Phillies’ Dominant Young Rotation Could Be Catalyst for Surprise Year

Watch your backs, opposing hitters. There’s a gang of gunslingers in the National League East, and they’ve got their sights aimed at you.

We’re not talking about the New York Mets, though their starting rotation is indeed sterling despite some early hiccups.

No, we’re going to sing the praises of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Perhaps you’re wiping coffee off your screen after a cinematic spit take. These are the Phillies, after all, the club that lost 99 games last season. The former juggernaut that collapsed under the weight of its expensive, fading veterans and appeared destined for a painful, protracted rebuild.

It’s early. No one is anointing the Phils as NL favorites. But, largely on the strength of its arms, Philadelphia could exceed expectations and give a hope-starved fanbase something besides cheese steaks to chew on. 

It begins with Vincent Velasquez, acquired this winter in the trade that sent closer Ken Giles to the Houston Astros. 

Even after taking the loss in the Mets’ 11-1 drubbing of the Phillies on Tuesday, the 23-year-old right-hander owns a minuscule 0.93 ERA. Overall, he’s surrendered 11 hits and two earned runs over 19.1 innings with 29 strikeouts.

He made franchise history in his second start of the season, a complete-game shutout against the San Diego Padres, per ESPN Stats & Info:

“It looks like we made a pretty good trade,” Phillies manager Pete Mackanin said after that game, per MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki and AJ Cassavell.

Speaking of trade acquisitions, Jerad Eickhoff—acquired from the Texas Rangers in the Cole Hamels deal—has posted a 1.89 ERA with 21 strikeouts in 19 innings. 

Eickhoff doesn’t overpower with high-90s heat, but he throws a plus curveball that catcher Cameron Rupp said the 25-year-old right-hander will “live and die on,” per Matt Breen of the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

Then there’s 22-year-old Aaron Nola, a first-round pick by the Phils in 2014. Nola has given up 12 earned runs in 19 innings and owns a 0-2 record, but he’s also compiled an impressive 23 strikeouts. 

Add 29-year-old Jeremy Hellickson, who’s struck out 14 in 14.2 innings over three starts, and you’ve got the makings of a special group.

In 2011, the Phillies featured a vaunted super-rotation that included Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and Hamels. That team, not coincidentally, won 102 games.

The 2016 starting five is a long, long way from matching that rotation’s track record. We’re still squarely in small-sample territory.

Last season, though, everyone assumed the Washington Nationals would run away with the NL East. Then the Mets crashed the party, largely on the strength of their burgeoning arms. 

Plus, 2015 witnessed two other youthful squads—the Astros and Chicago Cubs—arrive ahead of schedule. 

There’s no guarantee the Phillies will follow suit. They’re 6-9 entering play Wednesday, after all.

But marry that promising pitching to an offense led by third baseman and emerging star Maikel Franco, and suddenly it’s plausible to picture the Phils as something other than division doormats.

Sure, you can inject a dose of pessimism.

That same offense entered Wednesday second-to-last in baseball with a .211 average. 

It’s entirely possible these young pitchers could slip—like so many others have—as the league inevitably adjusts. Eickhoff and Hellickson, in particular, lack the pedigree to stand credibly in the can’t-miss category.

Then again, Phils starters have opened 2016 with a head-turning output, as NJ Advance Media’s Joe Giglio explained:

Heading into play on April 15, the Phillies rotation owned the following numbers: 10.71 SO/9, 1.71 BB/9 and a 2.14 ERA.

Here’s some perspective on just how ridiculous those numbers are. In the entire history of baseball, only 12 individual seasons have ever happened where a starter had at least 10 SO/9, 2-or-less BB/9 and an ERA under 3.00. Martinez (1999, 2000 and 2002) and ex-Phillies great Curt Schilling (2001, 2002, 2003) are the only pitchers to do it three separate times.

Schilling’s name has been evoked, which means we’re getting serious.

Possibly, we’re getting too serious too soon. The list of pitchers who have wowed for a few starts and then fizzled is too extensive to repeat here.

The Phillies, though, have a good thing going. The potential is palpable. Their gunslingers are lined up.

Now, it’s time to see how hard—and fast—they can squeeze the trigger.

 

All statistics current as of April 19 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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Phillies’ Long-Overdue Ruben Amaro Jr. Firing Opens Door for New Era

It finally happened—Ruben Amaro Jr. is out as general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. And, at long last, there’s a chance for a new direction in the City of Brotherly Love.

We’ll get to that new direction shortly. But first, it’s necessary to perform a brief autopsy of the Amaro regime.

The team announced his firing Thursday, per Todd Zolecki of MLB.com, one day after the Phillies were eliminated from postseason contention.

Of course, in reality, the Phils have been out of contention for months and even years. Yes, they advanced to the World Series in 2009 in Amaro’s first season as GM, made it to the National League Championship Series in 2010 and won the NL East in 2011.

Since then, however, Philadelphia has missed the playoffs for four consecutive seasons. This year, it’s sunk to a new low with the worst record in baseball.

Much of the blame for that stretch of futility rests squarely on Amaro’s shoulders.

First, there’s his noted aversion to analytics in an era when advanced stats and player evaluation have become the norm.

For his part, Amaro didn’t even have an analytics department until after the 2013 season, when the Phillies added Scott Freedman as a consultant from MLB‘s Labor Relations Department. Even then, Amaro sounded skeptical. “I don’t know if it’s going to change the way we do business,” he said at the time, per Zolecki. 

That attitude helps explain Amaro’s head-scratching tendency to keep aging players past their sell-by dates.

Take the infield core of shortstop Jimmy Rollins, second baseman Chase Utley and first baseman Ryan Howard.

Yes, they helped the Phillies win a championship in 2008 and contributed to the success of Amaro’s early years as GM.

But Amaro re-signed Rollins to a three-year deal with a vesting option for a fourth year after the 2011 season, agreeing to pay the veteran through his age-36 campaign. And, much more infamously, he handed a five-year, $125 million extension to Howard in 2010, a full two seasons before the first baseman’s existing contract was set to expire.

Hindsight is 20/20. But considering how far Howard’s stock has fallen in the intervening years, that will go down as one of the more boneheaded baseball decisions in recent memory.

Then there was the string of big-money deals and extensions Amaro handed to starters Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee and closer Jonathan Papelbon.

Yes, all three contributed, spectacularly so in the cases of Lee and Halladay. But all three ultimately became albatrosses, as Halladay and Lee succumbed to injury and decline and Papelbon curdled into a distracting malcontent.

Even when Amaro engineered deals as the rebuild finally lurched forward, it often seemed like too little, too late.

To pick one example: We’ll never know what the Phillies could have gotten for Utley at the deadline last year, when he made the All-Star team, rather than this season, when he was a recently injured shell of his former self and yielded a couple of interesting but unspectacular prospects from the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But it would’ve behooved the Phillies to find out (granted, Utley did have a no-trade clause).

The same holds for Papelbon and, to a much lesser extent, Cole Hamels, both of whom Amaro shipped out this summer but whose names popped up in frequent rumors last year as well.

Writing for FoxSports.com, Mitch Goldich summed it up neatly.

“One of the common criticisms levied against Amaro is that he doesn’t seem to have a plan,” Goldich noted. “I’d argue it might be more hopeless than that. That even if he did have a plan, there’s no guarantee he’d have the discipline to stick to it. Even when he knew the right thing to do, he couldn’t help himself.”

We could go on re-counting blunders (the lopsided swap that sent Hunter Pence to the San Francisco Giants in 2012, for example, or the time Amaro said grumbling fans “don’t understand the game,” per Jim Salisbury of CSN Philly). But you get the picture. Amaro is gone, none too soon, and the door is open for something new.

What will that be? And whom should the Phils slide into the general manager’s chair?

Whoever takes over won’t have to worry much about cutting the fat. With the trades (late or not) of Rollins, Papelbon, Utley and Hamels, as well as outfielder Ben Revere, Philadelphia doesn’t have many more pieces to move. (Howard, with his .228 average and $25 million owed next season, isn’t going anywhere.)

You could argue the Phillies would’ve been better served bringing in a new GM to oversee their trade-deadline machinations instead of keeping Amaro on board through July and August. 

In a way, though, this will allow Amaro’s successor to hit the ground running. Even if they didn’t always net the biggest possible return, the Phillies restocked a farm system that ESPN’s Keith Law ranked No. 25 in baseball before the season.

In particular, the trio of prospects acquired in the Hamels deal—right-hander Jake Thompson, outfielder Nick Williams and catcher Jorge Alfaro—should help a once-barren system bear fruit.

Add third baseman Maikel Franco, right-hander Aaron Nola and closer Ken Giles, plus shortstop J.P. Crawford—the Phils’ No. 1 prospect, according to MLB.com—and you have an emerging core any executive should be able to build around.

The new GM will also have money to play with, as CBS Sports’ Mike Axisa noted:

In fact, the Phillies only have about $65 million in salary on the books next year according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. This is a club that has run payrolls north of $165 million every season since 2011. The Phillies aren’t hurting for money, they’ve always been a super high payroll team, so they’ll have the resources to go out and sign some big free agents this winter.

That could include a front-line starter such as David Price or Johnny Cueto, or a bat like outfielder Justin Upton.

Handing big contracts to veterans, though, was how Amaro dug his grave. That’s not to say the Phillies shouldn’t go after expensive free agents, but first they need to bring in a GM with the acumen to make the right moves.

And, yes, they need someone who embraces analytics as an essential facet of baseball in the year 2015 and doesn’t look at them as some newfangled fad.

Scott Proefrock, who served as assistant general manager for Amaro’s entire tenure, was named acting GM. But he’s merely a placeholder.

In fact, as Matt Breen, Jake Kaplan and Justin Klugh reported for Philly.com, “The new GM will be handpicked by [Andy] MacPhail, who will succeed Pat Gillick as team president after this season.”

And MacPhail insists he’ll give his hire some breathing room, per John Clark of CSN Philly:

MacPhail will have plenty of names to choose from, but here’s an interesting one: J.J. Picollo.

Picollo has been with the Kansas City Royals since 2006, working his way up from director of player development to his current role as assistant GM. At age 44, he has the relative youth mixed with a player-development background, which can help shepherd a franchise out of the rebuilding darkness.

In addition to Picollo, Kaplan floated a handful of names, including 34-year-old Los Angeles Angels assistant GM Matt Klentak, 38-year-old St. Louis Cardinals assistant GM Michael Girsch and Miami Marlins director of pro scouting Jeff McAvoy, also 38, who’s spent time with the analytically inclined Tampa Bay Rays and Houston Astros.

No matter what, Philadelphia should target a candidate who combines freshness with meaningful experience and brings a track record of making sound, evidenced-based decisions, relying more on advanced scouting and numbers and less on gut.

Someone, in other words, who has a plan.

And so we’re back to taking shots at Amaro. Really, though, this is a moment to celebrate for Phillies fans. After years of frustration and futility, a new era is about to arrive.

Whether it’ll be successful, and how quickly, remains to be seen. But already, there’s something brewing in southeastern Pennsylvania—a feeling folks there haven’t had in a while: hope.

 

All statistics current as of Sept. 10 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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Fit and Healthy, Former MVP Ryan Howard Angling for Late Career Rebirth in 2015

It was one game, two at-bats. Also, it’s spring training. So take this with a boulder-sized grain of salt. Still, when it comes to Ryan Howard and the Philadelphia Phillies, any good news is welcome.

On Tuesday, Howard delivered some good news.

Hitting cleanup in the Phillies’ spring opener against the New York Yankees (we won’t count the embarrassing loss to the University of Tampa on Sunday), Howard went 2-for-2 with an RBI. And more importantly, he looked good doing it.

Here’s manager Ryne Sandberg, discussing his much-maligned first baseman on Feb. 26, per NJ.com‘s Matt Lombardo: 

His body right now looks like it will allow him to be more productive. … Just running the bases he even looks better. It looks like he has a much better chance of scoring from second base, much better getting to the cut-off spot playing first base. There should be some more range there with the way he looks from the waist down.

It was worth wondering how the former MVP was doing between the ears after Philadelphia general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. told 97.5 The Fanatic‘s Mike Missanelli in December that it would “bode better for the organization not with [Howard] but without him.”

Howard is owed $50 million over the next two seasons, plus a $10 million buyout for 2017. So it’s no surprise Amaro found no takers in the trade market. Howard posted a paltry .223/.310/.380 slash line in 153 games last year and paced baseball with 190 whiffs.

“His lower half has quit on him,” an unnamed evaluator told ESPN.com‘s Buster Olney after last season. “He just can’t move. I think of him as a .240, .250 hitter. He’s not a legitimate 40-homer guy anymore; he’s a legitimate 20-homer guy.”

Given Howard’s trajectory, even those lowered expectations seemed Pollyanna-esque.

I say “seemed,” but you could keep it in the present tense. Again, a little “best shape of his life” buzz and one good spring game don’t erase three years of steady decline.

But imagine if Howard could recapture the form that led him to four consecutive top-five MVP finishes between 2006—when he won the award—and 2009.

How much would that guy fetch, either at the deadline or next winter, especially if the rebuilding Phillies were willing to eat part of his salary? 

That’s jumping way, way ahead. Even if Howard keeps hitting and looking spry in the Grapefruit League, he’ll have to translate that success to the regular season before anyone takes his comeback seriously.

The list of injury-plagued 35-year-olds who have resurrected their careers is a short one.

For the moment, though, Phils fans (always a critical bunch) can be forgiven for looking through rose-colored glasses. 

Howard is an easy guy to root for—affable, energetic and by all accounts a visible clubhouse presence. Last year, as CSNPhilly.com’s Jim Salisbury noted, that all melted away:

There were times in 2014 when you’d look at Howard plowing his way through pregame sprints and wonder if he really wanted to be there. You’d look at him walk dejectedly back to the dugout after one of his majors-leading 190 strikeouts and wonder what was going through his mind. Money can’t buy confidence and Howard’s appeared to be shattered in 2014. 

In addition to his on-field struggles, David Murphy of the Philadelphia Daily News reports Howard was embroiled in a legal battle with family members “over control of his finances.”

So we’re looking at a mountain of distractions that explain Howard’s plight—and cast serious doubt on his ability to overcome.

That doubt won’t disappear tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, no matter what Howard does on the diamond.

Still, for a player who not so long ago ranked among the game’s most feared sluggers, it had to feel nice to be the bearer of a little good news.

All statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

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