A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Last week I looked at hot hitting starts in the system. While the list was exciting, the number of hot pitching starts is more interesting then the list of hitters. Part of this is the depth of interesting pitching prospects in the system. But, the other part is that pitchers are dealing with smaller sample … Read more
Last night the Mets lineup in the 6th began Bruce/Walker/Duda, so LH/switch/LH. So Joely Rodriguez, as the only LHP on the active roster, was obviously the choice. But in his brief career he hasn’t been reliable at getting LH hitting. Entering last night, LH hitters: 11/30 (2 XBH), 3/6 K/BB; RH hitters: 8/33 (5 XBH), … Read more
Unless you are completely off the grid, you heard that I have taken over as the Managing Editor of Crashburn Alley. That does mean some of the bigger and deeper minor league pieces will be moving there, but I am not abandoning this place. So I am going to jump back in with my thoughts … Read more
The past few years I have done a prediction survey with people who write and talk about the Phillies and baseball in general. This year I got 31 responses to the survey, which included writers from The Good Phight, Crashburn Alley, Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, and others (including radio broadcasters). This year I forgot to … Read more
Unlike many years in the past we have only gotten a couple of minor league work groups. We are still at least a week out from minor league assignments and this list (posted originally by Jim Peyton at Phuture Phillies) is already a few days old, so these things may change. This new list saw … Read more
We are a couple weeks into Spring Training and still a month from the start of the season, so it is not too early to speculate on the final roster. With all the questions about our new lord and savior Brock Stassi in my Good Phight Mailbag, I decided to revisit the 40 man roster … Read more
Minor league spring training kicked off this weekend. The first group of work groups are out thanks to pictures by everyone in Florida (the copy I am using was posted by Frank Berlingis). The first work group lists serve to show two things. The first is who is stateside and the second is who is … Read more
They finally put a game on TV, so I have some thoughts about some players. Specifically 3 players. Rhys Hoskins worked 3 full counts in his 4 trips to the plate today. He also fouled off a bunch of pitches in those at bats in addition to the 3-2 counts. He ended up going 0-3 … Read more
Baseball analytics still exist in a paradigm where the goal for many is to find or develop a “holy grail” singular stat that says whether a player is good or not. This is not limited to the WAR based pursuits that will likely at some point start to include data from things like StatCast to … Read more
We won’t be getting one of these tomorrow as the Rays have not yet moved into the 21st century. The pitching was not great as Pivetta was stymied by a combination of poor command and bad defense. The same would plague Elniery Garcia, who was once again 91-93 with his fastball and broke off some … Read more