Jorge Alfaro’s physical tools have put him in the prospect conversation for years — he’s cracked Baseball Prospectus’ top-101 prospects in each of the past five seasons, for example — but his on-field performance has always left something to be desired. He hit a respectable-for-a-catcher .253/.314/.432 in an injury-shortened season at Double-A level last year, but his plate discipline was poor. Although he demonstrated enticing power, his 4% walk rate and 29% strikeout rate hinted at serious issues with his approach. 

He’s seemingly begun to make the right adjustments this year, as he’s hacked six points off of his strikeout rate without sacrificing much power. In just under 400 plate appearances in Double-A, he slashed a more-encouraging .279/.322/.444. Whatever development has occurred, it seems to have satisfied the Phillies, who will promote the catcher today according to Yahoo’s Jeff Passan.

Alfaro’s future looks brighter than it did five months ago, but he’s still far from a slam-dunk prospect. Though his strikeout and walk numbers are trending in the right directions, they’re still cause for concern. And though he’s only 23, Alfaro has been playing professionally since 2010, so he may not have a ton of improving left to do.

While he’s improved at the plate, Alfaro’s biggest strides seem to have taken place behind it. According to Baseball Prospectus’ pitch-framing data, Alfaro’s framing was nearly a run worse than average last year, but has been over 14 runs better than average this season. Clay Davenport’s data tell a similar tale: +1 last season and +12 this year.

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I want to share a leaderboard with you that I can’t stop thinking about. These are the top-five National League first basemen in the second half by wRC+:

I cannot fathom a more perfect depiction of the frustratingly beautiful juxtaposition of expected/unexpected outcomes which is so integral to this absurd bat-and-ball game we watch each day. It would be easy to pick Votto, Freeman, Goldschmidt and Gonzalez as top offensive performers among National League first basemen. But Ryan Howard?! That Ryan Howard?!

The thing about Howard is that it’s not as though he snuck onto that leaderboard. He has a 191 wRC+ in the second half! Only four other players in all of MLB have a higher wRC+ since the All-Star break: Votto, Gary Sanchez, J.D. Martinez, and Jose Altuve (min. 60 PA).

What’s more, Ryan Howard’s offensive surge is in true old-school Ryan Howard fashion, which is to say he’s hitting the snot out of the ball. Thanks to a remarkable seven home runs in just 66 plate appearances, he’s posted a .403 ISO and .742 slugging percentage. Of the 294 players with 60 or more plate appearances this half, 142 of them — nearly half! — have a lower OPS than Howard’s SLG%.

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I’ll be in California for the next few days at the Area Codes and some Cal League stuff, but below are some thoughts on three Phillies prospects I’ve seen recently, including Jake Thompson, who debuts today.

Jake Thompson, RHP, Philadelphia Phillies

I saw Thompson a few weeks ago and he struggled with command. I don’t think strike-throwing is a long-term issue here — at least not so much that it will prevent him from starting — but I do think it impacts the effectiveness of his slider and that the most important part of his development at the major-league level will be locating that pitch where he wants when he wants. It’s often plus and should be so consistently at maturity. Thompson had issues locating it for me for the first half of his start until a mid-game at-bat during which C Andrew Knapp called for six straight sliders. It was a great opportunity for Thompson to find his slider, and it worked: Thompson located it for the rest of his start. It’s his best option for swings and misses to both right- and left-handed hitters. It was anywhere from 83-86 during this particular start though I’ve seen it up to 87 in the past.

Thompson’s fastball sits 90-93 and tops out around 94. His low-80s changeup has average projection, as does his curveball, which is slower and more vertically oriented than his slider. It’s a league-average starter’s profile for me.

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This is simply the nature of the current starting-pitcher market. There’s no Cole Hamels, there’s no David Price. There’s a Chris Archer and a Sonny Gray and a Julio Teheran, but odds are they all stay put. So you move on to your Andrew Cashners and your Drew Pomeranzes and you look for reasons to get excited. You don’t force reasons to get excited — some guys just aren’t that exciting — but if they’re there, you pay attention.

It’s understandable to not find Jeremy Hellickson too exciting. Over the course of his career, he’s been about the definition of average. Oh, Hellickson once was exciting. As a minor leaguer in 2011, he was ranked as the No. 18 prospect in the sport by Baseball America, and after making a brief but impressive debut that year, was bumped up to No. 6 on the following year’s iteration. In 2011, he was arguably the most hyped pitching prospect in baseball, sandwiched between Teheran and Aroldis Chapman, and then he started off his career with 400 innings of a 3.00 ERA.

But then, there were the ugly peripherals that had always loomed, followed by the heavy hand of regression, and then the elbow surgery, and Hellickson became a forgotten name as quickly as he’d become an intriguing one.

Except now it’s 2016, and the Philadelphia Phillies are reportedly asking for a team’s top-five prospect in order to obtain Hellickson; otherwise, they’re comfortable extending to him what could be a $16.7 million qualifying offer. Which, of course that’s what the Phillies are asking — no harm in talking up your own guy. The question is: how crazy is it, really? Or, more specifically, how interesting is Hellickson, really?

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A year ago today, baseball fans outside of the Delaware Valley were first introduced to a rookie outfielder on the worst team in baseball. His name: Odubel Herrera. You may recall that Herrera was a Rule 5 pick who had been a second baseman in the Rangers organization only to find himself named the Opening Day center fielder for the Phillies due to the, how shall we say, less than ideal nature of their 2015 roster. He didn’t find immediate success and received inconsistent playing time during the first half, so it wasn’t until July 25th that he appeared on the national stage. In what ended up being Cole Hamels’ final start in Phillies red, Herrera made one of the more iconic final outs in a no-hitter.

When the ball was hit, I remember knowing it would be a home run. When I realized the wind was going to keep it in the park, I remember knowing Herrera wasn’t going to be able to backtrack and make the catch. When I saw him make the catch, I remember knowing that baseball is unknowable and I should really stop pretending otherwise.

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A few years ago, I was driving down I-95 just north of Philadelphia when my timing belt broke. I had been happily cruising along in the far left lane of a four-lane road when all of a sudden my dashboard lit up with icons I’d never seen before and, even more alarmingly, my gas pedal refused to tell my car to “Go.” Without any means of acceleration, I somehow navigated my way across four lanes of traffic to the shoulder where my suddenly useless car came to a final stop. It was confusing, frustrating, and a little bit scary. Although I’ve never pitched professionally, I’m struck by a sense that right now Aaron Nola might feel a bit like I did that evening on the side of the road.

Aaron Nola was absolutely cruising. Through his first twelve starts he had a 2.65 ERA which was backed up by peripherals so strong that his FIP (2.77) and xFIP (2.74) provided an extra boost of confidence that, yes, Nola was for real. Then, without any real warning whatsoever, it all fell apart.

For the sake of convenience, let’s call those first 12 starts Nola’s Good Stretch and the most recent five starts his Bad Stretch. Nola has given up more earned runs (27 ER) in his 18-inning Bad Stretch than he did in the entire 78 innings of his Good Stretch (23 ER). That is an intense decline in results and, as a result, the Phillies announced that Nola will skip his final start before the All-Star Break in an effort to give him time to right a path that’s gone horribly awry. But look at a few more numbers across his splits and you’ll notice something a bit curious:

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Maikel Franco had one of the better games in baseball Tuesday. Facing the Diamondbacks, he came up in the third inning and doubled, and then he came up in the fifth inning and homered. It’s extraordinarily difficult to have a bad game when you hit a home run. It’s almost impossible to have a bad game when you homer and double. The Phillies would take that performance eight days a week — Franco’s single-game wRC+ easily cleared 300.

There was just one little thing, though. Franco’s a young power hitter, so the fact that he had two extra-base hits shows that that was Franco at his best. Yet there was also a sighting of Franco at his worst. In the end, the Phillies won, and Franco did do his damage, so spirits are high. But Franco did something that’s hard to forget.

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When Cole Hamels arrived in the major leagues, he had a 90 mph fastball, decent command, and what would prove to be baseball’s best changeup. That’s a few bucks short of an ace, and so, in two of his first four seasons, he produced an ERA over four and maybe was looking for something.

Now, instead of having one elite pitch, the Rangers’ ace is the only starting pitcher in baseball to possess four pitches in the top ten by whiff rates (minimum 200 thrown). That’s a long way from a pitch and a half. The fixes were simple, though, and he ran me through them before a recent game with the Athletics.

The Fastball
Here’s a graph that doesn’t follow normal aging curves: Hamels’ fastball velocity. Note that he was 26 years old in 2010.

Instead of going down steadily, the curve has gone up. We could wonder why, but we don’t have to — Hamels can tell us himself. Turns out, Hamels had back problems when he came up — a herniated disc — and he finally was able to do something about it once he got a major-league contract. “I hired a chiropractor, and for the past few years, I have one that travels with me and works on me the day before the game and right after the game,” Hamels told me.

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We have an understanding, right? Neither the Phillies nor Braves were supposed to be good, and neither the Phillies nor Braves are actually good. Winning now was never part of the plan, so in a sense it kind of doesn’t matter what happens on the field. Not on the team level, because the teams were always going to lose. So there’s no point in being too critical, or in laughing too much. Criticism should be reserved for failures. Failing requires the intent to succeed.

I don’t want to sit around and talk about the Phillies and Braves every day. It’s not particularly interesting that they’re bad. That being said, I do at least want to take the chance to even things out. Toward the end of April, I wrote about how the Braves offense was a total disaster. And it was a total disaster, as you remember. They hit two homers on opening day, then they hit one homer over their next 19 games. They didn’t get their team slugging percentage into the .300s until the middle of May. It was inconceivable how poorly the Braves were hitting, and it’s not like they’ve since turned into an offensive juggernaut. But as you look at the numbers today, there has been a shift. The Braves offense ranks low. The Phillies offense is worse.

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Ever since we’ve known about Aaron Nola, whom the Phillies selected with the seventh overall pick in the 2014 draft (nearly two years ago to the day), we’ve heard about front-of-the-rotation potential without traditional front-of-the-rotation stuff. Nola’s a righty, and he throws in the low-90s, and so for there to be front-of-the-rotation potential suggests something else. Pitchability, command, deception, feel — whatever non-stuff-related adjectives you want to use, the thought’s been all along that Nola’s possessed it in spades.

Following the draft and half a season of professional ball in 2014, Baseball America’s scouting report declared that “Nola’s hallmark is his stellar command.” Baseball Prospectus noted that Nola “brings a polished three-pitch arsenal, with strong command and solid deception.” Kiley McDaniel’s evaluation included perhaps the strongest description of Nola’s unquantifiable pitching ability, saying he “has an amazing feel to pitch.”

Fast-forward another year and some change, and Nola’s in his second major-league season — first full season — and we’re not only seeing that front-of-the-rotation potential quicker than most expected, but we’re seeing hints of an even higher ceiling than most expected. Through 12 starts, Nola’s averaged 6.5 innings per start with a 2.65 ERA and a 2.73 FIP. He’s been a top-30 starter by RA9-WAR and a top-10 starter by FIP-WAR. He’s been a top-15 starter in strikeout, walk, and ground-ball rate — arguably the three most important traits for any pitcher to possess.

Nola looks like one of baseball’s best young starters and, as expected, he’s doing it without traditional front-of-the-rotation stuff; he’s still right-handed, and the fastball still barely averages 90 mph. That’s not to say he doesn’t have a plus pitch — Jeff Sullivan already called Nola’s curveball the best in baseball — but he’s not dominating hitters in the obvious, easily quantifiable way that many of today’s young flamethrowers do. He’s doing it in a more sneaky kind of way, and that adds an extra layer of intrigue to an already intriguing pitcher.

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