Phriday Phillies Links Phor You, June 11, 2010: Dawning of the Age of Aquariums, Dobbs Cockroach'd!
by Wet Luzinski on Jun 11, 2010 7:28 AM EDT
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PrintThis time, Johnson outduels Halladay as Marlins beat the Phillies, 2-0. Or this recap, as we, understandably, just didn't have the energy for it last night. Last 6 Halladay starts? 11 runs. The Phillies have reached last year's shutout total for the season. On to Boston and New York! Pack them big boy hittin' pants! I'm looking at you, Wertz.
New Marlins ballpark features two giant aquariums behind home. Check out the new drorings of the Bagel Slicer!
Makeup date for Wednesday's rainout is Sept. 6. Maybe Rollins will be off the DL by then. MMMMaybe.
Strasburg's Second Start Bumps Phillies-Red Sox from TBS Lineup. In a related story, Strasburg: New hotness. Phils: Old and busted.
Dodgers tap into "V" energy. But Broxton drew the hanging man. I see a future of truly ugly McCourt divorce proceedings! (h/t to Jay at Let's Go Tribe for tipping me on this one).
Phillies Struggle But Manage to Stay Upbeat. And you all thought I was embellishing stuff about Vic in the Pat the Bat series.
Greg Dobbs found a cockroach the size of a cellphone in his locker at Citizens Bank Park on Thursday. At least the teammate who put it there, Shane Victorino, trapped it in a plastic container.
"If it was out," Dobbs said, "I would have taken a bat and smashed my whole locker."
So the new joke is: Greg Dobbs can't even hit a cockroach in a plastic container! And for those of you Dobbs-rage'd out there, h/t Tug Haines of the Fightins for putting out there what we're all thinking.
Phantastic Voyage. Speaking of Vic, I hereby nominate myself to live blog this event on SBN's dime. I'd make us proud.
Phillies should shake up bench. Oh, fine. If you prefer the high-minded analysis, see what Bill Baer at Crashburn Alley proposes. I just wish we could make all these moves while we have Chollie distracted on a spa day o' beauty, then blindfold him and bring him back to the clubhouse, take off the blindfold, and see what his expression would be.
Paul Hagen: Sellouts and success hard to maintain for MLB teams. When will all these sellouts and shutouts lead to the Phillies selling out?
Arizona Diamondbacks need infusion of credibility. No they don't, silly, they need the last year of Raul Ibanez's contract. Oh, and Danys Baez too. And Greg Dobbs. Wotta package!
Confident first-rounder Biddle signs with Phils. Welcome, kid. Now make with it the outz, Jesse Biddle.
Future Shock: Draft Wrap: NL East. (subscription req'd) Kevin Goldstein sizes us all up. Thankfully, he thinks highly of Gauntlett Eldemire.
Kid Drinking Beer at Phillies Game Video - Removed from YouTube. Back to the porn, everyone.
No Jail Time in Phillies Sex-for-Tickets Case. Because in jail, you can't trade sex for anything. Bottom line: World Series tickets in exchange for 100 hours of community service. Not a bad deal really.
Braves 11, D-Backs 7. Coverage from Talking Chop. This one awash in bullpennery, but alas. So much for my wacky idear of thinking Willis was worth anything.
Padres 4, Mets 2. and Mets 3, Padres 0. Coverage from Amazin' Avenue. This guy David Niese, he worries me. Word is he's had mad hammie problems in the past, but last night threw a 1-hitter. Oh, and hey! the Mets are tied for second in the division.
Nationals 4, Pirates 2. Coverage from Federal Baseball. Just rounding up a night full of Baseball Teh Suck. For the right amount of money, you can have something soft and chalky to throw at your TV. And zOMG Strasburg touched it!
Toledo 4, Lehigh Valley 3. Seems like every time I do these links, Cody Ransom has hit a HR the night before.
Trenton 9, Reading 7. Not so nice a night for Yohan Flande or Domonic Brown. But someody else got Bozied'd!
Dunedin 10, Clearwater 3. Well, it was 5-1 before Phillippe Aumont came in to pitch to Dunedin in the 6th (averts eyes).
Lakewood 8, West Virginia 2. The BlueClaws had their fancy pants and hittin' shoes on.
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Our third-round pick Cameron Rupp will be playing in the College World Series this afternoon on ESPN3.com, if anyone wants to watch it.
I don’t know if a switch back to starting was a good move, and certainly starting him out in AA that way might have been rushing things a bit. The Phillies don’t have a great history of success with developing pitchers, so this whole situation concerns me.
"Tortorella’s got it all wrong ... Gaborik shouldn’t be messing with our skilled player." -Peter Luukko
The Phillies don’t have a great history of success with developing pitchers
Phillies smash ball good
I don’t think their history with developing pitchers is that bad, to be honest.
Bill Conlin often says stuff like this in his columns, but when he does, he backs it up with facts going back to, like, the 1960s. It’s true that there were several decades in there when the Phillies basically developed zero very good pitchers, but that isn’t really relevant to the capabilities of their current administration.
Since they drafted Brett Myers in 1999, they’ve also developed Cole Hamels, Ryan Madson, Gavin Floyd, Taylor Buchholz, Kyle Drabek, Kyle Kendrick, J.A. Happ, Josh Outman, and Antonio Bastardo. That isn’t too bad.
What would be interesting to see is the Phillies success rate with developing pitching prospects (or whatever thing you call them considering TNSTAAPP) versus other teams both in the NL and across the MLB. I think that would give us more perspective on the success or failure of the Phillies both recently and over the years.
Bastardo? So what they developed a 94 mph 4 seamer? – that’s function of arm speed more than anything else. His other pitches are garbage. My biggest issue is the in the development of secondary pitches which are all about technique and that falls under the pitching coaches’ purview. Happ’s secondary stuff is not scaring anyone and he struggles to throw it for strikes. Hamels ’ curve ball is one of the worst I’ve ever seen – it ‘s a hard pitch for an over the top lefty but I’ve seen it done – Lee for example ( he throws a knuckle curve ). And it took a year plus for Kendrick to develop a change-up and his slider is slurvey at best. They didn’t develop anything with Madson – he was throwing that change-up since he was in high school and 96 mph is a function of god given fast twitch muscle fibers and arm length. Madson’s other pitches are horrid and that’s one of the reasons why he didn’t make its as a starter.
If you really want to get to a predetermined conclusion, there’s always a way to get there if you bend over backwards hard enough.
The fact is that the Phillies have developed at least ten major league pitchers in the past eleven years. I don’t know how that compares to other teams, but off the top of my head, I would guess that it’s respectable, and you have not disputed that. I suppose it’s possible that their coaching had nothing at all to do with this. Maybe the Phillies are just uniquely gifted at predicting which young pitchers won’t need any coaching to succeed, when they acquire them. Regardless, the fact remains that a decent number of successful pitchers have been produced by their farm system in comparison to the organizations they compete with.
I am not predetermining anything. I merely stated that they didn’t develop much more then what those pitchers already came with which is often the case with the farm systems in baseball. Other than as holding tank for replacement players or transitioning players in a rebuilding phase, I find the minor league system in baseball fails to develop sound athletes. Sound athletes do not suffer the chronic overuse injuries at the insane rates that baseball players do. This indicates improper general conditioning among other things to invovled to discuss in a short amount of time. The minor leagues are attriiton farms for weeding out talent or the ones lucky enough not to have suffered the effects of sports specfic plateauing as much as other players. Sports specfic plateauing is a loss of neuromuscular plasticity which impedes an athlete’s ability to learn new skills or enhance the skills they already have and it occurs when athletes are not developed properly or overtrain. Basically your overloading the nervous system by forcing it to coordinate complex tasks that the body isn’t wholly prepared for or in the case of overtraining, just overexposing it to the same strong stimulus.
Maybe the Phillies are just uniquely gifted at predicting which young pitchers won’t need any coaching to succeed, when they acquire them. Regardless, the fact remains that a decent number of successful pitchers have been produced by their farm system in comparison to the organizations they compete with.
If they are good at predicting young pitchers that don’t need coaching then why are they in the place dedicated to developing players. What are they developing? Are they waiting for them to develop physically because if that’s the case the minor leagues are more of a laugh riot then I had previously assumed. If it just a matter of developing the sports specfic endurance to handle the MLB load, then if they have been properly condtioned athletes from the get go, it should take a year, maybe two at the most in the minor leagues. Even within that time frame I think it’s reasonable assume a pitcher can learn how to throw a secondary pitch effectively and those techniques (grip, hand postioning, etc.) necessary to throw off speed pitches are taught by a coach unless coach means something different in baseball than in other sports. If the pitchers you mention didn’t need coaching then it’s a credit to the scouts and not the farm system unless scouting falls under the heading of farm system.
I don’t think you fully understood my point.
I’m not going to dispute your theories about how baseball players are conditioned, because I don’t know anything about that one way or the other. But the discussion that doubleh and I were having was about a different topic – whether the Phillies are good or bad at developing pitchers relative to the rest of major league baseball. You replied negatively to one of my comments in this discussion, which led me to believe that you had some objection to what I was saying on the topic thereof. But based on your last comment, it seems to me that your objections are not really related to anything I said.
Relative to the league – sure we’ve done a decent job esp when you consider how often young arms fail and that pitchers are plagued by injuries. We definitely scout well. But I think we just lost a scout who was resposible for the current core players. I don’t remember his name. How that effects things in the scouting department I don’t know.
My critism of how we develop pitchers has more to do with finish. They are good pitchers – mechanically sound, and don’t get injuried alot but they lack that bit of polish. I don’t think that alone throws the farm under the bus. Christ it’s way better than what it was.
I guess I still see it as mediocre, considering Floyd, Buchholz, Outman never completely developed here and Drabek will also have other outside influences before getting to the majors. But I suppose if we were to take a list of all the pitchers drafted from each MLB vs. those who make it to the bigs successfully, it would probably show similar results.
"Tortorella’s got it all wrong ... Gaborik shouldn’t be messing with our skilled player." -Peter Luukko
Yeah, I’m not saying they’re great or anything. But they aren’t bad. Buchholz and Outman were pretty close to ready when they were traded, although the Phillies did move Outman to the bullpen in his last year, which was ill-advised. I think they did a good job with Drabek too. They did not do a good job with Floyd though.
I’m sure there are probably some pitchers who started out in other organizations and finished their development here as well. Although the only one on the current team who comes to mind is David Herndon.
Seems to me that this discussion really depends upon how you define player development success. It’s not necessarily a pitching development pissing contest – i.e., the Braves developed 10 pitchers and the Phillies only developed 5, so ergo the Phillies suck. Each year, there are only 1-3 major league pitching roster spots, whether a starter or reliever – of significant length and duration, mind you – on any team each year. So if you are meeting that quota, whether for your own roster or shipping them off to someone else’s via transaction, that’s success.
by Wet Luzinski on Jun 11, 2010 6:19 PM EDT up reply actions
Since they drafted Brett Myers in 1999, they’ve also developed Cole Hamels, Ryan Madson, Gavin Floyd, Taylor Buchholz, Kyle Drabek, Kyle Kendrick, J.A. Happ, Josh Outman, and Antonio Bastardo. That isn’t too bad.
You really want to use that list and say the phillies are good at ‘developing’ pitchers.
They didn’t develop Floyd, he was a flp in Philadelphia, rushed to the majors and only ‘fixed’ when he got to chicago.
Buchholz, Drabek, Outman will spend most if not all of their major league careers playing for other teams (and other minor league systems)…not sure you can say the phillies developed any of them.
Hamels minor league career was limited due to injury – and mostly his ‘god given’ talent.
They developed a nice 8th inning guy who couldn’t start or close (madson)
And a nice middle of the rotation guy in happ
and a barely 5th starter in Kendrick
And bastardo – where is he this year?
by jemagee on Jun 11, 2010 7:04 PM EDT up reply actions
You see, this is what happens when someone tries to craft an argument without a basic understanding of logic.
Even if we were to agree that all of your factual points are correct (which they are not – some of them are reasonable, others are more fact-esque), nothing you said would contradict my point – that the Phillies are not that bad at developing pitching – unless you were to also prove that the vast majority of teams develop more pitching than the level you described. But you cannot do that, because, as anyone would realize if they just thought about it for a few minutes, most teams are not out there developing multiple all-star caliber starters over the course of a single decade. Especially teams that are above .500 every year, which means that they have to pick in the latter half of the first round in every draft. Those that have been able to develop that much pitching on a consistent basis are in the exception, not the rule.
I decided to choose a team at random to compare their recent history to the Phillies’, and selected the Detroit Tigers, as an organization that’s been somewhere around the middle of the pack in quality over the past decade. Since 1999, they have drafted the following pitchers who have made it to the major leagues or have brought back major league players in trades: Jason Frasor, Joel Zumaya, Jesse Carlson, Justin Verlander, Burke Badenhop, Andrew Miller, Rick Porcello, and Ryan Perry. That is right in the same ballpark as what the Phillies have done, and the Tigers had the rather large built-in advantage of having the #2 overall pick in the draft one year, which they turned into Verlander. (They also had the #6 pick in the draft one year, which they used on Miller.) I’m not aware of whether the Tigers have developed much Latin pitching talent, but there are no Latin pitchers on their team that they signed, so I suspect that it isn’t much. Feel free to repeat this exercise with other organizations and let me know how many of them have done a significantly better job than the Phillies.
Drafting and developing are two different words
Keep that in mind
The proudest word in baseball is gamer - Tim McCarver 6/12/2010
by jemagee on Jun 12, 2010 6:28 PM EDT up reply actions
Bastardo is in the Phillies bullpen, at least until either Happ or Madson return.
by dannijd on Jun 13, 2010 9:44 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I’m not overly concerned about it. His goal was to work on his mechanics. I haven’t seen him pitch, but if at the end of the year he has a 7+ ERA, but his mechanics are better and his outings start turning around, I’ll consider this to be an adjustment year and expect better things next year.
‘’Work on mechanics’’ is like being diagnosed with an idiopathetic condition or something vague like lower back pain. At this point I don’t hold my breath when I hear a pitcher has to work on their mechanics esp. when baseball is filled with a bajillion self annoited pitching gurus. However, the kid’s 6’7 and can throw hard so the upside will be good if he figures out how to do it. He also has had hip problems and that’s bad for any athlete.
I agree, but for tall, cold weather Pitchers (hello Mr. Biddle) needing to refine deliveries with parts flying all over the place willy-nilly, is far from uncommon. I am far from an expert in pitching mechanics, but from what I saw of Aumont, his only needed fine tuning, so that’s less cause for alarm for me. There’s a Reds prospect, whose name escapes me, who has been on DL 2 of the past 3 years whose delivery is like a collection of every thing you can do wrong as a pitcher (Knee locks on landing, artificially breaks his pitching arm, Glove hand flies all over place. slight Inverted W, etc.). If Aumont had his problems I would write him off as a prospect.
Right. And it doesn’t get any colder than Quebec. Baseball season’s probably like six weeks long there.
Gauntlett Eldemire makes the “sleepers” list on Hardball Times.
Sixth round: Gauntlett Eldemire (CF – Phillies). Playing for Ohio, he didn’t get the results that would normally get someone on this list, but I’m convinced by the passion of those who love his tools. Eldemire shouldn’t have dropped this far, even if it does take some dreaming to envision him as a polished major league hitter.
Ohio U, of course, is Mike Schmidt’s alma mater.
He needs to make the majors so that when he gets his inevitable walkoff the headline can read:
“Phillies throw down the Gauntlett.”
"Tortorella’s got it all wrong ... Gaborik shouldn’t be messing with our skilled player." -Peter Luukko
and when he gets the steal sign, of course, the Phillies will run the Gauntlett.
by Wet Luzinski on Jun 11, 2010 4:39 PM EDT up reply actions
In addition to the acquariums...
Home plate from Halladay’s perfecto is going to be on display at the New Marlins Stadium. While I understand that a perfect game being pitched in tour stadium is a big deal, I would not want to walk past memorobilia from a perfect game pitched by an opposing pitcher when I visit Citizen’s Bank Park— to me, that would be commemorating an event that I would rather forget. Thoughts?
I'm with you
If the situation were reversed, and Johnson pitched a perfect game against use at Citizens Bank Park (doesn’t seem all that unrealistic after last night) and the Phillies displayed that game’s home plate, or pitching rubber, or anything else, I would avoid whatever part of the park it was being displayed in. That’s a memory of our own futility, something I’d rather not see displayed, even if it was history.
Speaking of opposing pitchers who nearly no-hit us at home this season, Dice-K is on the mound for Boston tomorrow night against Joe Blanton. His near no-no was just a couple days after we started slumping, but it’s arguably the catalyst that really sent us into a terrible downspin, as we were shutout for 8 innings the next night, and then came the Mets series. Would anyone else find some beautiful irony if we were to clobber him tomorrow night and thus start a month in which we average 7+ runs per game?
by Baseball Nerd on Jun 11, 2010 11:49 AM EDT up reply actions
I would and I am hoping and praying for it, but I am not holding my breath for it— on one hand, the Phillies are looking better in the last week (3-3 in their past six games, with a total of 25 runs scored), but getting shut out once and near shut out in another game concerns me. The problem is, with Blanton on the mound, we practically need 7-8 runs to win the game, and I am not sure that we can get it from our offense.
LA Times Article
On the guy the McCourts’ hired to generate positive energy…? Wow. While reading the article the first thought that came into my mind was Rasputin. I guess I’m just not new age enough, because that came off as all kinds of bat shit crazy.
"Tortorella’s got it all wrong ... Gaborik shouldn’t be messing with our skilled player." -Peter Luukko
LOL… cue Antastasia music… I just want to know if it worked— maybe if we all visualize the Phillies hitting home runs our offense will improve (or do you need fancy degrees and a friendship with a nobel prize winner to acheive that?)
Hello my Philly Friends ;)
This should be an interesting series
Join the NLL community at http://www.nationallacrosseleagueblog.blogspot.com/
Talk about Boston sports at http://www.bestbostonsports.com/
by bestbostonsports on Jun 11, 2010 1:25 PM EDT reply actions
maybe we should fall behind 3-0 each game for kicks.
by Wet Luzinski on Jun 11, 2010 1:30 PM EDT up reply actions
Then we’d get Patrick Kane to shatter your dreams ;)
This should be a good series of baseball. The Phillies have been slumping and Im interested in seeing how the Red Sox fare vs them in an AL ballpark. I wonder if Dicek will throw another hitter…. (No chance, lol)
Join the NLL community at http://www.nationallacrosseleagueblog.blogspot.com/
Talk about Boston sports at http://www.bestbostonsports.com/
by bestbostonsports on Jun 11, 2010 1:32 PM EDT up reply actions
“This is the police! Make outs with your hands up!”
by Wet Luzinski on Jun 11, 2010 4:40 PM EDT up reply actions
when the team is losing I channel the inner Bob Eucker. When the team is winning, well I don’t remember what I do. Oh yeah, well I’ll usually lead the Cole Hamels Lynch Mob (CHLM), but he’s been doing well, so that groups in hiatus
TAKE THE FALL, ACT HURT, GET INDIGNANT
by CoburnsCuddleBuddy on Jun 11, 2010 4:53 PM EDT up reply actions
When did this lynch mob start???? I was able to watch him in ’08 and enjoy it, only to develop the need to watch through my fingers last year— he is slowly winning me back over, though— I went to the Red Sox game he pitched and was able to watch almost the whole game without the hands over my eyes.
May we get back to good times soon…
Lynch Mob started at the beginning of this year
TAKE THE FALL, ACT HURT, GET INDIGNANT
by CoburnsCuddleBuddy on Jun 11, 2010 5:11 PM EDT up reply actions
Ok… Where are the other parts of the Curse sl that I can find out how hexed we are (other than tonight’s appalling showing on the scoreboard. I am beginning to think that this is not a slump— we are really this bad.
by dannijd on Jun 11, 2010 10:57 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions
Sigh…guess not getting that call back from the diamondbacks was nice
by jemagee on Jun 11, 2010 7:05 PM EDT reply actions
Meh – i wasn’t going to get it – but it vanished from the job board – after their crappy start i wasn’t surprised – job stability in phoenix might be a problem :)
by jemagee on Jun 11, 2010 7:20 PM EDT up reply actions
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