2014 Season Preview

On Monday afternoon all of the answers to our questions about this Phillies team can finally start to formulate. Let’s be honest with ourselves, it doesn’t look good. There’s always hope and anticipation at the beginning of a season but there’s probably the least amount of both in a decade. This Phillies team has pinned so much of their hope on guys who are just plain old.

I know this angle has been looked at before by me, but it bears repeating. Let’s take a look around the diamond and give a quick breakdown of the projected starters for this outdated squad. I’ll list each player and the amount of worry about their performance this season in parentheses. 1 being no worry and 10 being Ryan Howard.

Catcher (3) – Carlos Ruiz

Chooch turned 35 in January and is coming off an up and down season that was more up as the season went along. He was suspended for 50 games at the beginning of last year for using adderall, but hey! This year Chooch has a legit prescription and maybe this will help him regain his All-Star caliber play from 2012. Pitchers seem to love him and he plays solid defense. Chooch is a plus catcher in this league and should bring plenty to the plate from that position.

1^st Base (10) – Ryan Howard

The Big Piece turned 34 last November. Gone are the days of Howard being a feared slugger who can impact the way pitchers pitch to the rest of the lineup, let alone himself. He hasn’t played close to a full season since 2011 and that was his worst statistical season to that point. He’s going to make $25 million this season and all recent evidence suggests platooning him against left handed pitching would benefit all involved. Newsflash! You don’t want to platoon guys you’re paying $25 million a year! The Phillies need Howard more than they’ve ever needed him but there are shadows of doubt everywhere in his game. The glimmer of hope fans can cling to is that he is probably the healthiest he has been since the beginning of the 2011 season. Let’s pray to Richie Ashburn and Harry Kalas that that can translate into more than 30 home runs for the once great Piece.

2^nd Base (6) – Chase Utley

The Man, as Kalas liked to call him, turned 35 in December.  Lackluster spring aside, I can’t be too worried about Chase Utley if he’s healthy. Of course, that’s been a massive if the last few years, save last year. Utley has played a normal amount of spring games and while he is hitting under .200 with one extra base hit, which I heard was a flare down the left field line, he has been healthy by all accounts. That’s all that really matters when it comes to Utley as far as I’m concerned. 2^nd base is not usually a spot that generates a lot of offense and if Chase can manage to play 140+ games I can’t see him having a season that isn’t better than 75% of NL 2^nd baseman. Is that a double negative? Who cares..

3^rd Base (7) – Cody Asche

I know, I know, you wanted to see an infield made up of all guys born in the 70s. Amazingly for the Phillies, they won’t even have one guy start opening day in the infield that was born in the 80s as Asche was born in June of 1990.  Asche is by far the least proven starter on this team but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He played in 50 games last year and he’s not exactly the next Scott Rolen but he also looked like he belonged. He gets a 7 on the worry-meter simply because he’s never played a full major league season. Hopefully he can inject some positive youthful exuberance to this team of grizzled veterans.

Short Stop (8) – Jimmy Rollins

JRoll turned 35 this past November and he’s coming off back-to-back seasons of hitting .250. In 2012 he at least showed some pop with 23 home runs. 2013 was just a dismal season at the plate for Rollins. As far as seasons when he played every day, he set career lows in hits (151), home runs (6), RBI (39), and stolen bases (22). There’s also the attitude he has (I’m not calling it a problem) and how it seems to clash with Ryne Sandberg. Jimmy plays baseball his way and it’s worked way more than it hasn’t over the past 1952 games. Since the media driven dust up between player and manager a few weeks back, Jimmy has shown some good signs at the plate. Hopefully that can transfer into the season. Also, it’s naïve but I’m going to continue to hope that he won’t pop up the 2^nd pitch of an at bat more than once a week.

Left Field (3) – Dom Brown

Finally, a player born in the 80s. Dom Brown is 26 years old and should be entering the prime of his career. Dom had a breakout season last year and had just about the most impressive two week stretch of any player in Phillies history, hitting something like 10 home runs in 12 games. He led the Phils in homers (27) and RBI (83) and was a bit nicked up toward the end of the season or those numbers would have been even stronger. He still needs to work on his defense a bit, but it’s light years better than when he broke into the league and refused to catch a fly ball without extending his arm as far away from his body as he could. Dom is a major league ball player and could possibly be the best hitter on the team this year.

Center Field (3) – Ben Revere

Benny and his jets will turn 26 in a month and he should be coming into this season with the most confidence of any position player. Revere’s broken foot derailed the Phillies season at the All-Star Break. He was humming along at over a .400 clip from the beginning of May until the injury in early July. The Phils were also playing their best ball and scoring runs at their best clip since the 2010 season for the month before the break. Revere could prove to be key as the leadoff man who can get on base and cause distractions for pitchers when trying to get Utley and Howard out. That’s the plan anyway. His drawbacks are having -1 rank of power and a 1 rank for arm on a 1-10 scale. If he gets on base and steals a ton of bags while running down everything he can in the outfield he can mollify those negatives.

Right Field (4) – Marlon Byrd

The 36 year old former Phillie (he hasn’t played for the Phils in 10 years!) is coming off his best statistical season and has had a good stroke this spring. He should be a solid upgrade over the Delmon Young / not Nate Scheirholtz fiasco last year. His position in the batting order, 5th, right behind Ryan Howard, has been a void since Jayson Werth left town. The Big Piece could use all the production Byrd can give the Phils to make sure he can get a fastball to hit once and a while. Howard is a lot like Pedro Cerrano when it comes to breaking balls and fastballs. Byrd is a solid defender and other than that you just have to hope he can re-create whatever magic he had last year with the Pirates. I can say I’m officially on board with this Byrd signing as the season is about to start. I had my doubts at the face value of it when the news first broke, but at 2 years $16 million it’s a low-medium risk with possibly high reward. (Giving Ruben the benefit  of the doubt alert.)

It’s a shaky group to put it bluntly. And we haven’t even touched on the bullpen. Who’s ready to talk pitching? In the interest of everyone, I’m not going to go quite as in depth on this group but I’ll make a few shallow, fairly  obvious observations.

Starting Pitchers (4) – Cliff Lee, AJ Burnett, Kyle Kendrick, Roberto Hernandez, (Cole Hamels)

If Hamels wasn’t in parentheses for having somewhat mysterious shoulder issues the worry meter would be at a 2 for this group collectively. It’s by far the strongest area of the team, and was certainly bolstered by the 1 year contract bestowed upon AJ Burnett. All reports have Cliff Lee as dazzling during the spring and the Phils will certainly need that to be the case if Hamels is unlikely to make a start in April. Sanberg has decided to go with a 4-man rotation until mid-April due to more off days than usual in the early going.

The key for Hernandez and Kendrick will be keeping the ball down in the zone. They are ground ball pitchers that can get hurt when they leave the ball up. We don’t need Kendrick getting whiplash watching balls rocket out of hitter friendly Citizen’s Bank Park. Other than that, you have to expect this group of guys to be better this year considering this list I’m about to share with you.

2013 Philadelphia Phillies starting pitchers:

Cole Hamels - 33 starts

Cliff Lee - 31 starts

Kyle Kendrick - 30 starts

Jonathan Pettibone - 18 starts

John Lannan - 14 starts

Roy Halladay - 13 starts (6.82 ERA)

Tyler Cloyd - 11 starts

Ethan Martin - 8 starts

Zach Miner - 3 starts

Raul Valdes - 1 start

Yikes, got pretty ugly quickly there. So anyway, they should have a pretty decent shot at having better starting pitching this year if Hamels only misses April. And according to Cole he feels “great”.

Bullpen (9) – Jonathan Papelbon, Mike Adams, Antonio Bastardo and a whole lotta eeeessshhh

How confident do you feel about the 3 names I actually listed? Well, the rest of them, Justin De Fratus, Jake Diekman, Phillippe Aumont, I could go on but I won’t, aren’t much to look at either. The Phils bullpen was the worst in the Majors last year and while it wasn’t the only reason they stunk up the joint, it was a serious contributing factor. Amaro brought in Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez from Cuba who proved he wasn’t going to make the team before getting hurt. There isn’t much else he did to improve upon a disastrous group from last year so I’d say the bullpen is right up there with the Utley/Howard/Rollins triumvirate as far as worry. Hopefully Jonathan “my velocity is down because I can’t get pumped up to play for this team” Paplebon won’t be a huge jackass distraction, but who are we kidding?

So Vegas has set the over / under on Phillies wins this season at a very meek 76. As sad as it is to say, I think the the best this Phillies team could possibly muster is a break even of 81 wins. That's assuming more goes right than wrong. I'd put them making the playoffs at about 12 to 1 considering the Braves and Nats will most assuredly be better than them. I'd love to be proven wrong on these predictions but after being a complete homer with my predictions last year I'm trying to be more of a realist this season.

Well folks, that’s your 2014 Phillies season preview. It’s not quite bleak, but it’s close.

Remember up with hope, down with dope!