Nap time at the ‘Daycare’: Phillies need Otto Kemp and his peers to succeed where the current crop has failed
For the Phillies to get back to where they were in 2022, they'll need this next wave of prospects to give them more than they’ve gotten from the last one.
It doesn’t need to be Otto Kemp. Or Justin Crawford. Or Aidan Miller. Or Gabriel Rincones. Or Aroon Escobar.
But it needs to be one of them. Probably more than one.
For the Phillies to get back to where they were in 2022, they are going to need this next wave of prospects to give them more than they’ve gotten from the last one.
It doesn’t get much lower than getting swept by the Pirates in a get-right series. On Sunday, the ninth inning of a 2-1 loss provided a perfect executive summary. It began with Bryson Stott grounding out to first, and it ended with Alec Bohm grounding into a double play with the tying run on second and the go-ahead-run at first.
The previous inning, in the bottom of the eighth, Orion Kerkering allowed a go-ahead RBI single to Andrew McCutchen and then loaded the bases with a walk and hit-by-pitch.
As usual, the game logs tell the tale.
Stott: 4-for-36 in his last 10 games (Phillies 1-9).
Bohm: Three hits in his last 17 at-bats during the Phillies’ five-game losing streak.
Brandon Marsh: A .610 OPS in his last 40 games, a stretch in which the Phillies are 21-19.
Together, the Stott/Bohm/Marsh trio is hitting .193 (18-for-93) with nine walks and four extra-base hits in the Phillies’ last 10 games, nine of them losses.
It is nap time at the Daycare. It is the biggest reason to doubt that the Phillies can turn this thing around.
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I take no joy in saying that. Bohm, Stott, and Marsh have shown themselves to be capable big leaguers, which puts them in a better space than most of the organization’s top hitting prospects over the last 15-plus years. But capable isn’t enough. Not for a team in the Phillies’ position.
The story might be different if Bryce Harper wasn’t sidelined indefinitely with a wrist injury. And if José Alvarado wasn’t suspended. And if Jesús Luzardo hadn’t given up 20 runs in back-to-back starts.
A team with a $300 million payroll can survive with a lineup that falls off a cliff if it is perfect everywhere else. The Phillies have scored eight runs in their last five games, all losses. They are not surviving.
There are no answers other than to hope that the future comes suddenly and strongly. We saw this offseason how difficult it is to patch a lineup in free agency. Could they have outbid the Cubs and traded for Kyle Tucker? Perhaps. They decided not to mortgage their future. They need that investment to pay off.
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The most disappointing development over the last couple of seasons has been the lack of development at the major league level. Bohm, Stott, Marsh, Kerkering — all are virtually the same players they were when they broke into the bigs. They are not bad players. But none has leveled up.
It’s very hard to build a great lineup without at least one homegrown impact bat. We can quibble about the definitions of “impact” and “homegrown,” but I would qualify the Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong as both. The 23-year-old, acquired as a prospect in a lopsided swap for Javier Baez, has an .877 OPS and 17 home runs for the surging Cubs.
Recently, he has been joined by 2023 first-rounder Matt Shaw, who has a .711 OPS and seven steals since he was recalled from triple A. First baseman Michael Busch was acquired from the Dodgers. But he is young and cheap and swinging a bona fide middle-of-the-order bat.
The Cardinals are almost exclusively homegrown. Brendan Donovan, Masyn Winn, Lars Nootbaar, Iván Herrera.
Young and cheap and outperforming expectations is the X factor in postseason success. Mark Vientos with the Mets, Corbin Carroll and Ketel Marte with the Diamondbacks. These are the players who make a team’s economics work.
You can argue that the Mets and Dodgers qualify as exceptions this season. In New York, Vientos was bunk before he went on the injured list. Pete Alonso isn’t cheap anymore.
As for the Dodgers, you can take away Will Smith and Andy Pages, and they’d still have one of the highest-scoring offenses in the game. Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernández — all were acquired at steep prices on the trade or free-agent markets.
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A few points about the Dodgers, though:
Betts was a product of the minor league system in the sense that he was traded for a trio of high-value young players whom the Dodgers had developed. The Red Sox’s return included a then-24-year-old Alex Verdugo, who was coming off a season in which he hit 12 home runs with an .817 OPS in 377 plate appearances.
While the Dodgers may not currently have a homegrown hitter on the level of former stars like Corey Seager, Cody Bellinger, or Matt Kemp, they certainly still benefit from the cost savings they achieved during each of those players’ pre-free-agent service years.
You can make a strong argument that Smith should qualify as an impact bat, given his .814 OPS over the last four-plus seasons at a premium position (catcher).
Even if you don’t regard Smith and Pages as impact bats, imagine the Phillies lineup if you swapped in Smith’s .429 OBP and .910 OPS at catcher and Pages’ .821 OPS and 12 home runs in center field.
How do you fix the Phillies? You hope they are self-repairing. You bring Kemp up like they did. You don’t hesitate to do it with his peers. You don’t trade away the next Logan O’Hoppe at the trade deadline.
The current players are who they are. Right now, that isn’t enough.