Lets get this show on the road.
AAA: Lehigh Valley lost 10-5.
* John Mayberry went 2/5 with a HR (10)
* Michael Taylor is still on the mend
* Joe Savery got smacked around; 6 IP – 6 ER – 10 H – 2 BB – 2 K
* Joe Bisenius allowed 4 ER in 0.2 IP, and now sports a 27.00 ERA in his 3 AAA appearances.
Check below for the rest
AA: Reading lost 9-4.
* Quintin Berry was 3/5 and was caught stealing for the 12th time this year
* Domonic Brown was 1/5 with a 2B (4)
* Brad Harman was 0/2 with a BB, and his average now sits at .202. Such a disappointment
* Vance Worley got smacked around; 6 IP – 6 ER – 8 H – 2 BB – 6 K
* Chance Chapman went 2 scoreless innings. He’s sporting a 1.98 ERA over his last 13.2 IP, and is holding his own at AA
A+: Clearwater won 4-1.
* Freddy Galvis went 1/4, and while the .627 OPS this month doesn’t look pretty, its an improvement over June and July.
* Cody Overbeck went 2/4 with a 2B (19), and like Galvis, he’s trying to salvage his season. He has a .720 OPS in August, far surpassing June (.622) and July (.662). But still not where he needs to be
* Tyler Cloyd had a fine start; 7 IP – 1 ER – 5 H – 2 BB – 5 K. Now sporting a 3.77 ERA in 59.2 IP at CLW
* Schwim pitched a scoreless 9th for his 18th save. Over his last 12.2 IP, he’s fanned 20 batters. That works
A: Lakewood was off
SS: Williamsport was off, it was the NYPL All Star Game
* Leandro Castro went 2/4 with a 2B
* Jeremy Barnes went 0/1 with a BB
* Francisco Murrilo went 1/2
* Sebastian Valle went 0/1
* Austin Hyatt made an appearance out of the pen; 0.2 IP – 0 ER – 0 H – 0 BB – 0 K
RK: GCL Phillies lost 7-4.
* Singleton goes 2/4 and a HR (2) and a BB
* Bollinger goes 1/4
* Hudson goes 1/2 with 2 BB
* Altherr and Santana a combined 0/8
End transmission.
Phuture Phillies 
Overbeck is intriguing. He appears to have true power potential, but he’s got to start hitting for a higher average – and soon. Because he’s a college guy and is still in A ball, his real window of opportunity to shine and be considered a true prospect (rather than filler) is going to be pretty small.
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Can anyone who watches Clearwater speak to Overbeck’s other attributes such as, speed, size, agility, arm-strength, bat speed, fielding, mental approach/toughness etc. . . . I am trying to figure out just what type of prospect this fellow really is.
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As was posted in the roster report for yesterday, this morning, from the Dominican, Daniel De La Cruz had a no hitter, 0 walks, 12 strikeouts. He hit a couple of batters and Carlos Valenzuela make an error, so not another virtual perfect game. I believe De La Cruz has been mostly the 5th starter, so now , I am thinking all 5 starters there go to the states next season. De La Cruz, jumped to leadership in the WHIP department, currently at 0.97.
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I saw Overbeck a few times last year in the field and I thought he looked awkward at best at 3B. Granted there’s a learning curve so I don’t want to condemn him but his range and hands were both below average.
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Santana- relatively had not been striking out much , lately , but yesterday I see 3 in 4 AB’s. Looks like he will turn in one of those from time to time, at his current production.
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I see the emphasis on OPS on Galvis as a determinant of his status. Then one thing he should be judged on is Slug Percentage. I don’t consider him to be a prospect as a power hitter. Also the On Base Percentage is over-rated as well, because some are more adept at putting the bat on the ball. Like said before, Galvis will make MLB if he can continue his fielding prowess. His Batting Average is good for one with this fielding ability, and can get much better as he has hit well for stretches in the past. My bet says he makes it , and has a better chance than many of the more favored on here.
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Now that most shortstops can hit, there are very, very few guys who can make it as ML starter based pretty much on their fielding alone. A guy of Vizquel or Ozzie Smith’s abilities could still make it (the truly phenomenal, take your breath away, type of shortstops), but the days of Buddy Biancalana, Mark Belanger and Buddy Harrelson are over for good. Being a very good fielder is just not enough and it’s not clear yet whether Galvis will fall into that category.
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Hey Marfis,
I very respectfully have to disagree – and looking for light debating here:-) Not on any one point, but on the whole. I think Galvis is not going to get to the majors at his current pace. I am sure he’s a wizard with the glove – and that’s terrific. But I don’t understand how can discount both slugging percentage AND OBP%. Ok got it – he’s not going to hit for power – and that’s a fact and it’s all good. But I am not sure I get your comment about OBP% not mattering when you can put the bat on the ball. I get this in the case of Rollins (when he’s going good) – I think we all undertsood he’s going to hit his way on base and not walk – and it is what it is. But he also gives you power, etc. I don’t see how a kid hitting .242 (in high A no less) with no power is “putting the bat on the ball”. I think if you are a singles hitter, good defense or not, you better figure out a way to get on base. I’m just not seeing someone like Galvis being carried on a roster for late inning defense, etc.
Don’t get me wrong – not writing him off, and am pulling for him. But the way he’s going I think he’s got to step it up with the bat.
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You have to consider slugging with any player. With Galvis batting .242 if he had a ton of power I would be more hopeful for him, but he doesn’t, so I’m not.
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The problem is that, right now, Galvis doesn’t project to hit for the same average at the major league level. Would I take him as a .266 hitter (what he’s done in August, one of his “good” stretches) with +15 win defense at shortstop? Absolutely. But a guy who hits .248 in A+ ball with no pop (a .059 ISO) and hasn’t exactly made a ton of contact (15.8% K) doesn’t even project to hit .266 in the majors. His peak translation, courtesy of BP, is only .242/.290/.320. If that’s his ultimate upside as a hitter, then his career path looks much more like Abraham Nunez than Adam Everett.
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Whoops, that should say “+15 run defense at shortstop” instead. He could hit .000/.000/.000 if he was a +15 win fielder over the course of one year!
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For the record, Galvis is like the 4th youngest player at his level so keep that in mind.
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That was me.
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11/14/2009 is the day Freddy turns 20.
His fielding rates a 75 presently and future 80 on a 20/80 scale. This would rank him higher presently than over half of the startes in MLB.
He has been asked to experiment with switch hitting which in of itself is a burden on statistics and performance.
In a new era where the extreme usage of enhancement drugs being curtailed, his fielding will become of even more value.
He plays in MLB.
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OBP is important for Galvis. Assuming he is never going to have much power, he does not to work the count and draw walks. If he can hit .270 with enough BBs to have a .350 OBP then he can be a productive player. With no power that is still below average offense from the position. But combine that with plus defense and he can play.
I wonder if the team continues to be aggressive with him and promotes him to Reading next year. With Hanzawa and Barnes presumebly at the levels behind him, I don’t see why not. They might even want to jump Barnes to Clearwater because he is older to see what they have in him. That might mean Villar at Lakewood, though that would be a big jump for him.
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I think Galvis makes it as a John McDonald type of defensive wizard at SS. He’s a legit prospect because of his defense and he’s pretty young so his bat can still come around. If he can crack .300 on his OBP, he’ll likely be able to start on some MLB teams because of his glove.
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Freddy Galvis is the youngest player at the highest level in the organization. 19 years old for a full season of A+ ball shows me that the phillies are challenging him because it is the only way to make him better; the only player even at Lakewood younger then him is Anthony Gose. Galvis is a gold glove caliber shortstop already according to scouts, and by the phillies pushing his progress, Reading for the next year or two, Lehigh to follow, Galvis steps in to Rollins position at the ripe old age of 23. If Galvis is a .250 hitter by then, won’t that be the same number J-Roll is putting up right now? Since jimmy is already sliding down the hill, 3 years out I think .250 out of the 8 hole would be welcomed.
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Gut feeling: Freddy Galvis = Anderson Machado.
Machado is playing Independent League ball now with the Lancaster Barnstormers.
I hope I’m wrong.
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The phillies have been aggressive with their young “high” priced latin players like Carrasco and Garcia, so I don’t see why Galvis won’t make the jump to Reading. He doesn’t have an incredibly high K rate ~15% so hopefully with more time he can learn how to drive more pitches.
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Jimmy rollins is not a leadoff guy,but to say galvis can even tie his shoe is crazy, Jimmy is a little guy with power, and a allstar caliber glove. It would take a lot for Galvis to be near as good as jimmy he is fast, great glove, power, steals bases, about 280 career average, He is a five tool shortstop.
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Jimmy couldn’t hit worth a damn at 19 either. He was at Clearwater during that season too and posted the following:
.244 avg, .306 obp, .354 slg, .659 ops
Granted its better by a decent margin than Galvis but it shows that his bat might come around to the point of being bareable. He’d likely be a #8 hitter in the majors so the standard is a bit lower than Jimmy’s leadoff numbers.
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Fellow switch hitting, SS, countryman Omar Vizquel hit .213 with a .628 OPS overall at 19 in the Midwest League. Galvis is hitting .274 with a .658 OPS against righthanded pitching. He is hitting only .159 against lefties.
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If I were the Phillies, I’d tell Galvis to skip winter ball, drink a bunch of protein shakes and spend the entire winter working out and getting much, much stronger. He’s so thin that adding muscle shouldn’t impair his flexibility, mobility or speed.
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I think none of us really has any idea if Galvis will ever be able to hit enough to hold his own at the plate. The fact that he is, apparently, 150 pounds, is not a fact that weighs in favor of his potential development as a hitter.
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Freddy’s wieght has very little to do with his development as a hitter. Quickness to the ball and landing on the mark are skills which weight has little importance. 150 pound adult can produce quite a bit of strength just look at many triathelets. Squaring up the bat to the ball is the most difficult part of hitting. A quick short stroke allows for more read time on the pitch and the ability to attack a fastball and sit on a off-speed pitch. Good eyes allow for pitch recognition, what to attack and when. The skill to hit is a product of repetition and god given ability.
Freddy could easily be a gap hitter if the only ability he had was to square up balls regularly even if his body weighed 100 pounds. Much of the energy comes from the speed of the pitched ball. Take away any possible discomfort this kid might have experimenting with switch hitting and his skill development from his primary side could take off. His glove and approach play now.
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The fact that Galvis is experimenting with switch-hitting makes focusing on his stats suspect and also highlights the main problem with using minor league stats in general to judge particular prospects.
Part of the reason a guy is in the minors is because they need to work on particular aspects of their game and/or they need to develop certain skills. We do not know what instructions a particular player has from the organization that might be affecting his performance on the field.
If a guy is being asked to change his swing, learn to switch-hit, or adjust his pitching mechanics that player is going to struggle during the transition and his numbers will suffer.
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Don’t ever worry about Freddy Galvis. Jimmy Rollins will be the Phillies shortstop for another 7-10 years. The Freddy factor ain’t no factor at all.
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Looking at Galvis’ stats alone isn’t important.
But the reports on him, since he was signed, indicated that he was never going to hit for power, and that he’d have to hit for average to be a successful big leaguer. The stats confirm that he’s still not hitting for average. He’s switch hitting, learning to do something new, so he gets some slack. But his .658 OPS lefthanded still isn’t going to blow anyone away.
Hes still very young, so no one is giving up on him. But he’s going to have to hit. And as I’ve said a billion times, you do not compare a prospect to a Hall of Famer, Ozzie Smith in this case.
The game is shifting more and putting more value on defense, that helps Galvis. But its still tough to argue, with a straight face, that a guy with a .250/.300/.350 batting line, no matter how good a glove he has, is starting material for an upper echelon MLB team.
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I love Jimmy Rollins, just love him to death. But I don’t know how long he is going to play well. If you told me another 6 or 7 years, I’d believe it, but if you told me 2 years, I’d believe it too. His month-to-month and even year-to-year inconsistency makes it virtually impossible to get a read on him.
My view is that the organization needs to make a serious commitment to improve the level of its middle infield prospects NOW. We are so far behind that curve that it’s not funny.
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Jimmy Rollins has the same chance of being here in 7 years as I do of winning the powerball this evening. He is integral to the offense now, but he is losing his quickness, has butted heads on more then one occasion with uncle mumbles, has become complacent since his MVP season, and the chances of signing a mid 30’s player to a long-term deal are slim at best. What sense would it make to commit the kind of money he would command when his deal is up. Long term the phillies system needs a ss, 3b, and c at the major league level; he can be moved in his final year or walk and we collect picks. Galvis is one possible option, but long term rollins is not.
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PP…I totally agree with your statement “tough to argue, with a straight face, that a guy with a .250/.300/.350 batting line, no matter how good a glove he has, is starting material for an upper echelon MLB team.” Rollins best days are behind him, he continues to swing for the fences, does not understand situational baseball, will not lay down a bunt, yet continues to carry himself as if he needs no improvement.
with all do respect PP, rollins numbers this year are: .242 .290 .410…and he is going to continue to decline. Gillick 2 years ago said Galvis was the best defensive player in their system, majors on down, period.
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The funny thing about Galvis, is all of the other short stops in that IFA class have done nothing besides Carlos Triunfel and even he’s been injured all year.
Oscar Tejeda (Red Sox) is repeating low A and actually has worse stats then he had last year with a .637 OPS.
Esmeily Gonzalez (Nationals) turned out to be 23 years old this past year and got send to the DSL.
Jason Smit is in his first year above GCL, @ NYPL.
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Rollins is batting over .300 since his benching…perhaps that problem already solved itself.
I think its unfair to compare Freddy to any HOF level SS. His defense is supposedly amazing and hopefully his bat develops more than expected and he becomes at least a nice slap hitter who can survive in a 8 hole of a MLB lineup. He’s only 19 so there is plenty of time for him to figure it out.
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It’s a fair point to say that the switch-hitting experiment severely drags his numbers with the bat. If I were to make a case that Freddy can develop into an adequate hitter at the major league level, it would be this…
First, we’ll assume that Galvis will scrap switch-hitting, which doesn’t seem to be working. So his Clearwater numbers, hitting lefthanded, are:
.274/.318/.339 — 5.6% BB — 14.9% K
Second, at Age 19, I think we can all agree that he’d be much more age appropriate at Lakewood. We can use Minor League Splits’ equivalency calculator to translate the above line to Lakewood, and it would look like this:
.312/.361/.395 — 6.7% BB — 14.4% K
Not earth-shattering by any means, but if his glove really grades out at 70 or 75, then combining that with the above bat in a 19-year old in Low-A makes him a pretty good prospect. Now, obviously I’ve made a lot of leaps in logic and taken some liberties to get there, but I think the point holds up nonetheless: yes, Galvis’ bat has to get better for him to make it as a major league hitter, but it’s too early to lose hope that that will happen.
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If he were to scrap switch-hitting, there is no indication that he’d then be able to hit LHP. As there is no data on which to make a guess, we still have no idea what he’d be capable of.
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Agreed, which is why I said I took some liberties in the above comment. But if he’s a natural left-handed hitter, it’s hard to imagine that he could hit worse than .159/.156/.190 (his current right-handed averages) by standing in the other batter’s box.
The overall point stays the same: if he were focusing on hitting left-handed and were still in Lakewood, Freddy could very well be hitting in the .300 range right now. It’s something of a stretch, but I think it’s a reasonable enough point.
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Cosart flew through the first three innings today, then got roughed up in the fourth.
Too bad W’port is full of OFs because it would be nice to see Gump move up. He has almost exactly the same BA/OBP/SLG in the GCL as he did at UCSB so I would say it’s time to challenge him a bit. Plus it would give the high school guys more ABs. On the other hand, he and Singleton (and to some extent Santana) are the only guys hitting on the GCL team, so having him there might help the team have more success.
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I this was 1985 Galvis would have a future in the pro’s. He’d be right up there with guys like Raphael Belliard and Steve Jeltz. The problem is the position has changed so much since then. You just can’t throw a guy out there who hits .220 anymore. Maybe a catcher, but not at SS.
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Boston why can’t they jump him to lakewood?
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Reading is destroying Portland
18-1
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Steve Jeltz could not carry Freddy’s jockstrap. This kid will continue to improve–the broken bone was a fluke but he will be solid in a couple years. He is worth watching in the field already.
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I meant to post this in here but posted it in the Draft Recap by accident.
Flande has really turned it around.
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We now know that ARod was taking roids early in his career. The Yankees and Red Sox have also been linked to steroids use. Is it possible that most of these SS’ with crazy stats and defense were using PEDs? I think it is very plausible which makes me believe that a gold glove short stop will get to the league w/ below average hitting skills. He can’t be below Mendoza but he doesn’t need to hit 300 w/ power.
Hopefully Galvis can develop into a 275 hitter w/ speed and a gold glove. He doesn’t need to win the silver slugger but I’d be very excited to watch another perennial gold glove contending SS in a Phillies uniform.
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mikemike, I don’t think he warrants the jump. Interesting, I found a Q&A with him on a blog where he says this:
“I was under the impression that I was going to be playing short season in the NY/Penn league but at the last minute I got the news I’d be playing down here in instead because they had too many outfielders in Williamsport .”
http://highheelsonthefield.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/08/brian-gump-rises-to-the-offspeed-challenge.html
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I seen it once on here that Galvis’ .150 average against LHP would preclude him from making the majors. To test this Looked up a couple of MLB Switch Hitters. Randy Winn was at around . 150 against LHP, He makes $10 million a year. Gary Matthews Jr. was around .170 against LHP . He makes around $10 million a year. And these are OF’s not good defensive Short Stops. Galvis should continue Switch Hitting, and he underperforms against LHP’s they can use him less in that situation.
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Phenix, I think what happened is that Cal Ripken demonstrated that a bigger man could play shortstop. My theory is that with a stronger arm, a shortstop can play deeper and not need the athleticism of a Rafael Belliard to capably cover the position.
I wouldn’t rule out Galvis’ improving as a hitter. But even in the past managers have fallen in love with all-glove, no-hit shortstops and they generally do not win pennants with them. People love to compare glove men to Ozzie Smith, but Oz became a legitimately effective offensive player in his prime.
But Galvis is still young yet. He might make a leap with the bat and surprise us.
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