In light of the Phillies’ surprising start to the season, Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports kicks off his latest 10 Degrees column by writing that the Phillies can ill afford to continue carrying Ryan Howard and his .161/.233/.381 batting line. The “loyalty-vs.-pragmatism” battle which the Phillies currently face would be easier to ignore if the Phillies were toiling in or near the cellar of the NL East as many anticipated, but the club has other options at first base and is no longer playing Howard regularly. Even against right-handed pitching, Howard is hitting just .163/.246/.385 in 118 plate appearances, making it fair to question his viability even as a platoon option. Passan also revisits the Phillies’ puzzling decision to sign Howard to a five-year, $125MM extension in the first place despite the fact that he was already under control for two more seasons (and his age-31 campaign).
Here’s more from the NL…
- Matt Breen of the Philadelphia Inquirer spoke to Phillies manager Pete Mackanin about the importance of utility infielder Andres Blanco to the club. “There might be guys that are better, but as far as all-around defense, hitting, clubhouse character, this guy has been a special player for us,” said Mackanin. “It’s a tough role. It’s tough to find.” Blanco keeps four gloves — infield, outfield, first base mitt and catcher’s mitt — in his locker in order to be ready in any role and draws rave reviews from his teammates for his attitude and his production in his role. The 32-year-old has batted .286/.351/.491 in 372 plate appearances as a part-time player with the Phils dating back to 2014 and is earning his first seven-figure salary this season after agreeing to a $1.45MM deal this winter. As Breen notes, it’s a considerable bump up from the $3,000 signing bonus he took as a 16-year-old out of Venezuela when the Royals were the lone Major League club to make him an offer at all.
- Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi isn’t tipping his hand as to when lefty Julio Urias will be promoted to the Majors, writes Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register. Zaidi said the 19-year-old top prospect will be in a Dodgers uniform “at some point” but elected to leave it at that for the time being. Manager Dave Roberts tells Plunkett that despite Urias’ dominance of Triple-A hitters at such a young age, he hasn’t lobbied with the front office to have the left-hander added to what has been an inconsistent Major League bullpen. The Dodgers have reportedly been considering Urias as a bullpen option, which could help them continue to gradually increase his workload, Plunkett notes. To this point in his career, Urias has never thrown more than six innings in a start or more than 87 2/3 innings in a season, so his workload is understandably a concern. Urias has already thrown 41 innings this year, including a streak of 27 shutout innings that is still intact.
- Giants manager Bruce Bochy tells Alex Pavlovic of CSN Bay Area that he doesn’t have a leash on Jake Peavy despite the right-hander’s considerable struggles in 2016. There was some hope that Peavy may have turned a corner after a solid start in Arizona last weekend, but he lasted just 1 2/3 innings and surrendered five runs on Friday, causing his ERA to balloon to 8.21. “I think he’s close,” said Bochy. “The stuff is fine. He’s healthy and he’s close. He’s just got to be a little more consistent with execution.” The Giants have maintained that stance on Peavy and fellow right-hander Matt Cain throughout the duo’s problems this year. Cain has indeed turned a corner over his past three starts, but it’s hard not to wonder how long the Giants will stick with Peavy if he cannot undergo a similar resurgence in the very near future.
They should try to trade for Bour. He would solve the Howard problem.
I can’t imagine the Marlins not requiring a pretty fair haul to a career .800 OPS hitter loose from a divisional rival. Especially one that’s not even arb eligible for another couple of years.
The move makes sense in principle, but in practice I bet it would require far more than would make sense for a team that’s still rebuilding. Especially since they have a few upper-minors (or, now, MLB) 1B options that are nothing special, but likely not much worse than Bour either.
Chris Johnson can play first, hit .245 with decent enough pop and will cost them Jacob Waguespack at most! If you really want to take a Marlins’ first baseman, he’s a better bet than Bour
And by “He’s close,” Bochy means “he gets to go against the Padres on Wednesday, so we expect he’ll have something positive to build on.”
I think by it he means that is movement is there – but his command sucks donkey balls. he had a lot of movement in his last start but balls were falling out of the zone everywhere and forcing him to come in which doesn’t help anything.
If he gets lit up by the Padres and the Braves after that then I don’t see how any reasonable manager could go forward with him in the rotation after that. Everyone knows Bochy is loyal to a fault. Really hope the front office takes the decision out of his hands on this one, as Bochy and Peavy have a long history which is clearly effecting Bochy’s judgement in this case.
agreed. you know that sabes and bobby are gonna have a say at the end of the day on this. in ’14 and ’15, peavy had extended stints on the d.l. to work out any kinks and be fresh for the stretch run. looks like we’re hitting the wall here tho this year. and with the upcoming thin f.a. market, most, if not all, buyers will be shopping and overpaying for talent. yes, boch needs to back his horses in the media but sabes/bobby need to see if an upgrade can be had without breaking the bank.
don’t know how many arms in the minors are ready for a playoff run. pundits have mentioned beede is still a year or two away. blackburn’s going thru a bit of a setback this year. heston still needs to get his walk totals down.
we have a little over two months to july 31. who would fit at the back end of the rotation? maybe a lefty like a kazmir who can spot soft stuff and occasionally burn a heater by ’em?
ryan howard for billy butler with the phillies kicking in $22.5mil on salary exchange. change of scenerty might help either.
Lol
We’ll eat both contract if you give us your comp A pick
Don’t do drugs
Andres Blanco has quickly become one of my favorite Phillies. Seems like a great guy on and off the field.
Phillies should trade Blanco– seriously, can you expect a 32 year old who broke out last year to keep hitting .280. He has versatility. leadership ability and is cheap. You can get at least a solid AA prospect out of him, depending on who you’re shipping him off to. Besides, once Crawford is up, Galvis takes his role as utility infielder, and Featherston represents another option, as he is mashing in AAA right now.
Imagine a mid-season bench of Borjous (OF), Rupp (C) , Galvis (INF/OF) , Asche (Corners), Featherston (INF) while stocking up the system–
I’m all for building the system, but seemingly the impact Blanco makes on the younger south american players (Cesar, Odubel, Neris, Franco, Galvis, etc) is huge, plus hes controlled for cheap. No one is gonna give you a piece thats more valuable than what Blanco brings to the table.
100% agree with this. Blanco’s value in the clubhouse alone far outweighs his trade value.
The Howard deal didn’t make a huge amount of sense, but you could understand the underlying logic. From the time they offloaded Thome to play Howard (after the 2005 season) he had an extraordinary four year run–198 HR and 573 RBI. Yes, his WAR was low, but he was the guy they built their lineup around. He finished 1st, 5th, 2nd,and 3rd in MVP votes from 2006-2009. So, when they first extended him in Feb 2009, before the 2010 season, it made sense. They tacked on the extra time “14 months later” but what that really meant was before the 2011 season got going. 2010 wasn’t up to 2006-2009 standards, but they were still pretty darn good 31/108 and a .276/.353/.505 line. Should they have waited? Sure, but it’s quite possible they feared breaking up championship-contender team–don’t forget they won 102 games in 2011.
Yes, a terrible deal. But if his performance had held to even the 2010/2011 levels, how many fans would have been happy to see him walk?
I still think it’s ironic that Thome the much older player, amassed more WAR after the trade than Howard did–and that was including Howard;’s 2006-2009 years
I really don’t fault the Phillies front office for giving Howard the big contract..How could they know that he would come down with a horrible leg injury and would be a shell of his former self?
What I do fault the front office for is not realizing that they should release him.Thus not constantly reminding the fans that they have an overpriced player who’s almost an automatic out who has no range that their playing everyday just because their paying him.
“The Howard deal didn’t make a huge amount of sense, but you could understand the underlying logic”
No, you cannot understand the logic because the logic was the front office (ownership and Amaro) thought they were smarter than everyone else. They jumped the gun to sign Howard two years early thinking that with Pujols and Fielder also entering the market that contracts would skyrocket and they’d look like geniuses. It’s the same reason they traded away Cliff Lee and how smart they were to set the market by signing Ibanez so early. The previous regime believed they knew what was going to happen in the future, and seemingly they were wrong on nearly every one.
Phillies need to ride the Howard deal out, nobody will trade for him, and the Phillies in my opinion don’t need to trade for a first basemen, I dot. Expect them to keep up this hot start so just keep giving young guys a chance.
I like Tommy Jospeh, Andrew Knapp and Rhys Hoskins. Watched them all play at Lakewood and am excited for them all to come up, I’m content with what we have down in the lower levels and am confident Joseph can handle first until then
Just release Howard and
Play the kids. Either way you still pay him
I think the Phils might be able to trade Howard;s contract for say Nick Markakis, who they have been rumored to be pursuing, if they added a prospect to make it worth Atlanta’s time., a la the Touki Toussaint trade. Perhaps a lower tier top 100 prospect like Cornelius Randolph or Roman Quinn gets the job done.
Markakis for Howard makes less than zero sense. The Phils don’t need to offload any money. And they can get a better player than Markakis if they start putting prospects like Quinn and Randolph on the table. They would not be stupid enough to take on the Markakis deal unless all it was is a cash offload and the BRAVES are the ones kicking in a prospect in order for the Phillies to reduce the payroll obligation of the Braves. On the other end the Braves have no use for Howard. He’d essentially be going there just to get waived. This is before even getting into Howard’s no trade list.
Agreed, I do not how Howard for Markakis could/would work for either team. They are owed roughly the same amount over what’s left on their contracts. Only way Braves do it is the same fashion they did Bourn-Swisher for CJ trade, save money on 2017 and 18 with Markakis.
But why would the Phillies do it? Markakis for Howard does next to nothing for them.