Phillies rethink minor-league hitting program in hopes of producing more homegrown bats

Getting everyone on the same page sounds great but the execution of the plan is will be difficult.

“You can talk about the old adage: The hardest thing to do in sports is to hit major-league pitching,” Barber said. “As a scout, I believe the second-hardest thing is to try to identify players that will end up hitting. … (But) there are things that lead you to believe in a player’s (hitting) ability.

“Before, it was just, you hand it over to player development. And then they develop him from there, regardless of what you thought on the scouting end. I don’t believe those two things are mutually exclusive or independent of each other. They have to work together.”

Barber, since assuming control of the club’s drafts, has valued bigger tools and players with higher upside (and higher risk) than the previous regime. The Phillies have a philosophy for what they value in hitters, but Barber admitted, “I don’t know that it’s been fully implemented yet.” For now, they will lean on the standard buzzwords.

“We want guys to make consistent contact and hit the ball hard,” Murton said. “That is going to be the main thing. But it’s more, like, how do we get there? I think that’s where with Barber leading the draft, then me overseeing the development side of it, putting guys in positions to do that. Having them buy into what you’re trying to get them to do will hopefully get you to where you want to go.”

Contact will be a point of emphasis — not that it wasn’t before.

“You look at prospects throughout the game that end up not making it, I feel like a lot of times from a hitting perspective, they don’t make it because they don’t make enough contact,” Murton said. “Their physical ability is definitely present. But they just don’t have enough ability to find the bat on the ball.”

Rosenthal: Grumbling about owners like Mets’ Steve Cohen? MLB needs more of them - The Athletic

Do you know what this offseason tells me about how teams view longterm contracts? Nothing. Until time exposes a trend, it’s a blip, an outlier. I can say one thing, Steve Cohen is every bit the owner so many other owners feared letting into their club.

Don’t get me wrong: I wish there were 30 Cohens, one for each franchise. Not likely, obviously — Cohen is one of a kind, the 38th richest man in America according to Forbes, with a real-time net worth of $17.5 billion. But in an industry mostly content with profits, Cohen is obsessed with winning. Middleton and Seidler share his obsession, which is exactly what fans should want.

This is a new breed of owner, operating under a new collective-bargaining agreement that reflects the union’s success in raising the luxury-tax thresholds and staving off harsher penalties. Cohen took over the Mets in late 2020. Seidler became the Padres’ control person not long after that. Middleton became a 48 percent shareholder in the Phillies in 2014 and their control person in 2016. With any luck, the Nationals and Angels, both currently for sale, will be bought by like-minded individuals or groups, and the turnover will continue with the Reds, A’s and Pirates, to name three clubs that need a change.

2022 Major League Baseball Rule 5 Draft Preview Version 2.0 - $

Baseball America with some possible Rule 5 Draft options. Ramos looked good in some AFL games I watched. Noda’s profile is always an interesting one, although it seems to be going a little out of style.

Jose Ramos, OF, Dodgers

One of the most highly regarded prospects left exposed to this year’s Rule 5 draft, Ramos is a power-hitting corner outfielder with the ability to handle center in a pinch. Ramos hit .249/.339/.479 with 22 doubles and 25 home runs across 123 games, primarily with High-A Great Lakes, before finishing his 2022 season with Glendale of the Arizona Fall League, where he hit .275/.326/.463 with three home runs over 20 games. Ramos ranked as the Dodgers’ 17th-best prospect after the August update, and is among the top outfielders in the system. At just 21 years old and with no experience above the High-A level, Ramos might not have the necessary polish at the plate to stick on a big league roster if selected. He will be one of the more noteworthy players available, however.Jose Ramos, OF, Dodgers

One of the most highly regarded prospects left exposed to this year’s Rule 5 draft, Ramos is a power-hitting corner outfielder with the ability to handle center in a pinch. Ramos hit .249/.339/.479 with 22 doubles and 25 home runs across 123 games, primarily with High-A Great Lakes, before finishing his 2022 season with Glendale of the Arizona Fall League, where he hit .275/.326/.463 with three home runs over 20 games. Ramos ranked as the Dodgers’ 17th-best prospect after the August update, and is among the top outfielders in the system. At just 21 years old and with no experience above the High-A level, Ramos might not have the necessary polish at the plate to stick on a big league roster if selected. He will be one of the more noteworthy players available, however.
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Ryan Noda, 1B, Dodgers

Drafted by the Blue Jays in the 15th round of the 2017 draft out of Cincinnati, Noda has never produced an on-base percentage below .372 over any of his four minor league seasons. He’s hit .264/.407/.486 with 107 doubles and 94 home runs across 555 professional games. Noda was acquired by the Dodgers prior to 2021 and hit .250/.383/.521 with 29 home runs over 113 games with Double-A Tulsa. He was left exposed for the Rule 5 draft that never happened in 2021 and despite a .259/.395/.474 line over 135 games with Triple-A Oklahoma City in 2022, Noda was again left off the Dodgers crowded 40-man roster. Despite below-average contact skills, Noda manages his whiffs enough that his elite plate discipline (20% chase rate in 2022) and plus power still play. Noda’s power is notable as he’s slugged 54 home runs combined over his last two seasons and has the exit velocity data to back that up with an 89 mph average exit velocity, a 105.8 mph 90th percentile average and a hard hit rate of 44.8%—while getting on base nearly 40% of the time and keeping his strikeout rate below 30% in the upper minors. Noda is one of the better first base defenders in the minor leagues, with the ability to handle a corner outfield spot in a pinch. With lefthanded power, on-base ability and some defensive value and versatility, Noda is one of the more well-rounded Rule 5 sluggers.

Ten Arizona Fall League prospects scouts liked most, plus 5 who left mixed impressions The Athletic

The weather has begun to cool, families will soon gather over turkey and stuffing and the latest season of the Arizona Fall League is in the books. For six weeks, some of the game’s best prospects exhibited their talent in front of a smattering of fans. But now those players have scattered back to the four corners of the country and to points beyond.

So, too, have the scouts. Sixty percent of fall league attendance is made up of evaluators — this is only a slight exaggeration — but before these scouts tied a bow on their final reports, several of them spoke to The Athletic. Here, the result of conversations with several scouts with several big-league organizations, is a rundown of the top 10 they liked … as well as five on whom they couldn’t agree.

The 10 prospects who most impressed

1. Jackson Merrill, SS, Padres

There used to be competition for the title of Best Padres Prospect, but the mass exodus to Washington in the Juan Soto trade leaves Merrill more or less alone. Good thing for the Padres that he’s one of the best prospects in the game. Though his fall numbers weren’t stunning — a .261/.316/.352 line in 22 games — no player generated as many positive reviews from scouts as the No. 27 pick in the 2021 draft. “Most scouts are salivating over him,” one scout said, “and even the low guys think he’s good.”

In their first extended look at Merrill, who was limited to only 45 games at Low A this year due to a wrist injury, evaluators saw a player with a projectable body and a feel to hit. Only 19, Merrill stands at 6-foot-3 and 195 pounds, carrying himself more like a 22-year-old than a teenager. He’ll fill out more, but not in a way that leads scouts to think he’ll have to move off shortstop. At the plate, the left-handed hitter shows signs of good plate discipline, as well as the ability to spray the ball over the field. The power, they think, will come.

It hasn’t yet, and no one’s predicting home run titles for Merrill in the first place. He’ll have to get the ball off the ground more often — Merrill had a 59-percent groundball rate at Low A — but could wind up hitting 15 to 20 homers a year. Put the whole package together, another scout said, and Merrill’s “got a chance to be really, really good.”

Braves’ Mike Soroka had tightness near twice-torn Achilles, so he got high-tech help - The Athletic

Soroka had heard countless times since the initial injury that it was something that just happened, no explanation, that it could’ve happened to anyone. Others have speculated that there was something structural wrong with his body that couldn’t withstand the torque of high-level pitching.

The analysis of his delivery told him otherwise.

“Not only was I putting too much stress on it, but I was basically taking out lower-half involvement from anything in getting a kinetic chain to the baseball.

“That was kind of the crazy part for me, learning that I cornered myself into throwing at a disadvantage for years, most likely to be able to manipulate the ball and see the ball move. That was tough to grasp.”

Rosenthal: Uncertainty surrounding Astros GM James Click marring World Series shine - The Athletic

Crane evidently doesn’t care. Maybe he shouldn’t care. But his handling of Click is another unfortunate episode for a franchise that has had too many under his ownership, a franchise that should be basking in the glow of its untainted World Series title. It would be difficult to blame Click if he told Crane to stick his offer you-know-where.

Law: The Mets fail to learn from history. Will the Edwin Díaz deal doom them to repeat it? - The Athletic

This century, there have been, by my count, 20 contracts of four or five years handed to free-agent relievers, not counting the new deal for Díaz. Jansen, Chapman and B.J. Ryan received five-year deals, and the remainder were all for four years. One of the deals, Raisel Iglesias’, is still underway with 1.6 WAR in year one — although most of that came after the team that signed him, the Angels, dumped him and the contract on Atlanta midway through year one. Jansen’s and Chapman’s immediately followed the ends of those five-year periods I mentioned above.

Of the other 19, nine of them resulted in 4 WAR or less from the pitcher over the course of the deal, regardless of teams. That includes Brett Cecil (minus-0.5), Justin Speier (0.8), Drew Pomeranz (1.8, and out for all of year three due to injury), and Scott Linebrink (1.8). Only three of the deals resulted in an average WAR of at least 2: the Kimbrel deal originally signed with the Padres, the Miller deal with the Yankees and Mariano Rivera’s contract from 2001 to 2004. That Rivera deal is the only four- or five-year contract given to a reliever who produced at least 10 WAR over the course of the deal. One out of 19, and it belongs to the greatest short reliever the game has ever seen. Do you feel lucky? I sure don’t.