Box Score Recap 5-16-2012

Box Score Recap

Miguel Abreu is old.  Sure, he’s only got 70 ABs this year.  But his OPS is 1.054.  Wild.

62 thoughts on “Box Score Recap 5-16-2012”

    1. Let’s do a little research here. May vs Colvin in their last 4 starts. May is a league higher but Colvin in a year younger.

      May 23 1/3 20H 10R 9ER 22K 12 BBs 1-2 record
      Colvin 20 1/3 20H 16R 14ER 18K 20 BBs 2-1 record

      Walks are definitely killing Colvin but May is also starting to walk people at an alarming pace. When May walks someone, he has the ability to get himself off the hook. Colvin has the stuff but it looks like he’s got no control over it. When Colvin has a good outing, and he has had good outings, he doesn’t follow it up with another.

      I’m not writing Colvin off but he has to take command and get control. May also has to get his control back but he definitely takes command.

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      1. One big difference i see is that colvin is repeating A while may is attacking the arguably toughest level as his first go round. just my 2 cents

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  2. Keep waiting to see Dom Brown in the boxscore……….I just have a bad feeling the organization screwed this kid up and we will never see his true potential.

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      1. during the LV game yesterday they said Dom can pinch hit but wouldn’t be used in the field for a little.

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    3. I’m sympathize with your view, Eagleeye5. If we go back to 2010, Brown was doing awesome in Triple A. Then the Phils called him up when Vic went down. Brown did well, but when Vic came back, he struggled as a pinch-hitter when he probably should have been getting more at-bats in triple A. Then the fans started to get on him, and I think it really bothered him. He did very badly in winter ball, then poorly in spring training (he struck out a ton, so I think his problems were mainly mental). He did alright in the big leagues in 2011, but he got sent down and his confidence was sapped. The move to bring in Pence was questionable, since the team was winning and scoring runs with Brown in the lineup and he was showing signs of getting better. This year, he’s shown some signs of life–I think his average right now is deceptive, since he was red-hot before a couple bad games in a row dropped it way down because it’s still early in the year–but the power he clearly has has not been there. Let’s hope he gets healthy soon and starts relaxing and swinging the bat the way he can. But, it might take a change of scenery to get him going again.

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          1. Truth is, if Brown is really that mentally fragile, he’ll never make it in the big leagues, period. Everyone goes through stretches where they struggle (see Pujols, Albert).

            Successful ML players are able to battle through.

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      2. Good summary, but you left out the bit about them trying to rework his swing. If he’s been trying to learn a new swing the last 1.5 years that could account for his struggles as a purely physical phenomenon.

        Plus the injuries. His numbers last year weren’t all that bad, especially if you factor in a power-sapping wrist injury, and he’s had other issues with his thumb and wrist since the first injury also.

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    1. Yeah, my guess is that Pointer is just in a slump where things weren’t going his way. When I saw him on Saturday, his only official plate appearance (2bb + 1hbp) he hit the ball to the opposite field and the outfielder made a leaping catch at the wall – a pretty good piece of hitting

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      1. I saw him Sunday, and he looked he’d never played the game before. Four ABs, three ugly strikeouts, zero hard hit balls. I, too, think he’s just been in a slump, but I don’t think we can blame it entirely on bad luck. It happens to the best of ’em. Here’s hoping he’s snapping out of it.

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  4. Nice to see that Lwood lineup click again and put up 7 runs with several guys getting a multi hit game. Gillies was rolling along and then all of a sudden, he slumps and can’t buy a hit. May has another fair outing and Colvin has another poor one. James on the other hand had another multi hit game, maybe he really did figure something out. I saw him play last week and he looked lost but he’s looked good on the last 4 games. JC keeps doing it! I would still love to know from someone who has seen Cloyd pitch what his secret is. But Elarton might be the bigger story. He has possibly resurrected his career. He has been very consistent. No spots on the 40 man roster will hurt his chances but if he keeps doing what he’s doing, he’ll have to be considered at some point. He probably has an opt out date as well and I don’t think the Phils want to lose him with as good as he’s doing.

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  6. IMO Elarton is another jekyll and hyde pitcher like Kyle Kendrick. At any rate, there’s no room for him in the Phils rotation.

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  7. If it’s for one spot start, and he’s on schedule to throw it, you’d have to think they’d use Hyatt because of the roster situation. Aside from that, I would make room for Elarton. Now if only I could get Ruben to take my calls.

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  8. Six hits and four walks for May in 5 innings… not so hot. I guess the best you can say is he limited the damage. This is turning out to be a bit of a meh year down on the farm, at least in the early going. With the exception of May, who is performing pretty much to our expectation level as our #1 prospect, has there been any player below AAA who has really showed signs of breaking out? They’ve all been pretty up and down–I think the way Gillies and James have alternated slumps and hot streaks is pretty emblematic. Who should we be getting excited about?

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    1. I am fairly excited about Austin Wright. He’s had 2 bad outings in a row, and walked 6 guys last time, but prior to that he was looking good. Waiting on the turn-around, hopefully it comes, and soon.

      I’m kind of surprised by Asche, though he was a high round pick with a major college pedigree. Also, he’s not hitting for a lot of power, though he’s in the top 15 in his league in SLG, his ISO is just .106. He’s not yet 22, and he’s listed 6’1″, only 180lbs, so he may have more in him with more strength training.

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      1. It’s also the league. You said it yourself; his ISO puts him in the Top 15. The FSL is one of the more extreme pitchers’ leagues in the minors. When he gets bumped up to Reading, his power numbers should improve if he keeps hitting.

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        1. No…he said his SLG was top 15 in the league, which is being driven by his high batting average. The ISO of .106 is nowhere near the top 15.

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      2. I should have used a semicolon or something in my sentence about power. A little confusing.

        Nonetheless, if Asche’s ISO were to carry forward to MLB exactly as-is, (which of course isn’t reasonable to project), he’d sit between #14 and #15 out of 18 qualified 3B, with their average ISO being around .163.

        FYI, Polanco sits at .078. Old friend Carlos Rivero is .090 in AAA this year. Hector Luna was at .122 in AAA before his call-up. He’s at 3.000 in the bigs right now. He should probably just retire.

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      3. I guess on Asche, I am waiting to see how he performs at higher levels against more experienced pitching. He is a college guy, so it’s hard to get super-excited about him yet, especially when he’s not slugging. I too got excited about the K numbers Wright was putting up. But I guess it’s telling that our two big surprises of the year were both college guys picked last year. We’re not seeing a whole lot of dramatic progression from the guys who have come up through the system. (Although I guess I should put a caveat in there for Galvis, who is producing an a level few of us would have predicted this time last year.)

        One guy I think is showing some interesting signs of maturation is Altherr. Granted, this is his second shot at Lakewood, but he’s shown flashes of being that player we got excited about in 2010.

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    3. I second the vote on Herdandez. He’s had a very nice year to date and appears to be legit.

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  9. For me its still Franco, he is still young and every time you check out a box score it seems he’s doing good things offensively. Having said that its weird that his avg is just .236.

    But Asche, Dugan, Martinez, Carlos Alonso, Pointer….

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  10. If a pitcher has (this is all hypothetical) 6 groundouts, 1 flyout, and 3 strikeouts, and pitches 7 innings, where do the rest of the outs come from? Are they all line-outs?

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    1. I think a lineout is considered an AO (airout), but I’m not sure – I believe it’s done that way to keep the GO/AO ration easier to manage. If that is the case, I’m assuming that it’s either a groundout, airout, strikeout or caught stealing/picked off. There are other ways to make an out that are statiscally insignificant – runner being hit by a batted ball, interference, batting out of turn, etc

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    2. I believe that anything hit in the air and caught in the air is a flyout. The additional outs could be caught stealing, pickoffs, double and triple plays and possibly runner interference. Your hypothetical left a lot open space and made me think about it.

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      1. Ok, I’ll try to be more specific. Jeremy Horst pitched 3 innings last night (AAA listed above). He struck out 2 batters and had a 1-1 GO-FO (all listed). How did he get those other 5 outs? I doubt that there were that many pickoffs etc. He couldn’t have had more than 1 GIDP b/c he only had the 1 ground out.

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          1. That’s right, it was a bunt pop up triple play which acccounted for 1 AO. He had 2 K’s 4 AO and 1 GO. Not sure where you’re gettin 1-1 GO-FO. milb.com stats list his GO/AO as 0.25 for last night.

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            1. The box scores up above have something missing; May seems to have 6 outs unaccounted for and Colvin 5. There aren’t that many GIDPs.

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        2. If you go to the MILB site for that game, you can look at the gamecast to see the play-by-play. Horst’s outs were:

          7th – K, FO – CF, Popup – 1b
          8th – popup bunt – triple play
          9th – K, Line-out, GO to SS.

          It would appear that the GO/FO ratio reported in the boxscores does not include pop-ups and line drives..

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  11. I saw the video of Elarton pitching last night. To me, he’s clearly the best RIGHT NOW of the guys who are starting at Lehigh Valley (long term, Hyatt has more upside, but he still struggles with command). His stuff is actually pretty good and he looks like a man on a mission to make up for all that time he lost screwing around when he was younger. I don’t see any reason why he could not be a very effective 5th starter right now in the majors. If I’m the Red Sox or the Yankees, I seriously consider making a trade for him. Why do the Phillies always have the good veteran pitchers in the minors that nobody knows about but never the hitters? The answer, I think, comes down to scouting. The team clearly knows what it is doing when it is looking for pitchers, both young and old, expensive and inexpensive. As for hitters, well, not so much.

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    1. If Elarton was called up, he’d be the 2nd oldest pitcher on the Phils staff. Only Contreras is older and that would be by 5 years. We could pick up Moyer and open a Nursing Home. That was just a joke. If Elarton has an opt-out clause, the Phils will lose him to someone looking for a cheap starter option. If he doesn’t have an opt-out clause, then I would expect to see a Rich Thompson type deal with a team that needs a starter for the rest of the year.

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    2. Or it could be from a lack of talented young pitchers at the AAA level that forces them to take fliers on journeyman veterans.

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    3. Scott Elarton strikes me as a pitcher who is as good or bad as his defense allows. Will throw strikes, not allow home runs, not make mistakes. Sometimes he’ll get hit around. Much like Kendrick, oddly. I don’t see him as someone I’d push into a spot. More of a “break glass in case of emergency” type of pitcher. You can’t count on him because his injury track record is soooo long.

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  12. what are people’s thoughts on edgar duran? 21 y.o. in Clearwater with a .718 OPS at SS, somewhat intriguing to me

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    1. Edgar seems to fly a little under the radar. When Jonathan Villar was traded, people said that we still had Duran and we had some really young guys in the VSL and DSL. I’d say that the Phils aren’t completely sold on Duran, and for that matter Galvis, because they drafted Tyler Greene, Mitch Walding and Roman Quinn. These guys might have been the best guys that were available but the Phils were hedging their bets that they’d get a darn good SS in there somewhere.

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      1. I don’t think it is really a sign that the Phil;s aren’t sold so much as you can always move a player off of SS but you can’t move a player to SS. I totally agree with the last statement, you find a first division starter in there it is totally worth it (and worse case you get a 2B or some utility players)

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    2. I’m keeping an eye on him. He seems to be improving at the plate, so if his defense is good at SS we may have a real prospect in him.

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  13. Duran’s homer yesterday was absolutely cranked – you wouldn’t know from watching it that it was his first of the season.

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  14. Cesar Hernandez is becoming my favorite non-pitching prospect thanks to his consistency. He’s been easily the least frustrating position player prospect we’ve got this year.

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  15. Somewhat off-topic, but what the hell:

    If anyone is yearning for vintage James-on-the-org’s-future talk, check out his comments in the BP thread today on “Fixing the Phillies.” Excellent as always.

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      2. It’s the BP cover story right now. Looks like you need a subscription to see the comments.

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    2. In the blog retort, James hit the nail on the head once again, and I sense, the BP writer, Brad A., knows he came up short in the debate,

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      1. Is he the guy that was arguing he’d rather have Anibal Sanchez than Cliff Lee? I get that Lee’s paid a lot, and Sanchez may be underrated, but come on.

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  16. I was looking back at the scouting reports for Asche when he was drafted and they mentioned that it would be questionable whether he could stick at 3rd base long term. Are there any reports on how his defense has been this year? I guess you keep him there as long as possible, but do you keep him in the infield if a move is made or possibly move him to left if his power is able to develop?

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  17. Well it looks like another great game pitched at Lehigh Valley. Bush this time with the win. I wish Schwimer pitched as well in the majors as he does at AAA. He has been lights out. Jesse Biddle has been pitching really well in his last few starts. I remember how we were talking about Asche not geting XBH and rbi and he 6 XBH and 9 rbi in the last 10.

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