Phillies DFA Noah Song, end good intended experiment

What looked like a Rule 5 coup has ended rather unceremoniously. The Phillies are moving on from the Noah Song experiment.

When the Rule 5 draft was conducted, the Phillies looked like they had pulled one over on several teams. Song was a former college pitcher who actually was a finalist for the Golden Spikes award in 2019. Since then, as we all know, he’s been in active duty with the U.S. Navy, only recently released to pursue his baseball career.

With the Phillies, he has had an up and down year. In eleven rehab innings while he worked his way back from a back injury, Song has shown the ability to miss bats, but also the inability to find the strike zone. He hasn’t been near his college level velocity, but he did show enough intriguing stuff that maybe the team was going to keep him. Alas, he has met with the business of baseball.

The fact is that there just isn’t room on the team for him right now. There might have been avenues for the team to keep him. Were they in the Braves position, far out in front of their competition in the playoff hunt, there may have been a spot where they could use him once or twice a week until September when reinforcements showed up for the pitching staff. Had they had a more firm grip on a wild card spot, they maybe could have hidden him on the staff. Instead, he’s in an organization that is struggling to score runs, therefore needs to rely more and more on its pitching staff to keep them in games. Each pitcher on the roster has been called upon of late to get the team out of precarious situations and with what Song is working with right now, he just isn’t ready to help them. Could they trade him? Maybe, but what are you really going to get back for him? The likeliest thing that will happen with Song is someone takes a chance on waivers, hopes he gets some velocity and control back and becomes a viable bullpen piece for them.

It was a good idea for the Phillies to try and keep Song in the organization. There should be no stone left unturned when it comes to talent acquisition. It just hasn’t worked out right now.