High Hopes: A Phillies Podcast - Panic Or Patience For Struggling Phillies? | WIP Daily

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Joe Giglio evaluates some of the struggling Phillies players and decides who needs patience and what changes need to be made to right the ship after a tough week. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Whether the action is at the link or the bank, there's never an off day on Broad Street. It's the biggest news of the day every day

with takes from someone who's never short on them. It's WIP Daily with Joe Giglio. Welcome on in. WIP Daily, Joe Giglio with you. Appreciate everyone listening, subscribing, following the podcast. Of course, our YouTube feed, 94WIP. Check it out there. Hope everyone had a great Father's Day yesterday.

And what a weekend it was watching baseball. The feel of that series, both Friday, Saturday, obviously yesterday, a little bit more of a lopsided game. But I just felt like I was watching playoff baseball. You could imagine that as the World Series come late October. Great atmosphere down at Camden Yards. I love that ballpark. My wife is from there.

My father-in-law used to have season tickets to the Orioles. So I know that park, that team, that city very well. And it was cool listening to the back and forth from the Phillies and Orioles and all that over the weekend. Obviously, the results didn't go great for the Phillies after an enormous win Friday, after the hour and 10-minute rain delay. And they come out and Boehm delivers.

After last week, I said, I don't know if I trust Alec Boehm. Boehm delivered. Great night Friday. Saturday, not the Phillies' best day. But then, of course, the issue is Sunday as Zach Wheeler gets bombed. First time in his career allowing four home runs in a single game. That was out of character in a really, really out of character way for Zach Wheeler.

So just tough day yesterday. But now, you know, big picture wise, the Phillies are still fine. You know, they're coming home now after a very long road trip, and they could use a little home cooking because that road trip felt like it was forever. Now they get the Padres and Diamondbacks here in Philadelphia. I expect they bounce back out of the Phillies this weekend. But there are some players to talk about here because the way I view it is they've got four players struggling right now. They've got four guys really not performing at their best right now. And the question is, should we have patience with these guys or should we be hitting the panic button with these guys? So let's dive into them. I got

the four players right here, Bryson Stott, Nick Castellanos, Johan Rojas, and Jose Alvarado. Alvarado, obviously not as big of a part of the story this weekend, but just in general this year compared to maybe the last year and a half or so, hasn't been as dominant. So let's dive into the four. How much panic versus how much patience should we have? So let's start with Bryson Stott. Bryson Stott, about a month ago, I said this guy's becoming a star. And since then, he's gone to tank. All right, he's hit 159, slugging barely over 200 since May 21st. On the season, Bry and Stott now has an adjusted OPS of 100, league average. His OPS has dropped below 700 to 696. He's hitting 234, 333, only slugging 696. He got to a point earlier this season where he was walking more than he struck out. That has now gone the other way,

though it's still pretty close, 32 walks, 39 strikeouts. Bryson Stott is in a funk right now. And I could see why there's some concern, like, hey, it's supposed to be a year he takes a jump and all that kind of stuff. I'm not overly concerned with Bryson Stott. I still believe his ability to recognize pitches is outstanding. I still believe in his bat-to to ball skills. The one thing about him that I think is fair to note and why he'll probably never turn into the 25, 30 home run guy and probably always hover between, let's say he ends up between 10 and 20 home runs in seasons as he goes on. He doesn't have great bat speed. He doesn't have great exit velocities. He doesn't strike the ball with enormous velocity the way a Bryce Harper does, the way a Juan Soto does. And I'm not breaking any news there to you.

He doesn't hit the ball like those guys, but that's what he lacks. More of Louisa Rice, more of a Stephen Kwan. That's the way I think his profile will continue over there. I think there's some more power he could grow into and he can learn to pull the ball more to the pull side for home runs. But that's the issue with Bryson. That hasn't improved. But I still, I'm not hitting the panic button on Bryson. I think too highly of the player. I think too highly of his at-bats. This is a rough stretch. He had a rough stretch in April. He got super red hot for about three weeks in May and now has cooled off since. And I think he's going to be just fine. You look at some of the StatCast numbers and

a lot of the numbers are really a-okay, I would say, especially in terms of pitch recognition. So I'm going to pull up a StatCast page right here. It's percentile rankings. Exit velocity, bat speed, barrel percentage barrel percentage and harder percentage are towards the bottom of baseball not very good but his sweet spot his chase his whiff percentage his k percentage his walk percentage are all very high i mean we're talking about some of the best in baseball in terms of of what he does you know in terms of valuing that. And when you add it all together, his expected weighted on base is.324.

His expected batting average is.251. Expected slugging is.380. I think by the time this season ends, he will get to the.260s at a batting average. He'll get to a slugging over.400. He'll get on base at a.345 to.50 clip, and we will be satisfied with Bryce's stock. Last year he had 280. Okay, he had a 329 on base. He had a 419 slugging. I believe by the time this year ends, that batting average will probably be a little bit less, maybe 265, 260. I believe his OBP will be well clear what it was last year and his directory is going up. I think it'll be in the 340s, 350s. And I believe his slugging will go over 400 and at least be in the vicinity of where it was

last year 419 so i i'm not hitting the panic button i'm patient on bryce's thought now let's go to a couple guys i am hitting a panic button on and one would be nick castellanos all right so there's a lot of ways to view nick castellanos. There really is. There's not just one way to do it, but I'm tired of hearing about Castellanos and eventually coming around. It might not happen anymore. Nick Castellanos' StatCast page is as blue as the ocean right now. Okay. Batting run value, seven percentile. Base running run value, 1th percentile. Fielding run value, 2th percentile. His chase percentage. Remember all that about chasing and how they wanted to get away from that?

His chase percentage is in the 4th percentile. He chases in the upper percent of all of baseball. His whiff percentage, swing and miss, 9th percentile. He is doing almost nothing better than even middle of the pack in the league. I mean, everything. Average exit velocity, 30th percentile. Bat speed, 40th percentile. So this is a guy, unlike Stott, who has good pitch recognition.

He doesn't have good pitch recognition. He swings and misses a lot. He doesn't walk a lot. And when he hits, he doesn't strike it very hard anyway. I mean, there's very little redeeming right now about Nick Castellanos at the plate. Very little. And you look at his numbers here in Philadelphia. I mean, so far this season, he's at 204, 263 on the batting average, and a 347 slugging.

For a corner outfielder to make $20 million a year, that is a wretched, wretched offensive profile right now. And this isn't just a couple bad months. He had a big June last year. Remember when he made the All-Star team and he was one of their better hitters in all the first half and he helped them have a big month of June last year? Well, when you look at Castellanos since, I'll just go this, a calendar year, over the last calendar year in Major League Baseball. Okay. So June, what is today? June 17th from last June 17th to now. So a full calendar year in Major League Baseball. There are 120 players that have enough at-bats to be called qualified hitters over the last year. All right. So guys that play roughly every day, or at least a good percentage of time over the last year in Major League Baseball. Nick Cassianos is the third least valuable player in baseball. He has the third

worst war in Major League Baseball over that time. In terms of weighted runs created plus, all right, a stat over at Fangraphs to determine all encompassing about offense, okay? I'm going to read off the top 10 and you won't be surprised. Aaron Judge, Shohei Otani, Juan Soto, Mookie Betts, Marzello Zuna, Matt Olson, Freddie Freeman, Kyle Tucker, Jordan Alvarez, Ronald Acuna Jr., Bryce, right behind those guys at number 11. Last year, best offensive players in baseball.

Okay, then let's go to the bottom. Brennan Doyle, Andrew Benettoni, Liotta Tavares, Orlando Garcia, Elias Diaz, Kiba Ruiz, Tyro Estrada, Nick Castellanos. Out of 120 batters, Nick Castellanos ranks 113 over the last year. Let's go to on-base percentage. Let's check out that one. Mookie Pat, Swan Soto, Aaron Judd, Shohei Otani, Freddie Freeman. You get the gist of it, okay? Last year, Nick Castellanos has the worst on-base percentage in the major leagues.

In the last calendar year, no regular player gets on base at a less frequent pace than Nick Castellanos. That's who he is, and it's been this way for a full year now. I mean, we're not talking about a little period of time. This is a full year. This is a player that looks like the kind of player that gets DFA'd. I'm not saying they're going to DFA him because they have to go get probably another outfielder to replace Rojas.

So I don't know if they have the capability right now to get two outfielders, two starting outfielders, a DFA Nick Castellanos, but this is a problem. This is a problem. He went into the number two hole recently here because of the injury to JT Realmuto, and since he got there, I mean, the guy has been totally, totally dreadful. I mean, three for 27 with nine Ks in the number two spots

as he went there. Unbelievable. I am panicking on Nick Castellanos. All right, let's go to Johan Rojas, who I think should be sent down to the minors as soon as Trey Turner is activated on Monday night. We'll see what the Phillies do. But Johan Rojas now, as we check out his pages here,

he is hitting.235 with a.271 on base, a.295 slugging percentage. That is a.566 OPS. He's a 63 adjusted OPS. 37% below league average. He doesn't run the base particularly well. He's been picked off three times. On Friday night, he was thrown out at home

when it seemed like he didn't get a good enough secondary lead. We know his defense in the outfield has not been as great as the Phillies and maybe all of us would have hoped. So we've got a player right now that has barely been worth a fraction of a win in terms of wins above replacement, 0.1. He has now amassed 360 plate appearances in the major leagues,

and he has a.658 OPS last year and this year. If you go back and add up his numbers from the postseason last year, spring training, if you wanted to go that far, just like from the beginning of October last year to now, we might be talking about the worst hitter on the planet in terms of major league baseball, like the worst guy. I'm going to pull up where he ranks right now in terms of just this year. Just this year,raphs tell me where

johan rojas ranks in terms of of batting because i would imagine we're looking at either the what it's been all year it's felt like so there's 151 players right now that are qualified on the the batting leaders over at uh fangraph that would be, what, about five per team? We'll see where a Mr. Johan Rojas is. So let's see this. I got to pull this up here if this doesn't freeze on me. But let me just put it kindly. It's not great.

It's not great. It's towards the bottom. And is it a surprise to anybody? The guy has been one of the worst hitters in Major League Baseball for a while now. And I think the Phillies would do better at this point if they bring Trey back and they do a platoon in the outfield. You could platoon Marsh, who played center yesterday, by the way. Marsh in center along with a Pache.

Pache gets lefties. Marsh gets righties. And then left field, try out a David Dahl-Whitmerfield combination out there for a couple weeks until they bring another outfielder in. I think that a couple platoons at center and left would go way better and would go way further than continuing

to push the Johan Rojas narrative. I am panicking that he is a starting caliber player on a team with World Series aspirations, which is exactly what this team is. If that is the goal and the goal didn't change for me, then they got to figure this out because right now he is holding the back. I mean, offensively, he's a problem.

And the Phillies offense in the last couple weeks has really cooled down. And a lot of that's because, you know, they finally felt the Trey loss. You know, Sosa has cooled down, home run the other day, but he's cooled down offensively. Now without JT. Castellanos in the tank. Obviously, Stott, since May 21st, in the tank. I mean, it's just hard.

It's hard to score consistently when you have four, five, or six guys in the lineup every day that are outs. They're just automatic outs. It's hard. You know, once in a while someone pops a home run, you forget. But it's like, man, middle and bottom of that order, you look every day. And even two with Castellanos, it's not great!

It's not great, so they've got to fix that. So I'm panicking on Rojas. I think he should go to the minor league. So patience on Stott, panic on Castellanos, panic on Rojas. Althor Jose Alvarado didn't pitch much recently, but we know the blown save last week gets the Mets on that Sunday, which really kind of started off this really tough week for the Phillies.

They lose Sunday, 2-3 in in Boston, two out of three in Baltimore. When you add that up now, that's two and five, their last seven. I mean, they had a tough week here. Two and five, their last seven. That's not normal for a team that has been this good for most of the season. But I'm going to have a little patience on Jose Alvarado. Here is my thing on him. We may need, and I think the Phillies may need to envision a better role, a different role for Jose Alvarado based on who he is right now, what he is right now. He's not as dominant as he's been in years past.

He's not as dominant as he was a year and a half ago or last year. His strikeout rate is considerably down. And right-handed hitters are not striking out as much, and they're hitting more off him. So I would almost look look as we evolve this season to get Alvarado into spots where it's a pocket of lefties more than eighth inning or ninth inning. You know, because last year and a half it has been

the best pocket of batters are coming up, I'm going Alvarado. Or the second best pocket of batters are going up, I'm going Alvarado. For me now, that's Hoffman-Strom. And I'm dropping Alvarado down a notch now, that's Hoffman-Strom. And I'm dropping Alvarado down a notch to where it's almost like what they tried with Soto a little bit last year. All the lefties are coming up. You were in, Jose, because I don't trust him right now fully

against righties. I'm not panicking on Alvarado. I have patience with him as he tries to refine his command. But I'm noticing a little bit of difference from the years past. Strikeout rate, what righties do. So I would be willing to change his role up a little bit. Patience on Alvarado. Patience on Stott. And I am hitting the panic button. I mean seriously in that panic button on Castellanos

and Rojas. Upgrades are needed, and Rojas needs some time at AAA. I appreciate everyone listening, subscribing, following WIP Daily. We'll talk soon.