I might as well throw out all the usual caveats up front. It’s April. Sample sizes are still miniscule. The ball might be different. The rules are definitely different. I could go on. All of that is true, but it doesn’t change this essential fact: José Alvarado is on an otherworldly tear right now, putting up best-reliever-in-baseball numbers for a Phillies team that desperately needs the help.

Let’s start with the numbers, because they’re overwhelming. Alvarado has faced 29 batters so far this year. He’s struck out 18 of them. That’s a 62.1% strikeout rate, or as I like to call it, a made up strikeout rate. You can’t conceive of a 62.1% strikeout rate. It’s nonsense math. Nearly two-thirds of the batters who have come to the plate against Alvarado this year have walked back to the dugout with nothing to show for it but a sad face.

As you can no doubt imagine, you need to miss a lot of bats to put up strikeout numbers like that. Alvarado has posted a 20.8% swinging strike rate so far this season, seventh-best among relievers even in the small sample of April, when outliers rule. That’s a career high for him, obviously, but not by as much as you’d think: He posted a delectable 16.7% mark for all of 2022. Read the rest of this entry »

It came as a big blow to the Phillies when Rhys Hoskins, a career 125 wRC+ hitter and the de facto team captain, went down with a season-ending injury. But if there were a silver lining to the circumstances, it was that Darick Hall would get the opportunity to prove himself with a more regular role in the starting lineup. Even Hoskins agreed; the day after he tore his ACL, he told Hall he was genuinely happy for him. The 27-year-old non-prospect forced his way to the majors last summer after hitting 20 home runs in 72 games at Triple-A, then crushed another nine at the big league level, finishing with a .522 slugging percentage and 120 wRC+. This year, he had a shot to show he could keep slugging over a full season. If he could, the Phillies would be much better equipped to handle the loss of Hoskins.

Unfortunately, Hall’s big chance was short-lived. On Wednesday afternoon, the winds began to change and the clouds turned dark. The silver lining became harder to see amid the storm. While trying to stretch a single into a double, Hall landed awkwardly at second base, jamming his right thumb into the side of the bag. He stayed in the game for another inning but eventually came out when he realized something was amiss. A righty-throwing first baseman doesn’t use his right thumb in the field all that often, but five out of five doctors recommend hitting the showers when you tear a ligament.

Indeed, a torn ligament was the official diagnosis, and it will require surgery to fix. The Phillies have yet to offer an official timeline for Hall’s return, but it could be several months before he steps back on the field. Mike Trout needed surgery to repair a torn ligament in his thumb in 2017 and missed about six weeks. Kevin Kiermaier had a similar procedure the following year and missed nine. Travis d’Arnaud lost more than three months after such a surgery in 2021. Clearly, recovery time depends on the individual player and the extent of the injury; we should hear more about Hall in the coming weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Organizational Intern, Baseball Operations Analyst

Department: Baseball Operations
Reports to: Director, Baseball Operations
Status: Full-Time Salary/Non-Exempt Intern

Position Overview:
The Phillies are seeking passionate and knowledgeable applicants for an entry-level baseball operations analyst. This role will provide analytical and administrative support to our baseball operations group and will consist of opportunities to contribute throughout the many facets of the department, including close collaboration with our Research & Development team.

Responsibilities:

• Assist with and compose research and analysis for baseball operations initiatives including internal and external player evaluation
• Support salary arbitration preparations
• Provide administrative support as needed

Required Qualifications:

• Strong foundational knowledge in modern baseball analysis
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Rigorous attention to detail
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel
• Familiarity with SQL
• Experience with programming languages (e.g. R, Python)

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working with video and with baseball technologies (TrackMan, Rapsodo, bat sensors, etc.)
• Familiarity with league transaction rules

Interested applicants should submit both their resume and an answer to the following question:
Write a brief analysis of the top three starting pitchers expected to be free agents at the end of the 2023 season. Given the information you have available today, how would you advise team decision makers to rank the pitchers for acquisition purposes next offseason and why? (max. 300 words)

The Phillies are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and are committed to growing a workforce diverse in perspective and background. We proudly strive to build a group of employees who represent the fans and communities we currently, and aim to serve.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Philadelphia Phillies.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Philadelphia Phillies. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

The actual process of cutting a major league baseball player on a guaranteed contract is easy enough in theory, but time-consuming in practice. The Mets designated Darin Ruf for assignment last Monday and had likely known he wouldn’t make the team for at least a couple weeks before that. But it wasn’t until this Monday that the 36-year-old former Creighton Blue Jay finally received his release. That ends the fifth act in Ruf’s career, one everyone would probably just as soon forget.

Ruf was one of several first base/DH types who passed through waivers just before the season, as teams weighed the potential for a bounceback against the downside of being on the hook for $3 million in his case, plus another $250,000 to buy out his club option in 2024 if things didn’t go well. Perhaps he’ll be more attractive at the league minimum or as depth in Triple-A if he accepts such an assignment, and we’ll see him in the majors again.

Even if this is the end of Ruf’s time as a major leaguer, he’s had a noteworthy career, spanning 561 games over parts of eight seasons across 10 years, on either side of a dominant three-year run in the KBO. I, for one, did not expect to be writing about Ruf in 2023, but he’s confounded my expectations and then some. Read the rest of this entry »

Before I started at FanGraphs, most of my writing was about the Phillies. When I took this gig, I made a promise that I’d continue to write about my favorite team, joking that this was merely “one more place to gush about Rhys Hoskins.” I must admit, this isn’t how I hoped to fulfill that promise.

On Thursday afternoon, Hoskins was manning first in a Grapefruit League contest against the Tigers. It was a happy day for Philadelphia, with Trea Turner, Kyle Schwarber, and J.T. Realmuto making their return from the World Baseball Classic. The Phillies were fielding what could have been their Opening Day lineup for the very first time. This wasn’t just any old Thursday in March; it was a chance to see how the reigning NL champs planned to defend their title.

Things got off to a promising start when Schwarber doubled and Hoskins drove him home in the bottom of the first. Woefully, the good feelings wouldn’t last for long. The following inning, Austin Meadows hit a high-bouncing grounder along the first-base line, and Hoskins turned to chase it into shallow right field. He nearly made the play, but the ball slipped out of his glove, like a scoop of ice cream falling from the top of the cone. As he moved to retrieve the ball, he took an awkward turn. One step later, and Hoskins was crumpled on the grass in pain:

It was immediately clear that something was wrong. Bailey Falter signaled for help from the dugout as Bryson Stott called for time. Every Phillie on the field came to check on their fallen teammate. Soon, the paramedics would cart him away. Read the rest of this entry »

David Ross was 38 years old and still strapping on the tools of ignorance when he was featured here at FanGraphs in February 2016. The title of the piece was David Ross: Future Big League Manager, and as many in the industry had suggested it would, that supposition soon came to fruition. The longtime catcher is currently embarking on what will be his fourth season at the helm of the Chicago Cubs. I recently asked Ross how he approaches the job philosophically now that he’s firmly in the trenches.

“My style — the way I approach being a manager — is leadership and direction, but I’m also still a player at heart,” Ross told me. “I understand what these guys are going through, competing for jobs and different roles. Communicating through that as a former player, someone who experienced it, I can relate to them. I try to keep a player’s mindset as part of my decision-making.”

Jed Hoyer was the club’s General Manager when the Cubs hired Ross following the 2019 season. I asked the now President of Baseball Operations about the process that informed that decision. Read the rest of this entry »

Trea Turner has transformed himself into one of the best hitters in baseball. Lacking projectable power when he was drafted 13th overall in 2014 — Kiley McDaniel cited his upside as 10-12 home runs with a .420 SLG the following winter — Turner proceeded to become far more than the slash-and-burn type that many envisioned. His past three seasons have been particularly impressive. Playing with the Washington Nationals and the Los Angeles Dodgers, he posted a sparkling .316/.364/.514 line with a 139 wRC+. Moreover, his right-handed stroke has produced 87 home runs over the last four non-COVID campaigns.

Turner — now with the Philadelphia Phillies after being signed to an 11-year, $300 million contract in December, and currently playing for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic — talked hitting prior to a recent spring training game.

———

David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite icebreaker questions: Do you view hitting as more of an art or more of a science?

Trea Turner: “I think it’s more of an art, but we’re trying to use science to quantify it. Sometimes guys have good swings, but then you go into a game and you can’t necessarily hit. The game is more of an art than a swing.” Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve reached the point in the offseason when it’s time for one of my favorite/most hated preseason traditions: my attempt to predict breakouts and busts. Since those are beyond what a projection system suggests are naturally going to be low-probability outcomes, there’s a high probability of me looking pretty silly — something writers generally try to avoid. Let’s start by looking back at how smart I was last year…or how foolish:

Thank goodness I had a weaker year than average overall, as I included a few of my favorite players in the mix! Being right for breakouts is a lot of fun, but being right on the busts is a bit depressing, a definite sign that I’ve mellowed as I enter middle age. Trout’s contact rate didn’t bounce back, and his BABIP crashed by well over 100 points, but his newfound grounder proclivity disappeared, and the power boost more than compensated for an OBP nearly 50 points below his career average. Riley’s BABIP also predictably fell, but he hit the ball harder and became a more well-rounded hitter, crushing most pitches instead of predominantly fastballs. Most of the rest came in at the middle-third of the ZiPS projections, which is a victory for the computer rather than me — all that is except for Schwindel, who didn’t just regress toward the mean; he lapped it.

Now, let’s turn to this year’s picks, as I throw myself upon the tender mercies of fortune. Read the rest of this entry »

“You can never have too much pitching” is an adage that predates the bombing of Pearl Harbor and a notion that’s at least as old as Old Hoss Radbourn’s sore right arm. Every team goes into the season expecting that its rotation will need far more than five starters, and one pitcher’s absence is another’s opportunity to step up, but that doesn’t make the inevitable rash of spring injuries any more bearable. This week, we’ve got a handful of prominent ones worth noting, with All-Stars Carlos Rodón and Tony Gonsolin likely to miss a few regular season turns, top prospect Andrew Painter targeting a May return, and José Quintana potentially out for longer than that.

The latest-breaking injury involves Painter, the freshest face among this group. The fast-rising 19-year-old Phillies phenom placed fifth on our Top 100 list. Moreover, the 6-foot-7 righty, who sports four potentially plus pitches, had already turned heads this camp, reaching 99 mph with his fastball in his spring debut on March 1 (Davy Andrews broke down his encounter with Carlos Correa here). While he topped out at Double-A Reading last year after two A-level stops, he was considered to be in competition with Bailey Falter for the fifth starter’s job, and had a legitimate shot at debuting as a teenager, though his 20th birthday on April 10 didn’t leave much leeway.

Alas — there’s always an alas in these stories — two days after Painter’s outing, manager Rob Thomson told reporters that he was experiencing tenderness in his right elbow, and several subsequent days without updates suggested there was more to the story. Indeed, an MRI taken on March 3 revealed a sprained ulnar collateral ligament, with the finding subsequently confirmed via a second opinion from Dr. Neal ElAttrache, hence the delay. The Phillies termed the injury “a mild sprain” that isn’t severe enough to require surgery. The team plans to rest Painter for four weeks from the date of injury (so, March 29) and then begin a light throwing program that under a best-case scenario would have him back in games in May. Read the rest of this entry »