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January 30, 2012

Juan Pierre, Domonic Brown, and plans

Last week, the Phillies signed Juan Pierre to a minor-league contract. Pierre’s most likely role with the club is as the fifth or sixth outfielder. His primary duty might be to pinch run when Jim Thome reaches base in the late innings. Once Ryan Howard returns from his Achilles injury—projected sometime in May—Pierre may be designated for assignment.

What makes this minor move interesting is what it tells us about the Phillies’ plan for Domonic Brown. National media coverage seems to view the Pierre addition as the Phillies placing “another obstacle” in the way of Brown. This is a misunderstanding of the situation in Philadelphia.

Brown appears to be behind John Mayberry Jr. , Laynce Nix, Ty Wigginton, and Pierre on the club’s left field depth chart. With the possible exception of Mayberry, these names all share one commonality—they will NEVER block a prospect.

So no, Pierre does not add another obstacle for Brown to overcome. The obstacles in Brown’s path are solely personal.

First and foremost, he must greatly improve his outfield defense, a task that is accomplishable but requires a lot of repetition. All aspects of his defensive presence appear to need work. His route running in Philadelphia was comical. He has a strong arm but occasionally became overzealous with his throws. He also made throws to the wrong location, demonstrating a need to improve his game awareness of base/out states.

wRC+ found Brown’s offensive contributions in 2011 to be one percent above league average, and a .276 BABIP certainly did not help. However, scouts, spectators, and talking heads unanimously agree that Brown has plenty of room to work on his plate approach. Another spin with Triple-A Lehigh Valley is not likely to harm his offensive progress and will almost certainly help.

And that brings us back to Pierre’s purpose. Rather than an obstacle, Pierre provides additional depth to ensure that the Phillies do not need to thrust Brown into major league duty until he is completely ready.

Philadelphia has yo-yoed Brown around the past two years, and it is clear the Phillies have recognized the potentially damaging impact this could have on their prospect and have taken steps to rectify the situation.

When Brown is ready—that is, when his defensive presence catches up with his tools and his bat is prepared to shoulder the burden of a left-fielder—he will walk onto the roster virtually unopposed.

Posted by: Brad Johnson

December 02, 2011

The Papelbon tradeoff

Setting the stage

Once upon a time, the Philadelphia Phillies signed Jonathan Papelbon to four-year, $50 million contract with a $13 million vesting option for 2016. Since Papelbon was a Type-A free agent, the Phillies also surrendered their first-round pick—31st overall—to the Boston Red Sox as part of the signing.

A short while later, the owners and players agreed to a new five-year Collective Bargaining Agreement which called for several substantial changes, which included releasing all relievers from traditional Type A status. Clubs would not have to give up a draft pick in return for signing a Type A reliever.

Formerly, Type A status was best viewed as a tax. Teams might view a particular reliever as worth $6 million for one year, but if Type A status was attached, the reliever would be paid considerably less. The value of the lost draft pick offset a chunk of the reliever’s value. In that sense, the new CBA was a boon for all relievers who would have unfairly lost income due to arbitrary rules.

However, the rule change was not retroactive. The Phillies must still surrender their first-round pick.

One man’s theory

At first sniff, this smells unreasonable. It appears that the Phillies were penalized for acting decisively in the free agent market. To apply different rules at different points of the offseason is bizarre.

But maybe the Phillies weren’t penalized. What if the Phillies knew about the impending changes and still decided to sign Papelbon before the agreement? Why would they do that?

With the new CBA in place, Papelbon’s bargaining position would have improved. While most view his contract as a gross overpayment, it’s not unreasonable to think that he could have gotten an additional $4-8 million added to the deal without the draft pick “tax.” The Phillies, already treading dangerously close to the luxury tax threshold, may have decided that saving a few dollars in the contract was more valuable than the draft pick.

There are a couple of reasons why the Phillies might feel this way. Free agents Jimmy Rollins (if he signs elsewhere), Ryan Madson and Raul Ibanez will net the Phillies several early draft picks. Trading the 31st pick for several million dollars in contract savings seems fairly reasonable for a team that should gain several picks somewhere around No. 31.

The Phillies’ draft profile also should be considered. They are widely known to focus on players with the best tools. These players are usually raw, athletic types who lack polished baseball skills.

As an example, in 2008, the Phillies selected Anthony Hewitt with the 24th pick. Hewitt was regarded as the most athletic player in the draft, but his baseball skills left much to be desired. Hewitt’s tools never developed into skills. The Phillies went on to take several other similarly toolsy players early in that draf,t including Zach Collier, Anthony Gose (part of the trade for Roy Oswalt) and Jason Knapp (part of the trade for Cliff Lee).

This tools-oriented approach to drafting doesn’t require a preponderance of early picks. High-ceiling, raw athletes abound in the first several rounds of the draft. The Phillies acquired their top pitching prospect—Trevor May—with the 136th pick of the 2008 draft. At the time of the pick, he was a high-ceiling, projectable pitcher with a sloppy delivery.

The last reason might be the most important. It was speculated on Twitter that Papelbon might have retained Type A status anyway, assuming Boston made a sufficiently large qualifying offer. In this case, signing Papelbon early carries additional value: It takes him off the market before Boston could make an offer worthy of Papelbon’s attention.

Bottom line

Might the Phillies have known about the impending changes to Type A status but chosen to sign Papelbon anyway? It’s certainly possible.

The Phillies probably saved several million dollars in major league payroll by signing Papelbon early. This will either help them avoid paying the luxury tax or reduce their burden.

They might have viewed the pick as entirely fungible. Since they will receive several similar picks before the end of the offseason, they can still aim at the same players. They won’t be particularly concerned that nearly major league-ready talent is scarce at that part of the draft since they typically pick players who take four or more seasons to develop.

And Papelbon might have ended up with Type A status anyway.

So… Maybe the Phillies were retroactively screwed, or maybe they knew what they were doing all along.
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Posted by: Brad Johnson

October 31, 2011

Postseason predictions wrap-up

Twenty Hardball Times staffers made their predictions of how the 2011 postseason would play itself out. Some proved prescient, a few less so. Let's take a look at the rankings to see whose guesses came closest to, and shortest of, perfection.

Scoring was based on a 5-3-1 system similar to regular-season awards: If someone picked a Division Series correctly, that person received one point, choosing an LCS winner garnered three points, while being a fortune teller and predicting the World Series winner earned five points. (Nobody got those five points.)

Here are everyone's picks and the results, ranked by total points.
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Posted by: Greg Simons

October 27, 2011

How good has Mike Napoli’s World Series been?

With the World Series having shifted to St. Louis for good, we won't be able to hear the catchy "Na-Po-Li!" chant echo throughout Arlington anymore. However, Texas' catcher will still be heard and felt in a big way for the rest of the series and will likely be named series MVP if the Rangers close out their first world championship.

Mike Napoli has been so strong offensively in the eighth spot in the Rangers lineup that he's outperformed every player in this series except, perhaps, Cardinals hitter Albert Pujols. Even Pujols' batting average, RBI and slugging percentage don't match up to Napoli's production over the first five World Series games. In fact, if we look back at the cleanup hitters in the past five Fall Classics, it seems like Napoli has out-produced them all.

	             Slash Line	HR	RBI	R	XBH
Napoli 2011	.308/.389/.846	2	9	2	3
C. Ross  2010	.235/.381/.471	1	2	5	2
Guerrero 2010	.071/.125/.071	0	2	0	0
A-Rod 2009	.250/.423/.550	1	6	5	4
Howard 2009	.174/.240/.391	1	3	3	3
Howard 2008	.286/.375/.762	3	6	3	4
C. Pena 2008	.118/.250/.176	0	2	1	1
M. Ramirez 2007	.250/.333/.313	0	2	3	1
M. Holliday 2007.294/.294/.471	1	3	1	1

Posted by: Shlomo Sprung

October 18, 2011

LCS prediction results

With the World Series competitors set—and good luck to the Rangers and Cardinals—it's time to review how the Hardball Times' staff did in the League Championship Series and compare their picks to those of our readers' contest entries.

The champion picker among our readers—and the winner of a copy of The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2012—is Eugene Douglas. He eliminated any need for a World Series-winner tiebreaker by being the only entrant to have a team actually in the World Series.

Eugene tied for the lead going into the League Championship Series by picking three Division Series winners—Detroit, Texas and Milwaukee. (Note Detroit: He's a Yankees fan.) So the Rangers won it for him, which is only proper because he works as a software programmer in Washington, D.C., where the Rangers once played....

The Annual, currently in production, will be available later this fall. We'll be sure to let you know on this site exactly when you can order yours.

There were a couple of mistakes in our previous article about Hardball Times staff picks, with "Prescient" Ben Pritchett already given credit for his pick of the Tigers winning the LDS, which put him in a three-way tie at that time. Additionally, Mat Kovach had correctly chosen the Cardinals over Philly, so he vaulted into a tie with Ben and Greg Simons with three LDS picked accurately.

In the LCS round, only Ben, Greg and Sam Hendrickson chose one of the World Series entrants correctly; Ben and Sam picked Texas, while Greg selected St. Louis.

Using a 1-3-5 scoring system, right now, Ben and Greg are tied with six points each. The only THT staffer who has a shot at getting another pick right is Sam, who chose Texas to win the Fall Classic. Check back after the World Series for the full results rundown.
Posted by: THT Staff


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