Prospect profile: Phillies acquire Enyel De Los Santos from San Diego in Freddy Galvis trade

There’s another pitching prospect joining the Philadelphia Phillies organization. Friday’s trade of Freddy Galvis to San Diego brings tall, lanky right-hander Enyel De Los Santos to Philadelphia, as he joins an organization stacked with promising pitching prospects.

For De Los Santos, it’s the third stop in his career. He was signed by Seattle out of the Dominican Republic in 2014 for $15,000. He was then traded to San Diego by the Mariners in a November 2015 deal that sent former Phillie Joaquin Benoit to Seattle.

So what are the Phillies getting in return for trading their starting shortstop, a move that clears the way for the heralded J.P. Crawford? They’re getting a guy who has displayed a plus fastball, with a developing change-up and curve in the arsenal. At present, the change seems to be the better offering, as the curveball has only shown flashes of being an average pitch.

The fastball, meanwhile sits around 93-95 mph and has topped 98, according to Baseball America’s Kyle Glaser. De Los Santos spent all of 2017 with San Diego’s AA affiliate in San Antonio, going 10-6 with a 3.78 ERA in 24 starts. He appeared in 26 games overall, tossing 150 innings and allowing just 131 hits, to go along with 48 walks and 138 strikeouts. Opponents hit .237 off him.

De Los Santos, who will turn 22 on Christmas Day, bounced back from a relatively pedestrian 2016, when he saw his K% drop to 17.6. It was the lowest rate of his minor league career, but he rebounded to a 22.4% number in 2017. He also did a better job of keeping the ball on the ground, to the tune of a 44.2% groundball rate, after that number had fallen to 37.1% in 2016.

Control and command developed for De Los Santos in 2017, and he was able to take a big leap forward following what was a relatively disappointing 2016. Perhaps blame that on having to join a new organization after the November 2015 trade, but De Los Santos is a legitimate prospect that should slot into the Reading rotation to begin 2018.

The Phillies are certainly pinning a lot of hopes on Sixto Sanchez being their future ace, but depth is always a necessary thing. De Los Santos profiles as a back of the rotation type of pitcher, but he could be on track to join the Phillies in a couple of years as long as the off-speed stuff develops the way people are expecting it to. If he can only find one above-average secondary, he’ll probably be a future bullpen piece, but the Phillies certainly have to hope for a little bit more than that.