The Phillies signed reliever Phil Bickford to a minor league contract and assigned him to Triple-A Lehigh Valley, the affiliate announced. Alex Coll first reported the move last night.
Bickford had spent the season in the Cubs organization after signing an offseason minor league contract. He was released last week. It’s possible that was spurred by an opt-out clause, as Bickford was pitching quite well with the Cubs’ top farm team. He posted a 2.60 ERA while striking out 34% of batters faced in 27 2/3 innings. He walked fewer than 6% of opponents while getting swinging strikes at a plus 13.6% rate.
That wasn’t enough for the Cubs to carve out an MLB roster spot. Bickford didn’t get much of a big league look last season either. He appeared in eight games with the Yankees and allowed nine runs in 8 1/3 innings. He had a strong run in Triple-A with New York, posting a 3.40 ERA with a 30% strikeout rate. His most recent extended stretch at the MLB level came two seasons back, when he allowed a near-5.00 ERA over 61 appearances.
Bickford doesn’t have overwhelming velocity. His fastball lands a little above 93 MPH on average. He uses that pitch around three-quarters of the time and has a mid-80s slider as his breaking ball. He’ll look to carry over his early-season success with Lehigh Valley and secure a spot in the big league bullpen. Philadelphia has a trio of relatively inexperienced pitchers — Seth Johnson, Daniel Robert and Max Lazar — in middle relief. All three have minor league options, so Bickford has a decent path to pitching his way onto the big league club in the short term. The Phillies will almost certainly add an established reliever or two in trade before the end of the month.
Well, at least they didn’t sign Zach Pop, TJ McFarland nor Geoff Hartlieb.
But a team won’t get better picking out of the Mets garbage can.
Wow Bickford is almost unrecognizable, with his now short hair.
You know why they did this…once the wheeling and dealing starts happening they are going to need to fill in those holes in the minors left when we trade two AA and an AAA guy for Skenes and stuff…
I don’t know about Skenes but I’d love for it to happen. Hope it does. I’d also trade Nola for Zac Gallen right now.
No, no way for skenes. Just sports radio talk.
When they’re not talking about trading AJ Brown
Well they had chances at Payamps, Alexander, Rodriguez, Anderson, and others. I get that they all were dfa’d by Milwaukee but that’s a top 3 bullpen and they would make any bullpen better.
93 MPH?
Painter sits at a hundred miles per hour and breaks off a slider at the sternum that is caught by the catcher six inches above the ground.
Mick Abel was pretty much sitting 98 against Pittsburgh for the duration so he has to be able to do that for an inning.
If his name isn’t DUMBrowski then make it make sense.