Phillies Start Depth Churn at Start of Free Agency

The baseball offseason kicked off in earnest on Monday, especially on the minor league side. Teams needed to clear up their 40 man roster and minor league free agents became eligible at the end of the day. That leads to a flurry of claims, trades, additions, and saying good bye.

The Cuts

Phillies outright RHP Yunior Marte, LHP Kolby Allard, IF Rodolfo Castro, RHP Freddy Tarnok, and RHP Luis Ortiz, all are now free agents.

This is the easy set of transactions. All are out of options and not in a position to start in the majors for the Phillies or are especially likely to pass through waivers. There is some minor exception for Allard who is arbitration eligible and was likely to command actual money. Ortiz is a solid player when healthy, but he is going to miss all of 2025 and using a 40 man spot all of the next two winters is more cost than his talent.

The Additions

Phillies claim RHP John McMillon off waivers. Phillies trade cash for RHP Devin Sweet. Phillies select the contracts of RHP Devin Sweet and RHP Alan Rangel.

McMillon is the most classic of these moves. In 2023 he had a 2.10 ERA in 51.1 minor league innings with 25 walks and 91 strikeouts he. Had 8 strikeouts and 0 walks in 4 major league innings before getting hurt. His fastball averaged 99mph, touching 100.7mph in the majors that year. This year, he gas a 6.32 ERA in 31.1 minor league innings between the Royals and Marlins. He pitched well in 12 major league innings, but his control and bat missing went completely backwards. His fastball only averaged 95, touching 99 earlier in the year, but more 97 late. His fastball has relatively poor shape, and was very velocity dependent and his gyro slider also lost velocity and a lot of bat missing ability. If he can get healthy and back to the 2023 version he is a late inning reliever, otherwise he is low cost waiver churn.

Devin Sweet bound around a bunch of teams on waivers in 2023 before being outrighted by the Tigers last January. He had a good year with AAA Toledo and was going to be a free agent before the Phillies acquired him. He is a short, right handed, middle reliever with 2 options remaining. His fastball sits in the low 90s, with vertical life and not quite cut or run. He doesn’t get a great angle on it, so it gets some misses, but isn’t a great pitch. He has a harder sort of mini sweeping slider that is his in-zone pitch to help off-set some fastball deficiencies. His big weapon is a low 80s changeup with big fade and run that he used for chases and misses. His sort of a weird change of pace arm that can be up and down depth.

The strangest of the additions is probably Rangel, a 27 year old right handed pitcher who spent some time on the Braves 40 man roster, but has not reached the majors. He was released by the Angels and signed by the Phillies in late July. He started and relieved with the IronPigs, putting up two very solid starts to end the season. He probably will come in stretched out as a starter, but he definitely has up and down long man written on his role card. His pitches grade out well on Robert Orr’s stuff model despite mediocre velocity. His 4-seam fastball sits in the low 90s with an average IVB north of 18″, but a steeper angle. He got misses with it in 2023, but in 2024, batters hit it in the zone, and while they chased it out of the zone, they rarely whiffed. He added a low 70s curveball with more than -20 inches of IVB, that grades out well, but wasn’t particularly effective. He added more depth to his slider, turning it into more of a chase pitch. His big swing and miss pitch however, is his changeup which he throws a little harder this year, but with more movement on it. It missed many more bats in the zone this year and had an overall whiff rate of 32% as it also was a chase pitch. He isn’t anything great, but I had him as a priority milb FA to re-sign so keeping him by adding him to the 40 isn’t a huge deal.

Some Sad Farewells

Minor league free agency is always sad as it means you have spent 7 years watching a player grow, struggle, and grow. It often involves untimely injuries like in the case of Dominic Pipkin, Jordi Martinez, and Kendall Simmons. Sometimes it is watching a player you believe in stall out in the upper minors like Carlos De La Cruz. The shrunken minors means that these players are likely to struggle to find jobs as the Phillies have already prioritized the players they wish to keep. I hope those moving on find jobs in baseball, or somewhere else if they wish, and I enjoyed watching them over the years.

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