Phillies

The Phillies have two players who I think could be very good (or very valuable in trade) that are being somewhat wasted in their current roles.

1. Ryan Howard - Put me in the camp of "undecided" on Howard...here's his minor league numbers from last year:

AA Reading (Park Factor: 1029, League Factor: 1029): 433 PAs, .297/.386/.647
AAA Scranton-Wilkes Barre (Park Factor: 1035, League Factor: 986) 127 PAs, .270/.362/.604
Majors: 42 PAs, .282/.333/.564

These are pretty outstanding, but 29.7% of Ryan Howard's plate appearances in '04 were strikeouts. That's an awfully high number of K's; I don't like that in the minor leagues. What will good major league pitchers do to him??

To put it into perspective, the highest K percentage in the bigs last year (among qualifiers) was Adam Dunn, whose was 28.6%. My fear remains about this guy....

To say that Howard doesn't have potential isn't fair; his power is unquestionable. But they're letting him sit in AAA and really wasting him there. I don't really know where they could stand to improve (centerfield? third base, perhaps?), but I'm sure they could, and Howard is a valuable way to do that.

Bottom line: I have my doubts, but that doesn't mean that I'm right, and that certainly doesn't mean that baseball people agree with me. I'm sure that someone rates Ryan Howard as a major prospect and power hitter....why not cash out now?

2. Ryan Madson - It seems that 1 game can really dictate what happens in a career:

2/3 IP, 6 H, 6 R, 3 HR, 1 BB, 0 K

That's Madson's 1 career start. He's had 1 start and he pitched, well, horrendously. He was pretty well decimated by the White Sox at US Cellular.

But out of the bullpen, he was outstanding.

51 G, 76.3 IP, 17 R, 14 ER, 3 HR, 18 BB, 55 K, 1.65 ERA

One of the most overlooked players last year, he's graduated to being a middle reliever in their pen. I look at these numbers and some pretty solid minor league numbers and I say this:

1. This guy should be starting.
2. This guy could be closing.

I say he should be starting because I'm willing to give a guy a second chance...

(at this point, a lot of my entry was erased b/c instead of typing it up in notepad, I opted to just put it in Blogger. Shows how much I know).

Quickly, to wrap this up:

- His peripherals aren't as exceptional as his stats, but they're pretty good....
- He had very solid control numbers in his last two minor league seasons: in AA in 2002, he walked 2.8 per 9, and in AAA in 2003, he walked 2.4 per 9. This continued in the bigs in 2004.
- He's a groundball pitcher: 1.94 G/F ratio last year.
- He appears to be batter-neutral; lefties don't do much better than righties (subject to sample size).
- Tim Worrell is 37.
- He has limited homers very, very well throughout his minor league career: 40 homers in 733.3 minor league innings and only a few last year.
- He's only 24 years old.
- And, finally, he's started ONE game and was then relegated to the bullpen.

Madson's wasting away in middle relief, IMO.

I wish I knew a way to wrap this all up....but these two players DON'T have real spots on the team....Howard should be traded. Madson? I don't know....

Either way, I like him a lot this year and if he were tradeable, he'd be at the top of my list of low-cost guys I'd like on my team.

Series wrap coming tomorrow....