A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
If I was talented at this writing thing, this whole post would be a brilliant piece of writing. But I am not one who thrives on creativity, so you will need to settle for me just writing a normal piece with a disappointing headline. I mentioned it early in the season, but the Phillies major league rotation … Read more
Ruben Amaro and Pat Gillick continue to point to 2017 as the time the Phillies can start to compete again. There has been a lot of chatter that this is unrealistic, so let’s put the theory to the test. What could the 2017 Phillies look like? We are going to start with the homegrown and … Read more
It was announced on Saturday that the Phillies were demoting David Buchanan to AAA and calling up LHP Elvis Araujo. My initial reaction was of outrage that Severino Gonzalez would remain up on the major league roster despite showing in his last start that he was not major league ready. However, the Phillies might actually … Read more
Over at Crashburn Alley, Bill Baer wrote about Ryne Sandberg’s strange and detrimental bullpen usage. This is a topic I have been very passionate about, and rather than rewrite the great things that Bill wrote, I am going to expand this to roster construction. I don’t necessarily think that the bullpen is constructed poorly, but … Read more
Yesterday there was a lot of buzz about trades, pitchings, and a certain left handed starter. I have a lot of thoughts that I will ramble on about with no real coherent end point, so it is probably best to not think about finding a big message here. These range from thoughts on Amaro’s asking … Read more
Very often you hear complaints that the Phillies hold their prospects down forever, or at least until they are old veterans. This refrain gets repeated on message boards and comment sections forever, but is there any truth to this. I took all the major prospects from BA’s Top 10 Phillies prospects lists since 1998 who debuted … Read more
Yesterday Corrine Landry forwarded this tweet to me. .@brookob can't seem to figure out why the Phillies won't give Darin Ruf a chance? http://t.co/29q6sdtGEt — Philadelphia Inquirer Sports (@phillysport) April 7, 2015 The premise of the article coupled with all the comments bashing Amaro seemed to confusing to me, because I can’t figure out why the … Read more
There has been much written and argued about regarding the quality of the Phillies big league club for the 2015 season. The truth remains the same, the Phillies are going to be really bad in 2015 and there is nothing that can be done about it. The real question is does it really matter, and … Read more
Every time someone talks about the Phillies moving on in their rebuild, they bring up the Phillies $13 million closer, Jonathan Papelbon. Papelbon looks good this spring; his fastball is close to its velocity from last year (91-93), and his secondaries look sharp (and sequenced). Yet it appears the trade talk has calmed down, and while the … Read more
Take a good look because all of this could be gone tomorrow. The Phillies roster is going through rapid change as we approach the start of the year. So I thought it might be fun to take a snapshot at this moment in time. There is not much to take away from this, except maybe … Read more