With the recent news that Andrew McCutchen will open the season on the IL, Phillies manager Joe Girardi will have to decide on what to do about the leadoff spot, as Todd Zolecki of MLB.com observes. Girardi mentioned Scott Kingery, Adam Haseley and Roman Quinn as options. But Girardi also “did not rule out” J.T. Realmuto, and he went on to note that he is taking the new three-batter minimum into consideration when thinking about lineup construction. “You want to bring in your lefty to face Bryce (Harper),” he says, “but I’m going to have him surrounded with my best two right-handers around him. So pick your poison.” Regardless of the solution, Girardi and Phillies fans will be hoping for McCutchen to return in short order and retake his position at the top of the lineup.
- Per reports from Matt Gelb of The Athletic and Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports, expectations are that right-handed reliever Tommy Hunter will begin the season on the IL. The 33-year-old will be ready “a month or so into the season,” Salisbury adds. Hunter’s 2019 season was ended by elbow surgery in July. But that didn’t stop the Phillies from giving him an incentive-laden deal in February. Hunter was quite effective for the Phillies in 2018, providing 64 innings with an ERA of 3.80. However, he was limited to just 5 1/3 innings in 2019 before the aforementioned elbow issues. It remains to be seen which version the Phillies will get in 2020.
- Like Hunter, righty Victor Arano also seems ticketed for the IL to open the year, according to Gelb. Arano appeared in just three of Philly’s games last season (all in April) before elbow surgery knocked his year off the rails and stopped him from building on a quality 2018. That season, Arano notched a 2.73 ERA with 9.1 K/9 and 2.58 BB/9 over 59 1/3 frames.
- With Hunter and Arano joining David Robertson on the IL, that could create high-leverage opportunities for other relievers, such as Seranthony Dominguez. However, it’s still not clear if he can avoid the IL himself. Salisbury notes that Dominguez himself “believes he will be ready for opening day, but officials will be cautious.” The reliever emerged as a weapon out of the Philly bullpen in 2018, putting together 58 innings of work with a 2.95 ERA, even compiling 16 saves in the process. The following year, however, saw that ERA balloon to 4.01 over 24 2/3 innings before a ligament strain in his right elbow finished his season on June 5th. The 25-year-old pitched in a simulated game on Sunday, with Girardi noting that his fastball got up to 94 mph. That’s still short of his normal average of 98 mph, according to StatCast. But Philly fans will surely take solace in the fact that he is seemingly healthy and still has some time to ramp up to full strength.
Yea resigning a guy that won’t be ready to start the season is always a good use of money.
That’s why they signed the veteran relievers to those minors deals. They will hold down the fort until the other guys are ready to go and what do you care about the money? It’s not your money and you would be first to complain they don’t have any back up arms ready in AAA. It’s a long season.
They clearly are worried about the tax threshold so… money matters.
Tommy Hunter? He’s only guaranteed 850k, the rest is incentive-based. Considering he’s been pretty solid the past few years, seems like a very team-friendly gamble to me.
Worst case he doesn’t contribute and gets paid less than 1m, best case they get a veteran reliever on the cheap.
Yes he put in a solid 5 games last year.
I feel better about this season than I did last year. The players on the IL are a concern. As long as the list doesn’t get larger, we should be Ok until Cutch and Arano are GTG.
So half the bullpen is still injured. Great.
I’d rather have half my bullpen injured than having to deal with Wade Davis, Bryan Shaw and Jake McGee everyday.
Klentak has had zero success signing veteran relievers during his tenure. Aside from Neshak’s one decent year, the rest pretty much stunk out the joint, got hurt or got released.
The rest of his work only merits a grade of C from me. Klentak doesn’t seem to have the eye of a good talent evaluator. Oh, he can throw money at a Harper or a Wheeler, but someone else signed them first while both were still puppies.
I love JT Realmuto, but that trade is gonna hurt us big time unless Klentak can get JT’s name on an extension. Alfaro is already a quality MLB catcher, and Sixto Sanchez was our best SP prospect at the time of the trade.
I’m not a whole lot more enthusiastic heading into this year than I was at this time last year. Dunno. JMHO, but looks to me like 85 wins might be the best they can muster.
That number won’t win the NL East and probably falls a few games short of making a wild-card appearance.
Everyone counting out the Phillies, even their own fans. I love it. This team is going to surprise people for sure.
The sheer amount of money that Klentak has wasted on failed experiments is staggering.
Klentak is definitely on thin ice. What the Phils do or don’t do by the trade deadline will determine his future.
I will say that Klentak did have a lot of bad luck in terms of injuries. I really liked the bullpen coming into the 2019 season, but it fell apart before the season even started.
Von, agree. Most thought the pen was gonna be a strength. We all saw what transpired.
Agree with the klentak post completely.. Klentak and mcphail’s combined performance has been underwhelming. They’ve had five years to get a farm system right and failed miserably. Does not matter what they’ve inherited they’ve had plenty of time and multiple drafts to build a foundation and get it right. When you compare to other teams especially the NL East, all others are way ahead..
Quite frankly their talent evaluation and asset management skills are sorely lacking. Anyone can sign high-priced free agents.. it’s a matter of money and the owners desire to win, and in our case the owner is willing to spend..
We are sitting here five years later with a deficient rotation and bullpen, understand there have been injuries, but far too little in the way of internally-developed talent. That again speaks to they guessed wrong in evaluating talent and made roster, drafting, and player retention decisions based on a flawed analysis. Let’s also not forget the GM’s affection for kapler, when it’s clear the team needed something else and kapler was in way over his head.. Yet klentak wanted to retain him.?? Not going to win anything when that’s the type of judgment being exercised by management..
Any GM can throw tens of millions of dollars at free agency. The differentiator is Talent evaluation and developing a farm system so you don’t have to constantly chase high-priced free agents to plug holes. In any business the GM would have been fired a long time ago. And don’t forget, klentak did not sign Harper… Middleton signed Harper. And what actually has mcphail done in 5 years? The problems start at the top..
phillesfan: An excellent and erudite prose about the true deficit of the Phillies: i.e. the suits in the front office.
What exactly does McPhail do? Does he even have an office he visits each day? If everyone was healthy, or not otherwise impinged (Odubel), we would only start two players (Hoskins and Kingery) among our starting eight who were home grown.
No home grown hitters, then surely those home grown guys must be starting on the mound, right? Not so fast, my son. Among our starting five, or even six, only Nola is home grown.
And it’s not as though Hoskins and Kingery are going to mature into Acuna/Albies (Braves) or Soto/Robles/Turner (Nats) or Alonzo/McNeill/Nimmo/Rosario (Mets).
You are 100% correct. The top three teams in our division do something a whole lot better than we do. Have said for more than two years, our Ivy League wonderboy of a GM is in way over his head.
What about Jean Segura? Will he get the chance to leadoff in Philly or where else would he hit now?