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Aaron Nola’s arm injury in 2016 might have been the low point of the Phillies’ rebuild. Nola was supposed to be the sure thing in the rebuild, a command oriented middle of the rotation arm advanced beyond his years. After an offseason of worry, things did not get off to a good start. A back injury and poor performance had Nola sitting at 6 games started, 32 innings, and a…
J.P. Crawford played some baseball in the majors last year. There’s not a lot of #analysis to do with 87 plate appearances, but the real story is that Crawford finally made it to Philadelphia and showed he could handle himself at the highest level. In that limited playing time last September, Crawford displayed the three core aspects of his game that carried him from Lakewood High through the Phillies’ minor…
I haven’t been particularly kind to Freddy Galvis in the past on this site, but I think I’m still going to miss him a little bit in 2018. El Falcon’s 2017 season turned out to be his last one in red pinstripes, as he’s now a San Diego Father. Freed from the burden of having to evaluate Galvis in the context of J.P. Crawford, I want to take a fresh…
In a 2016 bullpen marred by some blindingly bad performances, Hector Neris and Jeanmar Gomez helped the Phillies the Phillies have a great win percentage in 1 run games. Gomez fell apart down the stretch, leaving Neris as the only reliable bullpen arm in the Phillies opening day bullpen. In 2017, Pete Mackanin made Jeanmar Gomez his closer with Neris instaled in the 8th inning. When Gomez inevitably blew up,…
I realize it has now been over a month since the last post here and posts were not frequent before that. I am still trying to figure out how to get everything done. With my prospect list finished I am going to doing a mad rush to finish out the report cards here before we launch into yet another baseball season. Thank you for bearing with us. Early in the…
Embed from Getty Images I’ve had an up and down opinion of César Hernández since his debut – originally I thought he was on his way to being the kind of player he finally became, but in between I was…kind of mean to him on this here website. I thought for most of 2016 that César Hernández was a fake. A fraud. A phony, playing the role of a big…
Ty Kelly was not the most heralded addition to the 2017 roster. In fact, we didn’t really trade for him; it was more that we bought him from Toronto for cash. I don’t know how much “cash considerations” generally is, but I think it’s an insignificant sum. And Kelly is a relatively insignificant player in the landscape of the MLB. He entered the season a borderline Major Leaguer and played…
Mark Leiter Jr. is the type of guy every team needs, but no one really ever wants to have to use. He’s a replacement level player occupying the long man/spot starter role who was thrust into 90 innings this year. Relative to expectations (of which there were none), Leiter did his job. Thanks to a basically league average strikeout rate (21.3%) and a slightly above average walk rate (7.9%), he…
“Neva” (NEE-vuh) is not a name you hear a lot. Or ever. But she was the nurse in charge of our birthing class in the summer of 2015. It was a glorious time to be a prospect-head and a Phillies fan, because as the trade deadline approached, the club was sooooooooooooo bad, putting them in line for a very high draft pick in 2016, and leaving them poised to trade…
The overall numbers for Odubel Herrera this season are not particularly inspiring. A 100 wRC+, while impressive for a Gold Glove-caliber fielder, represent a step back from where Herrera was in his first two seasons. Over nearly 1200 PAs between 2015 and 2016, Herrera, fueled by a 110 wRC+, produced 7.7 WAR. That placed him in a virtual tie with Dexter Fowler for tops among National League centerfielders. I should…