Phillies News and Discussion 2025 Season

[zambonir]

109 OPS+ is better than meh but his home/road split is .995/.665 so it really does seem to be a Coors Field thing.

The fact that the Angels tendered and lost their arbitration case with him, and acquired Kingery from the Phillies on a guaranteed (albeit minimum) major league deal makes them look even worse-run than the Rockies, not that this is news.

[bkox]

What about Cesar Hernandez? Has he had a better career than Stott?

And for relievers.. Jake Diekman managed to appear in 706 major league games.

[phillychuck]

Cesar Hernandez is close to Stott--lots of 2-ish WAR seasons. He should be mentioned. Diekman is a good catch..LH relievers get lots of chances!

[zambonir]

Yeah Cesar is ahead of Stott for now.

JP left Galvis in the dust quickly but Freddy probably rates an honorable too.

[phillychuck]

I thought of Freddy but didn’t know if he came up enough after the “Golden Era.” He was up in 2012, so I guess he counts.

Stott’s peak year was better than Cesar’s best, I’ll keep him as the 2B based on that. He has at least 5 more years left in the big leagues barring injury.

Updated post:

Looking at Stott’s statistics (above) got me to thinking about the best minor leaguers from the Phils’ system post the Ryan Howard/Chase Utley/Jimmy Rollins era...

C- Logan O’Hoppe (d’Arnaud?)
1B- Rhys Hoskins
2B- Bryson Stott
SS- JP Crawford
3B- Alec Bohm
LF- Adam Haseley? Darin Ruf? Mickey Moniak?
CF- Odubel Herrera (Rojas) Moniak?
RF- Domonic Brown

Honorable Mention 3B- Franco, IF- Kingery OF- Vierling 2B- Cesar Hernandez SS- Freddy Galvis

Arguably not a single position player as good as Carlos Ruiz (from the Howard/Utley/Rollins era, too). Outfielders are really bad.

SPs- Nola, Suarez, Sanchez, Sixto Sanchez, Carlos Carrasco, Zach Eflin, Nick Pivetta

Relief Pitchers- Seranthony Dominguez, Orion Kierkering, Hector Neris, Ken Giles, Hoby Milner, Jake Diekman, JoJo Romero, Luis Garcia, Mark Leiter, Jr., (Connor Brogdon)

Pitching development has been a bit better, but still not stellar. This is an Achilles heel for us.

[zambonir]

It's pretty close if you don't count Cesar's early two years off the bench. Five years, 11 WAR for Cesar, probably 10 WAR in four years for Stott, with no sign of him ever repeating his outlier season of 4-5. They both seem to be 2-3 WAR guys.

But, Stott's bat has really come back the past few months so he has a chance get back to the higher end of that over that if he can keep doing that through next season. In June, though, I would have said he might be traded or get non-tendered before Year 6 himself.

[phillychuck]

I’m not sure I would re-sign Stott when he reaches free agency. It might be natural to move Turner to 2B or 3B and play Miller at SS. I guess it depends on how much Stott will be paid.

[zambonir]

Oh I don't think he'll stick around past free agency necessarily. But Hernandez was non-tendered before his final arbitration year, prematurely as it turned out. He put up 1.7 WAR in the 60-game season for Cleveland, still better than both Didi and Segura on the Phillies, while Kingery had -0.9 (and Bohm 0.7).

The Stott we had for much of this season was probably good enough just for defense to justify his 2026 salary, but not necessarily 2027. If he can be more than that again, would be huge.

Bohm is probably also not going to exceed the WAR Hernandez had for us before being non-tendered, but I'd say he's exceeded some expectations over these two seasons, even while not meeting others.

[phillychuck]

I remember being very excited for Bohm and especially Stott when they were minor leaguers...

Michael Bourn is just before the era I was looking at. Loved him, couldn’t believe it when I read that the Phils had told him he was taking too many pitches. Who needs a .400 OBP? We will forever have to thank him for Brad Lidge...

[zambonir]

Well they are still far and away the Phillies' best drafted position players since Hoskins, as well as the best first-rounders. O'Hoppe and JP in that group but traded.

[Docs]

Is this a list of the best minor leaguers or the best major leaguers who went through the Phillies minors?

[phillychuck]

Major leaguers from the Phils’ system (at least one year in the Phils’ minors).

[zambonir]

Best minor leaguers of all-time without any consideration to whether they panned out would be a very different (but also fun) list. I imagine a lot of them in recent years would peak in Reading.

[Dirk41]

Jojo Romero??

That list is depressing

[zambonir]

JoJo's a perfectly cromulent major league reliever but we sure won that trade WAR-wise.

[Philsmania]

Watching the Mariners this week, JP still rankles. Not so much the trade - though there was plenty to dislike about the circumstances which led to that, as well as the subsequent ripple effect on the IF - as the way his initial call-up (deferring to Galvis) and injury-plagued season (deferring to Kingery) was handled.

Phillies have had six different SSs since 2018, and the two homegrown guys who weren't traded didn't stick at the position.

Something seemed to sour the Phillies on JP Crawford. In the span of a season, he went from Opening Day shortstop to no longer fitting into their plans. The Mariners targeted him knowing the Phillies soured on him. Just a theory but he always was a big video gamer and there was that incident in which Santana smashed a TV in the clubhouse while a couple of players played video games during a game. I've often suspected Crawford was one of them and tough ironically Crawford and Santana were traded together, that may have been a breaking point for the Phillies (and Kapler to whom they were committed at the time).

[zambonir]

He had a lot of bad injury luck in '18, and Kingery was also Klentak and Kapler's golden boy.

Might be something to that theory but they also really wanted Segura, and had to trade a really good player to make the whole deal work (though Nicasio also offset some of Santana's money). It's not like they had any other valuable position player prospects! What they really botched was the idea that Segura was actually going to continue to be a good SS, though he certainly stayed a good hitter until the end.

[zambonir]

okay starting to see your point

[Austinfan]

You'd think they'd have learned after the Sandberg trade. Why you should study history!

[flyers19rw]

Recommendation for Wheeler is thoracic outlet surgery. Recovery time is 6 to 8 months.