Schwarber, Nick, and Pray for Stick
Today is the day that Bryce Harper reports to spring training. While it’s certainly fun to anticipate Harper’s return from reconstructive elbow surgery, his grand entrance into the heart of the Phillies lineup will have to wait a few months. He has been “dry swinging” as part of his rehab, taking swings without hitting a baseball, and his return to the active roster isn’t expected until sometime around the All-Star break. Defense will wait even longer, with Harper not expected to really be ready to play the field until the end of the regular season. That will mean many simultaneous servings of Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos in the outfield, something the FDA would surely stridently oppose if asked for an opinion.
The Phillies did some good things this offseason. By far the team’s biggest move was signing former Dodgers shortstop Trea Turner to a monster deal totaling $300 million over 11 years. I was a fan of the signing because it recognized that despite finishing 2022 just two wins short of a World Series title, the Phillies were also a third-place team that finished 14 games behind its divisional competition. With no expectation of a collapse from the Braves or the Mets, it was important to aggressively improve the roster where possible. Signing Turner allows incumbent shortstop Bryson Stott to slide into Jean Segura’s vacated role at second base, upgrading both positions.
But I haven’t been a fan of how the Phillies have managed the Harper situation from a roster standpoint. This is a team that should have been motivated to upgrade its outfield even in the alternate universe where Harper never requires Tommy John surgery. As currently constituted, the team’s outfield depth, which is basically Jake Cave and Josh Harrison, would have a great deal of trouble even replacing Brandon Marsh, let alone the 2021 MVP. Dalton Guthrie and Símon Muzziotti are unlikely to be answers either; not a single projection system housed here at the site has either of them with even a 90 wRC+ in 2023. That the team did nothing to address this issue after knowing that Harper would be unavailable for a significant chunk of the season is either perplexing or maddening, depending on whether you root for the Phils.
The team has yet to commit to a DH plan, at least publicly, and it appears likely that players will rotate through the position to keep them fresh. But rotating isn’t the same thing as replacing since that same motley crew of backups will play other positions when they aren’t DHing. None of the reserves/minor leaguers named above or Edmundo Sosa is likely to be even replacement level at designated hitter. The closest thing the Phillies have to a viable offensive option is Darick Hall, who showed power in his brief 2023 stint, but also poor plate discipline and a meager contact rate. ZiPS is easily the most optimistic of the FanGraphs projection systems here and even it only pegs Hall for a .225/.299/.434 line and a 103 wRC+, rather below average for a starting DH. Nor does it seem like the Phillies are content (at least not yet) to just plug him into the position for three months, which may be the least damaging in-house solution.
In terms of projected wins, the Phillies are right in that band where adding a win is the most valuable. Win number 110 or 60 has basically no effect on a team’s playoff fate, but wins number 86 and 87 certainly do. A four-win player (Harper’s projection) losing half a season is two wins. Two wins is about what acquiring an MVP candidate at the trade deadline will get you, something teams give up significant value to do. So how big a deal is Philadelphia’s curiously lax approach? Let’s start with the ZiPS projection, which currently assume 75 games for Harper. Here are the updated projected standings with that assumption:
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta Braves | 94 | 68 | — | .580 | 47.1% | 39.6% | 86.6% | 12.1% |
| New York Mets | 94 | 68 | — | .580 | 42.6% | 42.1% | 84.6% | 11.0% |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 85 | 77 | 9 | .525 | 9.8% | 37.5% | 47.2% | 2.6% |
| Miami Marlins | 75 | 87 | 19 | .463 | 0.6% | 7.0% | 7.6% | 0.1% |
| Washington Nationals | 65 | 97 | 29 | .401 | 0.0% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.0% |
That’s similar to the projection I ran a few weeks ago — not much has changed — and leaves the Phillies as essentially a coin flip to make the playoffs, with a real chance to upset and win the division, though they’d need a number of dice to roll their way. Now, here are the same projections, but with a few different totals for the number of games Harper is able to play at DH. The first column is the default 75-game projection from above:
| Team | Div% | 0 | 18 | 36 | 54 | 72 | 90 | 108 | 126 | 144 | 162 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta | 47.1% | 48.9% | 48.7% | 48.3% | 47.7% | 47.2% | 46.7% | 46.1% | 45.5% | 44.8% | 44.0% |
| New York | 42.6% | 44.4% | 44.0% | 43.4% | 43.1% | 42.6% | 42.0% | 41.6% | 41.1% | 40.4% | 39.7% |
| Philadelphia | 9.8% | 5.9% | 6.7% | 7.6% | 8.6% | 9.5% | 10.7% | 11.7% | 12.9% | 14.3% | 15.8% |
| Miami | 0.6% | 0.7% | 0.7% | 0.7% | 0.6% | 0.6% | 0.6% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% |
| Washington | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Team | Playoff% | 0 | 18 | 36 | 54 | 72 | 90 | 108 | 126 | 144 | 162 |
| Atlanta | 86.6% | 88.0% | 87.7% | 87.4% | 87.1% | 86.7% | 86.5% | 86.1% | 85.8% | 85.4% | 85.1% |
| New York | 84.6% | 86.1% | 85.8% | 85.5% | 85.0% | 84.7% | 84.3% | 84.0% | 83.6% | 83.3% | 82.9% |
| Philadelphia | 47.2% | 36.9% | 39.3% | 41.7% | 44.1% | 46.7% | 49.4% | 51.9% | 54.5% | 57.1% | 59.6% |
| Miami | 7.6% | 8.5% | 8.2% | 8.1% | 7.9% | 7.6% | 7.4% | 7.1% | 6.9% | 6.8% | 6.6% |
| Washington | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.1% |
| Team | WS Win% | 0 | 18 | 36 | 54 | 72 | 90 | 108 | 126 | 144 | 162 |
| Atlanta | 12.1% | 12.6% | 12.5% | 12.4% | 12.3% | 12.2% | 12.0% | 11.9% | 11.8% | 11.6% | 11.5% |
| New York | 11.0% | 11.5% | 11.4% | 11.3% | 11.2% | 11.0% | 10.9% | 10.8% | 10.7% | 10.6% | 10.4% |
| Philadelphia | 2.6% | 1.6% | 1.8% | 2.0% | 2.3% | 2.6% | 2.9% | 3.2% | 3.5% | 3.9% | 4.3% |
| Miami | 0.1% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.1% |
| Washington | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
In the worst case scenario, where something goes wrong with Harper’s rehab and he misses the season, ZiPS estimates that the Phillies would lose 10.3 percentage points of playoff probability. To put that in context, when I did a similar exercise last year with everyone in the National League as of late June, only Corbin Burnes had more of an effect on his team’s playoff chances. Indeed, of the million simulations of the 2022 season I ran, 40% of the ones that saw the Phillies pull a Rocky II and make the second time the charm would have disappeared into the aether if Harper had failed to return.
At the time of Harper’s surgery, the Phillies had myriad options, even if you ignore the unrealistic ones (like signing Aaron Judge or tricking someone into picking up Castellanos’ contract) or the fun, ambitious ones (like signing Brandon Nimmo out from under the Mets’ noses and playing him in right, then shifting him to center when Harper returned). Brandon Drury at DH projects as a superior option to any of the Phillies reserves and would have been a better flex option than Harrison. Wil Myers signed a one-year deal with the Reds for relative peanuts. Trey Mancini’s two-year, $16 million deal was costlier (macadamia nuts?), but he’s both a better hitter and would provide an emergency option if Rhys Hoskins leaves after 2023. Even the most pessimistic projection for J.D. Martinez (Steamer’s in this case) forecasts him for a 111 wRC+, and he signed with the Dodgers for one year and $10 million. Jurickson Profar remains a free agent; he could pick up DH reps against lefties and provide supersub value elsewhere the rest of the time. Given Harper’s likely eventual return, the Phillies might not have been the front-runners for all of those players, but better options were seemingly available.
The Phillies aren’t likely to make the playoffs winning just 85 games. Indeed, the scenarios in which they make the playoffs are generally those where they exceed their projections. Digging through a million sims, 87 wins only got a team the third Wild Card spot half the time, with the over/under to grab the NL East the highest in baseball at 98.4 wins.
| To Win | 10% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 50% | 60% | 70% | 80% | 90% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NL East | 91.1 | 93.5 | 95.4 | 96.9 | 98.4 | 100.0 | 101.5 | 103.5 | 106.1 |
| NL Central | 84.8 | 87.2 | 89.1 | 90.8 | 92.3 | 93.9 | 95.6 | 97.8 | 100.7 |
| NL West | 89.4 | 91.7 | 93.3 | 94.8 | 96.2 | 97.5 | 99.1 | 100.8 | 103.4 |
| NL Wild Card 1 | 88.9 | 90.5 | 91.7 | 92.8 | 93.8 | 94.8 | 95.9 | 97.3 | 99.3 |
| NL Wild Card 2 | 85.6 | 87.1 | 88.2 | 89.1 | 89.9 | 90.8 | 91.8 | 92.9 | 94.5 |
| NL Wild Card 3 | 83.1 | 84.5 | 85.5 | 86.3 | 87.2 | 88.0 | 88.9 | 89.9 | 91.4 |
If the team was to change course at this point, it would likely need to involve a trade. Now, I certainly wouldn’t send Andrew Painter or Mick Abel out of town for a bat, but is there anyone else in the system who is really untouchable in exchange for some high-leverage wins? ZiPS had the organization with two prospects between no. 101 and no. 200 on its Top 100 (Griff McGarry at no. 106) and Hao-Yu Lee at no. 158), and I can’t imagine hanging onto them if the right trade opportunity became available.
In the quest to finish last year’s unfinished business, the Phillies lost one of the league’s most valuable players and chose not to really replace him. Phils fans better hope that Harper is as good at healing at he is at crushing fastballs a mile. If not, the team’s lax approach may prove fatal to its playoff hopes.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Sign Profar? Profar would move Castellanos to DH. Profar in Lf and Schwarber in Rf. Turner could play CF if Marsh gets hurt. he did a few years ago for a season. Profar is not a great defender, but he is better than Castellanos.
Profar hit 110 wRC last season. that’s pretty solid. He might be cheaper now than he was a few months ago and might be more open to a short deal that gets him to free agency next season.
Profar is a good idea for the Phillies. If they go that route, he should go in right over Schwarber though. Neither of them can really move out there, but Profar at least has the arm for right
Schwarber has an arm; he was a catcher and has done OK in the assist department
Profar projects to about 103 wRC+
Darick Hall, already on the roster, also projects to 103 wRC+
This is a non-solution to a non-problem.
Wait, are you complaining that the Phillies have too few options at DH? Brother Dan, they have four DH-caliber fielders slated to handle the corners almost every day. That’s the roster construction problem. There’s no easy way out of that.
What they really should have done is worked out a deal to keep Segura, since the Alec Bohm experiment, and signed someone like Adam Duvall (who is probably a perfect 4th outfielder). But if we’re going after the Phillies for not signing Duvall or Jurickson Profar…I don’t know. You can’t talk about the Phillies without talking about their corner fielding.
While I certainly agree on the real issue, those items are a sunk cost, so to speak. They’ve known for 2 years that they have 4 DH’s for LF/RF/1B/DH & somehow seem OK with that.
The issue is the best of those is out for half the year..maybe more..they’re on the playoff bubble..& are just gonna run bad player out at one of those spots &/or force Nick/Schwarber to play OF every game.
Neither one is an optimal. They really should have signed another corner OF (I agree that signing a DH only like JD Martinez makes little sense & just gums up the works) Honestly, Profar would be a great fit for them. would be an offensive improvement & allow 1 of Nick/Schwarber to DH..& would be a decent depth piece once Harper comes back.
Just to clarify—Harper isn’t one of those four. And he’s the one that will be DHing when he gets back (for obvious reasons).
As you said, those guys are being forced to play the field most of the time, not actually DH. Even when one of them does get a turn at DH, they then have no good bench bats to replace them at their usual positions.
Putting Brandon Drury or Trey Mancini in the outfield again is not the answer! Signing JD Martinez so that the rest of them have to play in the outfield is not the answer! Putting Jurickson Profar in the infield at all is not the answer! They don’t need another DH!
How is this even a topic of conversation? Like, cool, maybe they should have outbid the Reds for Wil Myers, he’s projected to not be a decent defender in an outfield corner and a league average bat. They probably should have outbid the Red Sox for Adam Duvall, who is a perfect 4th outfielder. Maybe they should sign Jurickson Profar if he’s willing to sign for a deal less than the option he turned down. But, who cares? This is tinkering around the edges of a fundamentally flawed roster, and all of it is going to be irrelevant once Harper comes back.
Once Harper returns, sure, but the point is that they have no decent bats to fill in while Harper is out, and even a LF/DH only option like Profar would be a significant improvement to the offense until then
My gut tells me that this remains far too pessimistic about the Phillies chances. Zips isn’t going to respond to my pathos, but I’m telling ya, this team is going to win more than 85 games.
People will be screaming “but what about defense” into the void forever on this website. Someday we learn that it is fake, and big beefy boys who hit balls very far and big beefy boys who throw balls very fast is all that matters. Castellanos and schwarbers positioning won’t matter at all if castellanos can find his stroke again and schwarber replicates his 2022
I mean, the Phillies only won 87 last year and the division is even stronger this year. They added Turner but lost Harper for a lot of the season. So fighting for the last wild card spot again seems about right.
They underperformed big time the first couple months, and this team added so many more pieces than just turner. The rotation and bullpen are significantly improved, and they’re playing less divisional games this year. They’ll win more than 87 games, even with Harper missing the same amount of time he did last year
They also went 14-17 in September and October to close out the regular season so you can’t blame the poor record on just under-performing in the first couple months.
Allow me to counterbalance you. The Phillies will completely fall apart and lose 85 games. They are the losingest franchise in professional sports, and they always go back to losing before too long.
Ah this is some great analysis! They lost before so they’ll lose again!
It’s not analysis, my friend. It’s a prophecy.
The Phillies go on to win exactly 85 games, just not in the way anyone expected them to. Their defense steps up to average now that no-one can shift, and their pitching carries them to victory while all their hitters slump or fail to exceed projections xD
It’s about as much analysis as the guy he responded to
Remember, last year’s Phillies faced a record number of regular season games (48) vs. teams that won 100 or more games in 2022. That wont be the case in 2023. They also faced (qualified) starters who finished in the top 10 in the game either in WAR or ERA a combined TWENTY games last year (Alcantara 6 times!). Thats’ also not gonna happen again this year.
Harper probably misses 20 more games than he missed last year. OK. We had Didi Gregorius starting at short for 63 games with a 58wRC+.
There are reasons to believe the projection will be beaten.
They may not face as many 100 win teams as last year, but when 2 of those teams are in your division that’s going to be a problem. They could win 90+ games and miss the playoffs, that’s the real concern.
>They could win 90+ games and miss the playoffs, that’s the real concern.
That’s basically saying two of the Cards, Brewers, or Cubs will win 90+ games. Which…color me skeptical.
Toss the Giants in too, I guess. Projection systems are pretty high on them.
It happened all the way back in 2021
Agreed, the projections aren’t as favorable as the other teams in the division, but they improved across the board! The Harper injury stinks but it’s not like they knew that when signing Casty and Schwarbs. I also feel like the potential improvements from guys like Bohm Stott and Marsh could help offset the void with no Harper in the lineup.
The team hinges on the ability of stott and Bohm to take big steps forward. If they do, they’d have the best offense in the league. But even league average offensive years from them and it’ll be a huge boon
It not just about your defense though. Your big beefy boys need to hit, and Castellanos and Bohm didn’t do that last year. Bohm has some reason for optimism, but Castellanos looked totally cooked. Neither Bryson Stott nor Brandon Marsh have shown a confident ability to hit big league pitching, and I’m not buying the author’s statement that Stott is an upgrade over Segura playing down on the defensive spectrum. Add this to a hole at DH and one of the weakest benches among contenders, and there are plenty of reasons to be down on PHI next year
Not even a Phillies fan mate, just a guy who thinks sometimes intuition is still important in determining the success of a team.
Stott will be good, Bohm may just end up being a 1-2 win player, but that would be fine.
Castellanos didn’t look good, no, but bad years do happen.
“Defense is fake” is certainly one of the more interesting takes I’ve seen on this website.
Every year we seem to just brush aside the fact that half or more of playoff teams have below average defenses. In the TTO era it just really is not how I would go about constructing a roster, dombrowski is right.
The Yankees team you reference often as the worst defense ever won 101 games! (Iirc) it’s actually fake.
I also think there’s way too much hand wringing over the difference between a league average defender, and someone being +-25% in that range. A league average defender in 2023 is a NASTY defender. They are fast, strong, and have probably practiced to the point of it destroying their bodies. The real market inefficiency emerging is acknowledging how superficial “elite defense” is, and exploiting it by not caring about someone’s less spectacular defense. Maybe it’ll be more important this year without the shift, I will grant that. And I think that is an exciting development. But If you position Kyle schwarber perfectly, really not meaningfully different than having any other guy out there, especially if you put someone like marsh next to him.
My tin hat is now on, and I think the growing obsession with defense is that it’s “the final frontier” of analytics. Once bill James sucked all the joy and mystery out of baseball, the only thing that was left to conquer was making sense out of the value of defense. So now it gets outsized attention since there’s still a sense of uncertainty around it: people can still form theories around how to best construct a team that differ from another statheads idea of how to do it. Otherwise it’s just all roster construction monoculture. So defense is really the last place left for “punditry” in analytics, despite only like 60 percent of balls being put in play. That like 3% of balls in play that are in contest between elite defenses, and bad defenses, is now where the focus of analytics has gone. Which is great news for a guy like dombrowski, who sees that that 3% is much better won with a bat than with a glove.
I mean, it’s definitely “like 3%” in that it is also a number between 0 and 100% of batted balls, but…
@ben Clemens please find out what number of balls in play are within the range that the quality of defense makes an appreciable difference on the outcome. I will take the under on the 3% I said earlier
To be slightly too serious I don’t really see the point in pulling numbers out of, uh, wherever that one came from when there are already better numbers. The existing defensive stats — the ones you’re wilfully ignoring while at the same time you’re also appearing to reinvent the wheel for no reason — are already quantified in runs. If you genuinely don’t believe, for reasons of “intuition” or by the eye test or whatever other subjective view you please, that e.g. Nick Castellanos is ~10 runs per thousand innings worse than an average outfielder, I have no idea what to tell you. I’ve watched the guy play and I only have trouble accepting that the value is that small.
Statcast already has balls in play bucketed by catch probability. Your intuition is wrong.
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/catch_probability
And man, Andrew Vaughn. 1/27 on attempts with less than 75% catch probability. Whereas Daulton Varsho was 35/58. That’s a lot of extra base hits.
Just to bring this back on topic, Castellanos was at 6/56 and Schwarber 4/41. Castellanos was 333rd of 337 in OAA and Schwarber was 335th out of 337.
Slow guys just can’t get to those balls.
The “Outfield Jump” leaderboard is fun too. Not nearly as useful as the one you linked to for the purposes above. But it gives you a sense of how effectively they know where to go, and how quickly they figure it out. And you know what that tells us? Andrew Vaughn and Jesse Winker should never play in the outfield ever again. Hoo boy. Their “burst” is bad. Real bad.
I’m getting flashbacks to Canseco’s header homerun.
He had it, he had it… he had it right smack in the head.
Is there anywhere that lists how many “out opportunities” fall above 95% (i.e. 0-star)? They’re not listed in this table so it’s impossible tell what percentage are represented.
Brett Phillips comes up in the top 10, with 11 OAA, but only 44 starred opportunities. This means at least 56 of his opps were >95%.
The top 10 on that list would be about 8.4 outs made on 26.5 opportunities in the 4- and 5-star range.
An average, 0 OAA player is at about 2.4.
The bottom 10 are at .92.
In the 3-star range, it’s 10.4 / 8.0 / 4.5 out of 12.4.
So, given these numbers are out of some sample >100: probably there are about 6-8% of plays that elite defenders are “getting to” that a dead-average one misses and 10-13% that the very, very worst don’t field.
I did a little back of the napkin math for a couple guys by adding the missed attempts on the Statcast leaderboard to OF putouts from the player’s FanGraphs page to get total opportunities, and got about 75% as zero star. Seems to jive pretty well with what you calculated.
Typically speaking, the difference between a very good defense and a very bad defense is about 70 runs per OAA–a little less than half a run per game. Make of that what you will, but that seems like a lot to me.
There were a lot of playoff teams last year, and the Phillies, Braves, and Twins are the only ones I see rated below average last season in Team Def on this site. 5 of the Top 6 defensive teams made the playoffs. Defense isn’t required to be a playoff team, but teams can get value from it, and as such better defensive teams are more likely to make the playoffs than bad defensive teams.
In 2022 the majority were below average
2021* sorry
So a little quick research into the data reveals that “just a guy” whose opinion is based upon “intuition” is full of beans. Who would have imagined such a thing?
Looks like this dumbass doesn’t know what opinion means. Mister smart data research man
Doubling down on your bad conclusions (based on nothing) and insulting people doesn’t make you look smart
I’ll give you that WAR generally overrates defense and that it’s relatively not as important as offense or pitching, but defense still matters quite a bit. There are also plenty of examples of teams with a decent or better offense and pitching who miss the playoffs due to bad defense.
I don’t really disagree with this at all. It reminds me of people harping on Swanson being a +20 defender and that not being sustainable. It’s like I’ll somehow find the will to move on with reliably average SS defense from a guy with 30 HR potential and the ability to hit for some average, thanks for the concern tho
The Phillies haven’t exactly sat on their hands about defense too: Marsh and Stott were key to the WS run, Turner’s an upgrade up the middle, Realmuto’s an all around badass….
Also they’ll be featuring a harder throwing pitching staff this year. They were the lowest velo playoff team last year IIRC. That should help the defense
That still leaves them short a bat at either a corner outfield position or DH while Harper is out.
Power pitching and dongs is a timeless formula
i am just not a believer in the (lol)mets and i think philly will find a way to outpace them this year.atlanta, on the other hand, looks like a behemoth.
While I want to say the (lol)mets look like juggernauts, too much of me has to agree that nothing ever goes the way the (lol)mets want and I have to keep rooting for that to stay the same. Because (lol)mets.
Where would we be without them finding new ways to…beat…expectations? 😇
Not sure how Profar isn’t on this team already. He can play every day here, be part of a playoff roster, and even when Harper comes back, he isn’t squeezed out of a role, because he plays enough positions and the team has such a DH need (of which Bryce will likely take most ABs at anyway).
It’s probably because he would lose his role midseason. Profar only “plays enough positions” if you consider exclusively left field “enough positions”
On most teams that would be true but on this Phil’s roster Profar could probably play the corner OF spots and some minimal innings at 3rd and 2nd without being a huge downgrade defensively
He’d be very bad defensively at 3B and 2B. I’m very familiar with his infield styling’s from his one year in Oakland. At least now he’s a competent hitter
You should see the other Phillies!
I’m not sure “our defense already sucks so let’s make it worse” makes sense as a roster construction strategy
I’m hearing reports that it’s the new frontier in analytics
It works if the offensive value you gain from Profar’s bat is more than the defensive value you lose by playing him on the infield, which might actually be true for the Phillies.
2022 was literally the only season when you could say Profar played exclusively left field.
His second highest innings in LF was in 2020 with 282 innings, but even then, that accounts for only 64% of his defensive innings.
It is not unreasonable to think that Profar could be a better option than Bohm at 3B facing right handed pitchers. (And no, it does not mean it is a good option.)
Ramon Laureano and Tony Kemp are probably available. Given Oakland’s determination to trade all major league players for next to nothing this is an option
I would not characterize their approach as lax as they have obviously aggressively spent money. I would describe their approach as inefficient as they already used up their resources (relative to how their peers used resources as only teams in NY have higher payrolls), and no longer have a flexible roster/resources to fix holes.
I have heard various reports saying Harper expects to beat his timeline by months. Being in camp already is a good sign, the all star break isn’t till Mid July. Could realistically see Mid May to early June for his return.
I don’t doubt that’s Harper’s intention/hope, but athletes are perennially over-optimistic about recovery timelines.
And it often makes things worse.
no doubt!
Good buddy Miguel Sano could be an NRI and is projected for better output than their in-house options. He’d be on-brand, too.
Darick Hall had a wRC+ 120 filling in for Harper next year. He may project at only ~100 last year, but the names floated here all project at 105 or 110. Hell, Edmundo Sosa and Josh Harrison were both hitting like that as recently as 2021.
The argument here is that millions should be spent, roster room created,and possibly prospects traded to acquire some dude that projects to generate about 0.5 WAR more than the multiple in-house options you have. Unless you put a lot of stock in “proven veteran” status, I just don’t see it.
Projections aren’t gospel, and roster flexibility matters.
Dombrowski’s usual method is to empty out the system to try to win so surprised he hasn’t done that here. The injury was in November so the team had a ton of time to make moves. Ideally, they could have traded for a starting CFer as I think Marsh seems more like a 4th OFer but there isn’t a lot out there. A trade for someone like Michael Taylor would have made a ton of sense and not cost much but they could have gone FA route as well. Kiermeier signed for 1/$9M and would have been a great fit but plenty of other OFers signed for reasonable short-term deals.
Do you want to go by what Darick Hall actually did, 1.6 bWAR with 9 HR’s in only 142 AB’s which equates to a full season of 6.4bWAR and 36 HR’s or go with the nit-picking of his flaws. I am not suggesting that he would reach those figures but how about finding out just what he might actually do. It appears that he would be. at the least, a viable strong side half of a DH platoon. The Mets accepted Daniel Vogelbach’s flaws, there are many, but he also produced great numbers against RH pitching. While I am biased, watching Big Papi and J.D. Martinez, probably accounts for that, by seeing the tremendous value a dedicated DH can do for a team I find the fact that many teams seem to treat the position as an afterthought, almost to the level of distain, very strange. For example, last year the Mariners even used Luis Torrens 8 times in the DH role. He carried with him a 71 OPS+ up to the plate. Even a mediocre dedicated DH has to be a better idea.
If this were the Pirates or Rockies, absolutely. But the Phillies are a position where wins are crucial *right now*. And it’s not like Darick Hall lit up the minors; at ages 25 and 26 the last two years, he has a wRC+ of 110. Not translated, mind you, raw.
So it seems like a choice between, say, going out and signing Profar at $X million (even though “hey wait, I may not fully buy into those numbers last year…”) or stay in-house with Hall (even though “hey wait, I may not fully buy into those numbers last year…”)
I am not trying to make Darick Hall the next Papi but he did what he did and is having a solid spring. All the options you mention, except for the reasonable, but apparently quite expensive, Jurickson Profar, are no longer available. Hall, who fits my idea of the positionless player who could be a useful DH, might be another surprise success story.