Can the Phillies reopen the window?

Baseball’s final four is set and if the championship series games play out anything like the divisional serieses did, then we’re in for a treat. Plus, with four classic franchises fighting for a spot in the World Series, TV ratings may get a bump.

Interestingly, the championship series features four teams that are on the way up (again) as the Phillies turn the page as the proverbial window of opportunity has closed. Now that the most successful era of Phillies’ baseball is pretty much over, it’s fair to assess how it measured up against other franchises.

What’s has been a great run for the Phillies has just been another decade for teams like the Cardinals and Red Sox.

Since the Phillies finally broke through and got to the playoffs in 2007, 17 teams have appeared in the postseason more than once. The Red Sox, Cardinals and Rays have been to the playoffs four times since ’07 while the Dodgers and Tigers have been in it three times. In that span, only the Phillies and Yankees have been in the playoffs more than the Rays, Sox and Cards.

But that’s only since ’07. Going back to 2002, the Cardinals have been to the playoffs seven times and won the World Series twice. Since 2003, the Red Sox also have seven postseason appearances and two titles and the Yankees have been in it nine times with one World Series ring.

What we need to figure out is how those other teams can slip out of the playoffs for one year, regroup and then make another long run for four or five straight years. How can the Phillies turn a golden era into the norm like the elite franchises?

Does it start with reshuffling the roster?

Five players that were on the Phillies roster in 2007 are still the core players of the 2013 club. The Red Sox also have five players remaining from the 2007 title team, but three of those guys—Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz—appeared in 49 combined games and none of them were over the age of 23.

The Cardinals only have two players remaining from the 2007 team in Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina and both of those guys were All-Stars this year. Wainwright led the National League in wins and innings and Molina batted .319 and caught 131 games.

The Cardinals also have sprinkled in young players from the system, too. The 2007, 2008 and 2009 first-round draft picks all make significant contributions to the team and the 2010 first-round pick was used to acquire Matt Holliday. The 2012 first-round pick, Michael Wacha, will start Game 2 of the NLCS. Joe Kelly, the third-round pick of the 2009 draft, will start Game 1.

The last first-round pick to play in the majors for the Phillies was lefty reliever Joe Savery and none of the team’s first-round picks since 2008 have advanced past Double-A Reading.

In fact, the last second-round pick to appear in more than 12 games for the Phillies was Randy Wolf from the 1997 draft and only one second-round pick going back to 2006 has made it past Double-A. That guy, Anthony Gose, has been in the Blue Jays’ organization since 2010. The Phillies used him to get Roy Oswalt.

Yeah, there is a trend here. There isn’t a trick to the sustainability the Cardinals have achieved unless getting smarter is the trick.

Comments

[awh™]

From the previous thread:

"awh: RAJ did improve the team from 2009 to 2011, but he also inherited an absolute dream situation for doing so: a young world champion core in place; a top minor league system; and an ownership that would launch a massive increase in payroll over the next 3 years.

To his credit, RAJ mostly made the right choices in those years. The guys he acquired (Lee, Halladay, Oswalt, Ibanez to some extent) were all they were advertised to be -- at least for a time. And the prospects he gave up have, almost to a man, failed to live up to their billing. Other GMs would likely have chosen differently & the Phillies would have been much worse off for it. So I do give RAJ credit for 2009 to 2011. But I don't think it's a repeatable formula & he hasn't shown the slightest aptitude with any other kind of formula."

bap, I think, perhaps, for one of the few times in BL history, I agree 100% with your post above.

[awh™]

Finger, good thread header.

Reading your last two paragraphs makes me ask you this question:

Are you implying, as I have, that "luck" may have had as much to do with the '07 - '11 success as anything else?

[bay_area_phan]

"I think, perhaps, for one of the few times in BL history, I agree 100% with your post above."

Small sample size.

[Chris in VT]

So our drafts have sucked pretty much since Arbuckle left?

[awh™]

"Small sample size."

Touchè!

[NEPP]

You ever paint a window shut with heavy oil based paint and then try to open it a couple years later?

That's basically what we're dealing with.

[awh™]

"So our drafts have sucked pretty much since Arbuckle left?"

Chris, the first draft after Arbuckle left was 2009. It usually takes 4 - 5 years for the success/failure of a draft to become apparent. So, in fairness, there hasn't been enough time to really evaluate any of the drafts since 2010.

But, in the interest of discussion, here are the first rounders the Phillies drafted:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?query_type=franch_round&draft_type=junreg&team_ID=PHI&draft_round=1&

Also, here's the entire 2009 Phillies draft, which after 4 years we can start to draw some conclusions:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/?query_type=franch_year&team_ID=PHI&year_ID=2009&draft_type=junreg&

Only Ruf and Zeid have made MLB from that draft class, and Zeid is in Houston now - he went as part of the Hunter Pence trade, so the trade is already paying dividends for the Astros.

I'm not enough of a draft guru to know whether at this time that draft ought to be judged a good or bad draft, but after 4 years, if you look at some of the performances of the players in the minors, it doesn't look promising.

The thing that jumps out to me is that it's amazing how many guys the Phillies scouts and brain trust thought were better than Darin Ruf. :)

[mm]

"You ever paint a window shut with heavy oil based paint and then try to open it a couple years later?

That's basically what we're dealing with."

And Amaro's said he doesn't want to use anything Ruf so it's really gonna be a challenge.

[awh™]

mm. LOL!

[Phillibuster]

Hey, I'm sure he can find a nice, smooth prybar.

[Chris in VT]

Chris, the first draft after Arbuckle left was 2009. It usually takes 4 - 5 years for the success/failure of a draft to become apparent. So, in fairness, there hasn't been enough time to really evaluate any of the drafts since 2010.

Posted by: awh™ | Friday, October 11, 2013 at 02:22 PM

See, I see that and then contrast that with this paragraph from the header above, explaining why the Cardinals are always competing for the World Series:

"The Cardinals also have sprinkled in young players from the system, too. The 2007, 2008 and 2009 first-round draft picks all make significant contributions to the team and the 2010 first-round pick was used to acquire Matt Holliday. The 2012 first-round pick, Michael Wacha, will start Game 2 of the NLCS. Joe Kelly, the third-round pick of the 2009 draft, will start Game 1."

And it is painfully obvious that really good organizations don't need to wait 4 years to get solid contributors at the major league level, unless they only draft high-schoolers or just suck at scouting the college ranks.

[awh™]

Chris, that is an excellent point.

The 2008 draft - Arbuckle's last - was decent, in that 9 guys have actually had at least a cup of coffee. 2007 has had 7 draftees actually make an MLB roster.

Since then it's been pretty bleak.

I'm not sure what the criteria are for judging a draft in terms of the number of players who make it or how good they are.

[Phillibuster]

Chris: Um... There's one draftee from a draft after '09 there that had a bearing on the Cardinals this year. The 2010 draft-pick was traded for Holliday, so that doesn't really count.

From '09 to '12, they have a total of 2 draftees who are playing a role. That's not nothing, but acting like we should be expecting our '10/'11 draftees to be playing major roles now is seriously rushing them (also, we do mostly draft HS kids).

[awh™]

Correction: 2007 had 8 guys get at least a cup of coffee.

[awh™]

2006: 8 Phillies' draft picks got at least a cup of coffee.
2005: 8 guys
2004: 6 guys

[Juums]

Awh:
To be fair, you have to compare apples-to-apples with draftees, as it's inappropriate to expect a high school draftee to make it to the big leagues in the same timeframe as a four-year college draftee from the same draft class. As they picked a ton of high school and junior college guys ahead of Ruf, you can't really fault them for not making it to MLB yet. (And Kelly Dugan, 2009's second-round pick, became one of the few bright spots from the Pharm's generally abysmal 2013.)

But amongst four-year college guys, they chose nine guys before taking Ruf. Of whom only one has done much of anything worth noting, and that was Zeid. So some snark is certainly deserved there. Though what jumps out to me is that the Phils took A.J. Griffin in the 34th round. It appears that he was a junior-signing who didn't sign, which is a pity, because we could've used a young, cost-controlled back-of-the-rotation guy who's put 2.3 bWAR in his first full season as a starter.

[jr]

The fact that pitchers have trouble throwing strikes and failure to recognize talent, (Grilli,Moss) shows that there is a need to revamp the minors.
Of course in no talent is drafted one cannot expect anyone to work miracles.Too early to judge but it does appear better drafting choices have been made lately.

[Dragon]

I'm not saying that the Cards or Rays FO and scouting staffs are the second coming, but when it comes time to 86 the RAJ regime, I'm(and I've said this before)looking there first for replacements.

[GBrettfan]

Some Victorino love on mlb.com:

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/mlb/boston-red-sox-outfielder-shane-victorino-plays-the-game-one-way----all-out?ymd=20131010&content_id=62797432&vkey=news_mlb

[Conway Twitty]

bap: Can you explain the ongoing San Jose saga to me. I'm 3k miles away, but I can read a map. Oakland looks a hellofa lot closer to SF than San Jose. Why would the Giants object to the competition for customers moving further away?

[Chris in VT]

Phillibuster - just a cursory glance, but since 2009 the Cards have drafted Joe Kelly, Shelby Miller, Michael Wacha, and Matt Adams...there may be others, but all of those players have become instrumental parts of the roster in less than 4 years in professional baseball. And some were high schoolers.

The overall point is just the good organizations draft well, develop young players well, and have those players become contributors to the ML club in a relatively short amount of time. Bad organizations do none of those things. Unfortunately the Phils have fallen into the latter category for the last 5 seasons or so, and we are seeing the ramifications of this failure now.

[bay_area_phan]

Conway: Quite honestly, I've never paid much attention to the A's stadium saga, because I've never really cared about the A's. But I would guess the Giants' fear is that, if the A's move to San Jose/Fremont, the Giants will lose the heavily-populated south bay market (which will now have its own team to follow), without gaining much of the east bay market (as many A's fans will probably still root for the A's).

[Fyn]

From athletics nation re: San Jose territorial rights

A brief summation:

Why territorial rights? Oakland did SF a favor when they were trying to build a new stadium in the early 90’s and were considering the South Bay. Territorial rights were created in the hope that it would give the Giants the public votes to support a new South Bay ballpark. That didn't work out. Unfortunately, the territorial rights "favor" had financial value which was included in the price of the Giants franchise when the team was sold in 1992. The Magowan group bought the rights that were intended as a gift. Now the South Bay rights are a financial entity, and the Giants have actively worked to expand their Peninsula/South Bay fan base. There is real value in that, and the Giants have every reason to demand compensation if MLB revokes the territorial rights to the South Bay area. But there is a very strong moral argument that the A’s were originally under no obligation to give the rights to the Giants in the first place. So no-one’s fully in the right and it’s a mess. One would hope Bud Selig would work quickly to solve this mess and let everyone move on, but he’s instead waffled on the issue. This leaves the A’s unable to create a secure long-term plan and well, here we are.

[bullit]

as i mentioned, my fan interest is now in the slippery rock slugger, matt "big city" adams. here's hoping for an mvp series for him.

[Iceman]

Why would anyone ever throw Puig anything near the strike zone?

Seriously. He's been in the league for months now. The scouting report should be 'swings at anything thrown in his general direction.'

[Chris in VT]

It seems that Puig's comp might be a poor man's Vlad Guerrero.

[bullit]

the gloss is really off puig. i'd rather have ruf in my outfield.

[Iceman]

I wouldn't go that far. Ruf is another one-tool player on a team full of them. Puig brings a few things to the table.

But poor man's Vlad is a nice description. He's going to murder mistakes his entire career from any pitcher dumb enough to challenge him. And the 'mistake' zone to him is anywhere in the strike zone. But I'm not sure the patience and judgment is there for someone who can grow into a high-average type of hitter.

[bullit]

you're right ofc, Iceman. ruf's best role would be as mayberry's replacement on the bench. i do get carried away by that boy-ish smile. btw, did ruf play winter ball last year?

[Iceman]

He's also going to put his body through a lot of abuse with the way he plays the game. He''s going to spend a lot of time 'day to day' or on the disabled list if he doesn't turn it down a notch. Reminds me of Harper in that way (and Utley to a lesser extent).

[bullit]

so kelly thinks he see's the spin too well when he wears glasses to bat. he gets too anxious and swings at everything. so he feels his slightly impared focus is a benefit. well, he did get the first hit and score the first run, along with the unproductive carpenter walk.

[PLM]

Even a blind squirrel find a nut once in a while.

[GBrettfan]

Does Brian Wilson look like that in the off-season, too, and does he know how ridiculous he looks? I think he does. I think he likes it as part of his crazy closer persona. But boy, it's dumb.

[GBrettfan]

Good game, by the way!

[GBrettfan]

Ben Davis ‏@bendaviscsn 5m
Ho-hum, another Cardinals relief pitcher throwing 99 mph WITH command. Apparently, in THEIR farm system they're a dime a dozen!

[bittel]

Young deep enough? Not even close! At least they sent him.

[GBrettfan]

Nice throw by Beltran to get Ellis, easily, at the plate.

[Sources]

Man, I hate the Cardinals.

[Iceman]

I honestly have a hard time hating the Cardinals.

I understand that I should, and I understand the reasons that I should. And I even agree with most of them. But it's tough not to respect their organization from top to bottom.

I can't stand Holliday or Chris Carpenter, and I couldn't stand Pujols. But that's about the extend of the negative emotions I can muster.

[bittel]

I see Young is still making outs at a historic rate.

Hard to make 4 outs in 45 minutes in one game.

[Kevin]

I am shocked -- shocked! -- that Michael Young would hit into a double play.

[Iceman]

I also think the Cardinals are what the A's would look like if Billy Beane & his front office had a top 10 payroll.

A forward-thinking organization that has been a step or two ahead of baseball's archaic and rigid orthodoxies (that have been mimicking Beane, albeit 2-3 years too late at every turn) with the ability to lock up players (Wainwright/Holliday) at long-term positions of need.

[Dickie Thong]

That was a no-brainer walking HamRam to set up the MYoung DP.

[derekcarstairs]

When talking about baseball franchises, fans and media tend to overrate the Red Sox. They are not comparable to the Yankees and Cards.

In the last 94 years, the Phillies have won the same number of WS, two, and the same number of WS appearances, six.

The Red Sox originally gained their aura, through the media, simply by being the Yankees' punching bag over many years.

[Coach Kent Murphy]

I don't hate the cards. I applaud them for running the franchise the way they do. They draft well, sign FA who have upside. They make trades that always seem to work out. And they know when to cut bait on the guys who won't Keep production up. And year in and year out they are right in the mix of WC or division playoffs.

[glanville!]

^ All true, but then I think about those guys jumping around on the field while Ryan is laying on the first base line in agony, and I just feel all stabby.

[Bob]

Interesting post. I have been griping for a while now about "How come the Red Sox and Cardinals are good for several years, have one down year, and are right back in the mix the next year? While the Phillies had a good run, but have been down for two years now and could be in the wilderness for who knows how much longer? And with a huge payroll to work with to boot?"

I find it hard to hate the Cardinals, simply for being competent. I do have a couple of Missouri friends, though. While I had the bragging rights for a few years, there was always this tone of, "Enjoy it while you can, pal. You guys are having a once every generation run that will only last a few years. Meanwhile we'll be back on top in a couple of years and will stay there while you're wondering what hit your team." Same thing with a friend from near Boston. Frustrating.

[Looking ahead 2014]

The Ryan Howard contract set the franchise back plain and simple. Just have to spend our way till he either A) produces or B) we ship him out eat sal and have Franco chase Freddy and asche in a few yrs. the last two drafts are really promising. Just hope a few pcs pan out and the players we sign can jump start the team again. I still have hope, but rube better get with the times and adjust. The shiny high priced toy isn't the best. Really believe morse and or hart are gonna be the PC we need. Can't miss on next yrs draft pick. Beltran has been brought up. I think we missed the boat on him a few yrs ago. Beltre too!

[CS]

Ruben wants a star SP again. I forsee him blowing the budget on a Tanaka type, and using the rest on a budget LF and Catcher.

[MG]

“The way is shut. It was made by those who are named Ruben Amaro, and Ruben Amaro keeps it, until the time comes. The way is shut.”

[aksmith]

No reason the budget needs to be blown on Tanaka. Yes, he'll need a large posting amount. But that doesn't count against the salary cap, i believe. And his salary shouldn't be insanely high. If they were willing to give Gonzalez his initial contract, they should be willing to give about that same money to Tanaka, especially considering they got Gonzalez on a second, bargain contract. Of course, Tanaka is a complete unknown to me except for his numbers. But his numbers are otherworldly.

And it's important to remember that paying a Cespedes and a Chapman relatively paltry contracts would have saved the Phillies money and headaches in the longrun. And they'd have been a much better ballclub.

[Iceman]

Wacha continues to just dominate every hitter he comes across the last three weeks.

If Mike Rizzo was the Cards GM, Wacha would've thrown his last pitch of the season 4-5 weeks ago.

[can_of_corn]

If R00b was Wacha's GM, Wacha would have been traded early in the season to a competitor for a floundering, past-his-prime, but versatile position player.

[PLM]

Possibly asksmith but then agan both players you mentioned could of flopped.

[Iceman]

Kershaw pulled after six dominant innings (72 pitches) with two outs in the 7th with a man on first for Michael Young (who flew out to end the inning).

Mattingly not exactly putting on a managing clinic in these first two games. Young has been to the plate three times with the game basically on the line in the late innings purely at the discretion of Mattingly.

[PLM]

For the forseeable future their is only one way to absorb the Ryan Howard pill(contract) and that is to swallow it. They are going to be a high payroll team.

[Iceman]

"If R00b was Wacha's GM, Wacha would have been traded early in the season to a competitor for a floundering, past-his-prime, but versatile position player."

What player that Amaro has traded fits this description?

More than likely if Wacha is in the organization he never develops that change up and probably gets transitioned to reliever after a few failed seasons as a starter.

[Iceman]

Howell with another scoreless inning. I remember before the season, BAP and I had an argument over whether he was worth signing. BAP, Jack and the front office thought that the young guns in the bullpen should get to fight it out for one of the final bullpen spots that would've gone to Howell. Others thought that Adams (who admittedly turned out to be a disaster) was not enough to fix the bullpen, and another arm or two like Howell needed to be signed.

Not counting guys like Luis Garcia, who were not on the radar to begin with, the cumulative WAR of the next generation of bullpen arms- plus the filler guys signing by the front office (Bastardo, Diekman, Horst, Valdes, DeFratus, Ramirez, Aumont, Stutes)- was 0.2. Howell's 2013 WAR (to go with an ERA close to 2 and a WHIP close to 1) was 1.6.

Howell's salary was around what the team paid Durbin & DYak, with a one-year commitment.

[GBrettfan]

Tough luck for the Dodgers these first two games to be on the losing end of well-pitched, low-scoring games. I would have thought Greinke and Kershaw could beat the Cardinals' starters not named Wainwright.

Magic Johnson looked pretty nervous - read a headline on mlb.com to that effect.

Wow, Wacha was their compensation pick for letting Pujols walk?

Hopefully, the Dodgers can win at home. They're going to have to score a few more runs.

[GBrettfan]

New thread.