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Post by Chip_PhilliesGM on Mar 14, 2018 6:21:07 GMT -5
I need to keep up with my fellow NL East rebuilder David in tracking my rebuild. I am trying to follow a similar path to my first rebuild, which got me a string of playoff appearances and one NL East championship. Here's my rough outline:
Year 1: 2044 - The Tear Down Year 2: 2045 - Sorting What We Have (AKA Rock Bottom) Year 3: 2046 - Climbing Back (70 Win Goal) Year 4: 2047 - Success? (At least .500)
Let's start with reviewing what should be our bottom, 2045... It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times... A rough year in Philly, but hopefully the light is coming at the end of the tunnel. 110 losses wasn't fun, but we now have a much better idea of what we have to work with. Rule V Mania With roster space galore, we selected a whopping 10 players in the Rule V draft. Now that the dust has settled, 5 managed to finish the year with us, and 3 of those were worth keeping for the future.
The most promising of the four is 24 year old SP Muneyaki Motsuzuki (Pot. 7/6/8) from the Expos, who managed a -0.2 WAR in 159.2 IP and his potential remains fairly unruined by the experience, so he can get a little AAA seasoning and hopefully be a solid mid-rotation starter someday. On the more lol side, if you ever wanted to know what a SP who has only ever pitched in A+ would do in 26 starts against the best, look no further than SP Clint Ellis (7/7/7). -1.9 WAR, 145 IP, 126 BB, 49 K. No, I didn’t reverse those, that’s a nearly 1:3 K:BB ratio. We believe that his midseason mental breakdown and weeping fits in the dugout before and after starts will only make him stronger.
You know that deer in a headlight look you get when someone volunteers you ? That was a common site whenever the pitching coach made the call to the bullpen. That deer’s name is MR Noah Hutchinson (9/7/5), a lefty with a nasty cutter and curveball, but no control. Noah’s -1.6 WAR and 9.18 ERA over a grand total 33.1 IP made Clint Ellis’s -1.9 WAR look inefficient as hell. He’ll get to join Ellis in keeping the therapists in Reading booked solid in 2046.
The other two guys we kept through the year were mostly mediocre, kind of old, and returned to their respective original clubs at the end of the season.
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Post by Chip_PhilliesGM on Mar 14, 2018 14:42:42 GMT -5
Raiders of the Lost Causes We picked up 6 scraps off of waivers throughout the season in the hopes of catching something we can use. Our most successful pickup was power arm SP Julio Ontiveros from the Reds, it tells you something about our season that we can call a 5.56 ERA a success. He gave us 29 starts with a positive 1.1 WAR and a solid 8.20 K/9. He may find his way back into the bullpen eventually where he could hopefully focus his great stuff in shorter bursts.
1B Cecil Macias was one of those guys we had to take a flyer on. He’s 26 with some solid power potential, we needed to see if there was any “there” there. Spoiler alert, there isn’t. He hit 4 HR in 284 AB for a -1.2 WAR and will be cast back into the fiery chasm from whence he came.
I claimed 37 year old SP Joe Chaney in the hopes of getting an extension to give us a solid, cheap veteran starter next year. Jokes on me, he called Philly a sewer and our treatment of young players borderline illegal.
Trash to Treasure, Or At Least Not Trash Anymore We made a whopping 3 free agent signings, and 2 out of 3 actually did well. 28 year old MR Dani Medina, who was released by the Jays signed with us for 750K and pitched his little heart out to the tune of a 4.08 ERA, 1.3 WAR in 114.2 IP. Medina gets by on pure guile and throws almost exclusively sliders. We get a couple more years of team control, so hopefully he keeps it up. Our other success was 3B Henry Clerq. Sure, he hit .187, but boy can he field and is virtually guaranteed his 4th straight Gold Glove award with an insane +24.9 ZR. He’s signed for pretty cheap (Below 2M), and can hopefully hold down 3B with his great defense for another couple years.
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Post by Chip_PhilliesGM on Mar 14, 2018 18:02:33 GMT -5
The Graduate(s)
We had a few promotions of note throughout 2045. Three of those promotions are expected to continue on in our 2046 starting lineup. At catcher is Paul “Boot” Skinner, who had a .687 OPS in 337 AB. Skinner is a 2043 2nd round pick, who has moved quickly and he projects to be a solid, probably 2ish WAR hitter with gap power, and a decent eye.
Probably our best hitting prospect is LF Joe Hood, who is still rough around the edges, shown by his -0.6 WAR. The talent is there to be a great #2 or #3 hitter with good contact skills, great OBP, and enough power to hit 20 HR a season. Hopefully for our sake he reaches that potential, because middle of the lineup bats are something we lack in the minors.
Hood was joined by fellow OF Armando Torres, who is younger at 23 to Hood’s 24, but more polished. Torres posted a 20/20 rookie season with 24 HR and 20 SB in 467 AB. The power and speed are definitely real, he just needs to make enough contact to provide positive value. We may platoon him for the foreseeable future, since he had a paltry .509 OPS against southpaws. Our conundrum to solve will be whether we keep him in a corner, where he plays good defense, or move him to center where he is about average, but his bat holds up better.
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Post by Chip_PhilliesGM on Mar 14, 2018 18:18:27 GMT -5
What Does It All Mean?
The biggest number that jumps out if you look over our team stats is that Starters’ ERA 6.18. The bullpen ERA is nothing to be proud of at 4.99, but 6 is insane and will be our number 1 priority going forward. I can cobble together a mediocre bullpen fairly easily and cheaply, so our focus will picking up help for the rotation while our younglings grow. There will be no more Ellis’ going out every every 5th game to get shellacked. The 2045 Blue Jays are the closest thing to what we are going for in 2046, finishing with a pythagorean record of 72-90. They had a starters ERA of 5.09 and bullpen ERA of 4.71. That feels doable. We’ll also need to score about 100 more runs, which again “feels” doable, but is harder than it feels, especially with most of the same lineup returning.
Next will be a preview of just what that pitching staff looks like in-house going into 2046.
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Post by Chip_PhilliesGM on Jun 5, 2018 11:38:35 GMT -5
Well, that did not go as planned. The Phillies year 2 of rebuild, that would hopefully end with a 90 loss season became another 100+ loss one. For the most part our young guys underperformed, especially on offense struggled and while we drastically improved our pitching, going from a starters ERA of 6.18 in 2045 to 4.60 in 2046. The offense was truly putrid and the worst in the NL in almost every category and I believe the least runs in all of the PBL.
While I could single out guys like Joe Hood and Armando Torres for crashing and burning, the team as a whole is to blame. No starting position player had a OBP above .300. The team batting average was .227. That will definitely be the focus in the offseason, and ideally we will be able to keep our gains in pitching and put together a reasonable offense and start towards getting under 100 losses.
Will hopefully have time to post a more player by player comments, so I can trash my offense more.
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Post by Chip_PhilliesGM on Jun 9, 2018 16:05:25 GMT -5
Let's look position by position to see what went wrong.
Catcher: Paul Skinner/Kenny Wolfe
Starting off not too bad, with a solid, if unspectacular catching duo. Skinner's offense is fairly weak, and he had a sub .300 OBP, but he did enough to come away with 1.9 WAR. Wolfe is much stronger offensively, but is used more so against LHP. He ended up with a 119 WRC+ in 296 PA, which is the best number on the team (lol) and was one of only 2 players with a WRC+ above 100 (lol again).
Verdict for 2047: Acceptable. Wolfe will likely leave via FA, and Skinner is okay. We'll upgrade if we can, but it's not a priority.
1B: Alvin Raymond
Raymond has been a really reliable 1B, who has kept his skills well into his late 30's. While his contact and OBP dropped quite a bit this year, the power was as good as ever. He launched 45 HR, including the 500th of his career, while still playing gold glove defense at 1B. Raymnond ends his 3 years having given us 118 HR, a 116 WRC+ and 9.80 WAR.
Verdict for 2047: Raymond will be moving on from Philly, meaning it's a position we definitely need to fill externally.
2B: Sam Fisher
So far, this hasn't been too bad, which means there are some real stinkers coming up. Thankfully Fisher isn't one of them. Fisher's a dependable second baseman, who had a .703 OPS and plays good defense. Nothing fancy, but he gets the job done to end up with 2.6 WAR, tied for best on the team with Raymond.
Verdict for 2047: Good. Fisher is still under team control and he is decent and cheap enough that we don't have to worry about 2B.
SS: Stuart Moore
Moore provides solid defense, but an extremely weak bat, with a .620 OPS.
Verdict for 2047: Eh. We could do worse, but we could do better too. Moore profiles better as a utility guy, so we'll upgrade if we can do so cheaply.
3B: Henry Clerq/Nolan Reid
Oof, now it's starting to go off the rails. Clerq was our guy going into the season, but got hurt. Although he only had 0.4 WAR in 60 games, so it wasn't a huge loss. Except that his replacement, prospect Nolan Reid had -0.7 WAR in 60 games.
Verdict: I don't know. We still have Clerq under contract and he plays amazing defense, but his bat is very bad.
LF: Joe Hood
This one hurts the most. Hood is probably our top hitting prospect and at age 25, I was counting on a breakout. What I got was -0.9 WAR in 80 games with a .590 OPS. The potential is still there to be a solid across the board hitter with something like a .270 average, .350 OBP and 20+ HR power.
Verdict: One Last Chance. Hood will get another chance to have his breakthrough, but I'm going to be looking to keep someone ready in case we get a repeat.
CF: Carlos Calisto/Armando Torres
Torres is another one that hurt, and actually hurt the team far more than hood with his -1.4 WAR in 65 games. And a 45 WRC+. Oof. Torres was another of my hitting prospects that crashed and burned. He has tremendous power, supposedly at least, you can't tell with that the 5 HR's he hit in 234 AB. Calisto is just an all defense guy, who can't really hit at all.
Verdict: Definitely look to upgrade and shouldn't be hard to find something better than these guys were.
RF: Stu Lane
Lane was signed to a cheap 1.1 M contract in the offseason to be a 4th OF and we definitely got our moneys worth. He ended up with more ABs and WAR (1.2) than any other outfielder on the team. So we salute 38 year old Stu for saving us from the garbage fire that was the rest of our OF.
Verdict: Stu was solid, but will be gone. We have Mike Maxwell signed through 2047, who gave us a perfectly average bat (100 WRC+) bouncing between the corners. He may see some time there again, but we'll look for an upgrade or platoon partner as well.
DH: George MacKinney/Vincente Herrera
I finally did it. I finally had enough of George MacKinney's shit. I'll still be paying him a huge amount of money for the next two seasons, but at least I don't have to watch him rub my face in it. Once upon a time MacKinney was an all star who had 4 consecutive 5+ WAR seasons, including an 8.4 WAR season in there. Then in 2044, he completely forgot how to hit. His ratings did not change all that much, he just can't hit anymore. After 100 at bats of sub-.200 hitting, I finally stopped holding out hope he will find his swing. He ended up signing a MiLC with Cleveland, where he shockingly continued to not hit.
Herrera filled in and he was fine, 17 HR and a 104 WRC+ in 383 AB. With this team that's clean up hitter territory.
Verdict: Probably Upgrade. I may bring back Herrera to be a cheap platoon, but DH should be the easiest place to improve our offense cheaply.
Overall: I at least need a new 1B, CF, DH, and SS, with possibly a new 3B, RF, and LF as well. Hey, that's only most of the team. Our huge problem is that the traditionally big offensive positions were mostly black holes. LF, RF, and DH all were very weak, and even 1B was below average offensively. That is where we have to improve and focus on in the offseason.
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