JFLNYC wrote:Swisher.

sweet, thank you

revere now in the top half of all mlb outfielders with at least 100 pa's in the fangraphs wrc+ list. he is 84th of 171, with a wrc+ score of 97, which implies just under major league average.

reminder, that stat does NOT include baserunning... except for speed turning groundouts into singles, and singles into doubles and doubles into triples, thereby elevating obp and slg. wrc+ is park and league adjusted woba. relative to ops, woba helps revere because it weights obp a factor of roughly 1.8 more that slg (rather than equal). on the other hand, it actually lowers the value of his speed-assisted extra bases relative to ops, because it gives a lower weight to triples, which are the one type of extra base hit he is above average in getting.

moral of the story: don't underestimate the value of not making outs, even doing so just 1/3 of the time, or the fact that speed helps avoid making outs at 1b (basically elevating babip). that high babip due to speed is a real skill than can compensate for lack of power is well established (thanks to ichiro inspiring lots of people to look into that back in the day).

moral of another story: top of the league base advance and high-percentage basestealing leverages a .330ish obp into a good deal more value than it would have for a mediocre baserunner. this was an oft-overlooked part of rollins' value in his peak years.

NOT the moral of the story: revere is worth keeping on as an everyday outfielder. i no longer believe this to be the case. his obp is not sustainable with his still dropping bb rate approaching all-time record lows, and when it drops the effect will be magnified by the great extent to which his baserunning value depends on his obp. and even if he somehow sustains the obp, his defense will continue to cancel out most of his offense unless his brief burst of great rightfield fielding stats weren't a fluke and he is somehow vastly better at reading balls of the bat from an outfield corner. even i don't believe in betting on the reversal of two very bad trends.

I wish Revere was the worst of our problems.

Many years ago, before the internet, I was reading one of Bill James' books and there was one piece of simplified team analysis that has always stuck with me: You look at each player on your roster and ask yourself a simple question: "Am I going to win my next World Series with that guy playing that position?" If the answer is no, you have to begin an immediate search for the player at that position for whom the answer is "yes." Every day you delay that search is a day longer before you have a team capable of winning a championship, especially when you allow for the fact that there will be both misses and hits during the process at the various spots on the roster.

If you apply that simple analysis to the Phils' current roster, it give you an idea of the task facing the franchise, especially when you take the analysis one step further and apply it not only to the players, but to the front office, too.

JFLNYC wrote:Many years ago, before the internet, I was reading one of Bill James' books and there was one piece of simplified team analysis that has always stuck with me: You look at each player on your roster and ask yourself a simple question: "Am I going to win my next World Series with that guy playing that position?" If the answer is no, you have to begin an immediate search for the player at that position for whom the answer is "yes." Every day you delay that search is a day longer before you have a team capable of winning a championship, especially when you allow for the fact that there will be both misses and hits during the process at the various spots on the roster.

If you apply that simple analysis to the Phils' current roster, it give you an idea of the task facing the franchise, especially when you take the analysis one step further and apply it not only to the players, but to the front office, too.

I don't think you can look at players in a vacuum like that though. Certain players would be "yeses" if paired with the right combination of other "yeses", but on their own might be a "no".

the entire pitching staff minus hamels, lidge, and i guess madson would've been "no" in 2008

In the entirety of the organization I don't think there are more than a half dozen players you could honestly say are viable members of their next playoff team, let alone champion. On the 25 man, there's Giles and... no, there's just Giles. Asche could get better enough to justify a job on a good team, but probably not before he's no longer cheap. With their payroll, this is perversely impressive.

And yet, per Gelb yesterday, there's a chance they extend Amaro.

dajafi wrote:per Gelb yesterday, there's a chance they extend Amaro.

why, he's earned an extension....

td11 wrote:the entire pitching staff minus hamels, lidge, and i guess madson would've been "no" in 2008

And the only slam dunks on offense were Rollins, Utley, and Howard.

Victorino and Ruiz and to a lesser extent Werth looked very promising in that regard, but none was a blue chip prospect of ours by any means. And I don't recall much faith in "Gilarmbuckle" during the run-up to 2008.

It's gonna be tough sledding, no doubt, but things can also change quickly.

dajafi wrote:In the entirety of the organization I don't think there are more than a half dozen players you could honestly say are viable members of their next playoff team, let alone champion. On the 25 man, there's Giles and... no, there's just Giles. .

i think that given age/level/performance, the following prospects are viable members of a 2018 playoff team, which i define as having decent odds of being 2.5+ war mlb players at that point:
dugan, jpc, quinn, franco, knapp, valentine. grenny not too long thereafter.
i think hamels will still be a 3+ win pitcher at that point;
i think that giles+diekman+jdf+martin can still anchor a 3 win bullpen at that point.
i think that nola, imhof, buchannan, biddle (backed up by two of pettibone, morgan, or liebrandt) are feasible 2 win starters at that point.
i think that some combo of pointer and altherr should give at least two wins in lf.
i think that pullin, grenny, joseph/valle and pointer/altherr should be good for 3 wins as a bench in 2018.

all that just gets me to 84 wins or so, and that's with a lot of things breaking right, but there is enough good stuff going on in the system that adding to it with decent trades of papelbon, byrd, and revere (and maybe brown and asche if they have good streaks and you trade high) plus a couple more top-10 draft picks can put them safely into the zone where adding another 6 win free agent pitcher is a smart move into real playoff contention.

but rubes will have to pull off at least one totally awesome trade (like, say, papelbon and at least half of his salary for a real prospect) really, really soon and a couple more (sell high on byrd and revere) not too long thereafter before anyone should consider giving him the chance to work on the rebuilding.

hope you're right but that's wildly optimistic on some guys.

Grotewold wrote:Victorino and Ruiz and to a lesser extent Werth looked very promising in that regard, but none was a blue chip prospect of ours by any means.

someone needs to dig up the list of current posters who trashed those guys and madson before they turned out to be really good. you and i have been guilty of being too high on plenty of philly prospects and acquisitions that ended up being busts, but it works the other way too.

There is something like 85 hitters in all of MLB on pace for 2.5 WAR. The idea that 5 or 6 of our prospects will hit that mark in 3 or 4 years (including some marginal prospects that may not even be Top 200) is not realistic. More appropriately, it's not a real plan for a GM.

phorever wrote:

Grotewold wrote:Victorino and Ruiz and to a lesser extent Werth looked very promising in that regard, but none was a blue chip prospect of ours by any means.

someone needs to dig up the list of current posters who trashed those guys and madson before they turned out to be really good. you and i have been guilty of being too high on plenty of philly prospects and acquisitions that ended up being busts, but it works the other way too.

The first Rollins extension was extremely unpopular on PP. There were definitely people protective of Utley, especially, and other guys to a lesser extent, but I don't remember anyone pegging them as cornerstones to a dynasty or anything. Howard was viewed as a lottery ticket until pretty late

And that was with our payroll ceiling less than half of what it is now. Money doesn't do what it used to, I know, but you still want more of it

you guys can't retroactively apply the "can't win a championship with him" thing to guys who won a championship. point being you can definitely win a chip with Ben Revere and probably most garbage on the current roster. As usual it starts at the top and the top or our organization is the leftover garbage disposal crud in the sink of a former four-star restaurant.

td11 wrote:the entire pitching staff minus hamels, lidge, and i guess madson would've been "no" in 2008

Check the record. Here are some ERA+ figures from others on the staff besides Hamels, Lidge and Madson: 117, 104, 152, 134, 159, 124, 119 and 236. That's for guys who combined to pitch more than 40% of all IP that year for the Phils.

In any event, by focusing on exceptions you're missing the point. You'll never get to the point where all 25 players yield an unequivocal "yes" to the question. Every team has weaknesses. The goal is to strive towards as many "yeses" as possible by being rigorously honest in evaluating each position and doing everything reasonably possible to move towards at least a plausible "yes" at each spot on the roster. When you reach a critical mass of "yeses," you've got a chance.

When you apply the analysis to the current Phils roster, you get a realistic sense of the work to be done along with an outline of what the plan should be. As daj writes, you've got Giles and maybe Asche. I might include DeFratus and Diekman, but the point is you're going to need essentially an entire roster turnover and continuing to give PT to anyone who's not going to be here for the next championship is worse than pointless, it's counterproductive.

An example is 2B. Chase Utley is the greatest Phils 2B of all time and one of the all-time Phillies greats, regardless of position. Moreover, he's had a good year this year. He's still one of the better 2B in the game. But he's not going to be the starting 2B on the next Phils championship team.

The Phils minor league system has very few players position players capable of helping the major league team in the near future. One of the possible few is Cesar Hernandez. Now, before someone points out that Cesar will never be the next Utley, the point is that the current Utley is not going to be the next Utley either and, if you're going to wait around for the next Utley to replace this one, you could be waiting decades.

Cesar has had a very good minor league career. Good BA, very good OBP, doubles and triples power, could steal 30+ bases, switch hitter, etc. He may not be the starting 2B on the next Phils championship team but the only way to find out is to play him regularly at 2B. Instead, he's been jerked around all year, asked to play out of position, he's been up and down from the minors. So, despite the team's abysmal season, you know nothing further about whether he can do the job going forward. With all due respect to Utley, if you're serious about building for the next championship team, you've got to let Cesar play to see if he's part of,the long-term solution.

That's how the process begins. It's not going to be pretty, there are going to be missteps along the way and progress won't be linear. But the longer you take to get the process started at each position, the longer it's going to take to reach critical mass.

fair post, and i don't really take issue with your main point that you won't have "yeses" everywhere but need quite a few of them.

however, i don't really think this calculation/analysis applies to areas like the bullpen or the bench. i don't think anyone in 2008 would've said that scott eyre or rudy seanez or geoff jenkins or werth or victorino or even chooch will be part of the next philly championship roster.

but i do agree with your larger point and i think it applies especially to the starting position players and SPs.

i also agree with you about cesar. pullin and valentin will be very interesting to follow next year

"yeses"
"noses"
"yeezus"
"hobitses"

Trent Steele wrote:There is something like 85 hitters in all of MLB on pace for 2.5 WAR. The idea that 5 or 6 of our prospects will hit that mark in 3 or 4 years (including some marginal prospects that may not even be Top 200) is not realistic. More appropriately, it's not a real plan for a GM.

a real, good gm also should avoid undervaluing prospects and wasting trade chips and picks on filling lesser needs instead of greater ones, and no good gm should be dumb enough to think that the next window doesn't open till 2020 when 2018 is completely feasible. if would plan around 2019-21 instead of 2016-18, then i think you are wrong and i am very glad you are not the gm because i think you would be worse than amaro.

please review the post to which i responded. i was addressing the assertion that there were only 6 players would could conceivably be part of the next winning team. any player with a realistic shot of being a 2.5 win player in 2018 should be on that list, and i am arguing that there are far more than 6 of those. i really should have added both nola and imhof to the list. you just need to get one really good player and one 3 win guy out of that bunch to add to hamels and a solid pen as a strong core. good trades and drafts add one or two more players to that solid core list, along with a bunch of decent young 1-2 win guys (the rest of those i mentioned plus other new trade and draft guys) who will improve going forward. i have a bunch of 1-2 win spots on my 84 win 2018 team based on the players currently in the system, but more 1-3 win and fewer 4+ win guys than i actually would expect since i can't really guess which 1-3 guys will break out to the high side.

phorever wrote:

Grotewold wrote:Victorino and Ruiz and to a lesser extent Werth looked very promising in that regard, but none was a blue chip prospect of ours by any means.

someone needs to dig up the list of current posters who trashed those guys and madson before they turned out to be really good. you and i have been guilty of being too high on plenty of philly prospects and acquisitions that ended up being busts, but it works the other way too.

viewtopic.php_f=1&t=55&p=467&hilit=werth#p467 - not much trashing in there