Outfielder Corey Dickerson moving across the state
In a deal first reported by ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan, the Philadelphia Phillies have acquired outfielder Corey Dickerson in a trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates. In exchange, the Phillies will be sending international slot money to Pittsburgh.
Dickerson is a 30-year-old left-handed hitter (fields right-handed) who was the eighth round choice of the Colorado Rockies in the 2010 MLB Draft out of Meridian Community College in his native Mississippi.
He debuted with the Rockies in the 2013 season, becoming their starting left fielder the following season. In January 2016, Dickerson was dealt to the Tampa Bay Rays along with a prospect for pitcher German Marquez and Jake McGee.
With the Rays, Dickerson became the starting left fielder and a 2017 American League All-Star, blasting 51 home runs over the 2016-17 campaigns.
In February 2018, Dickerson was dealt to the Pirates for Daniel Hudson and a prospect. Last season in Pittsburgh, Dickerson won the National League Gold Glove Award for left fielders.
#Phillies have acquired outfielder Corey Dickerson from the Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for international signing bonus money and a player to be named later.
This year, Dickerson injured his should in the first week and ending up spending more than two months on the Injured List. He returned and had put together a .317/.376/.556 slash line with four home runs, 18 doubles, 25 RBIs, and 20 runs scored over 141 plate appearances.
Phillies will spend a steaming hot July weekend at PNC Park
The Philadelphia Phillies (50-47) will be spending the next three days at one of the most beautiful ballparks in the game when they visit the Pittsburgh Pirates (45-50) for a weekend series.
The Pirates are struggling, losers in five of their last six and seven of their last 10 games. Though just 6.5 games out in the NL Central Division standings, the Bucs have not been able to rise above fourth place in their division since the start of June. They have not won more than three straight since mid-April.
For their part, the Phillies enter the series coming off a 2-2 split with the best team in baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers, but are still struggling mightily themselves to put back together what once appeared to be a winning season.
The Phillies went 3-4 on their just completed home stand in which they faced two tough teams in the Dodgers and division-rival Washington Nationals. They are just 7-9 going back over the last three weeks, since ending a four-game winning streak. While nine games over the .500 mark at home, they have fashioned only a 20-26 record on the road
Head-to-head, the Phillies won six of the seven games between the two clubs a year ago. However, that was the first time since their record-setting 2011 campaign that they had a winning seasonal mark against the Pirates.
Pittsburgh is 17th in MLB in runs per game (4.74), just behind the Phillies (4.84) who rank 15th. The Pirates are 13th among the 15 teams in the National League in home runs, 10th in stolen bases, and 9th in OPS. The Pittsburgh pitching staff is collectively ranked at 13th in the NL in both batting average and OPS against, ninth in strikeouts.
With the hot summer weather fully entrenched here in the eastern United States, and with two struggling pitching staffs, this could end up a high-scoring series. That is especially so if the Phillies do not get improved starting pitching, and if they can get into the Pirates bullpen by the middle innings.
The 2013 NL MVP brings veteran talent to the Phillies
For the first time in three years the Philadelphia Phillies have a former big-league Most Valuable Player on their roster as Grapefruit League games get underway down in Clearwater, Florida.
It was three years ago that Ryan Howard, who had been the National League MVP a decade earlier, took part in his final spring training with the Phillies.
On December 12, the Phillies signed 33-year-old 10-year big-league veteran Andrew McCutchen to a three-year contract as a free agent. McCutchen was the 2013 NL Most Valuable Player while playing his ball across the state with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The first-round choice of the Bucs at 11th overall in the 2005 MLB Amateur Draft out of high school in his native Fort Meade, Florida, McCutchen’s power-speed combination helped him grow into one of baseball’s top prospects over the next four years.
In June of 2009, “Cutch” made his debut in Major League Baseball. He would bang 47 extra-base hits and steal 22 bases in just 108 games that year to finish fourth in the NL Rookie of the Year voting.
During the 2010 season he rapped out 56 extra-base hits, scored 94 runs and stole 33 bases. Then in 2011, McCutchen became a National League All-Star for the first time.
The 2012 Pirates suffered through the 20th consecutive losing season. But things were starting to look up as the club won 79 games for the first time in 15 years. McCutchen was leading the way. He led the league with 194 hits and banged a career-high 31 home runs with 96 RBI, 107 runs scored, and 20 stolen bases.
For his outstanding season, McCutchen finished third in the NL MVP voting. He also won a Gold Glove Award for his play in center field and took home the first of what would be four consecutive Silver Slugger honors.
It was his performance during the 2013 season that would earn McCutchen his Most Valuable Player honors. He slashed .317/.404/.508 with 64 extra-base hits, 97 runs scored and 27 stolen bases. He also led the Pirates to a 94-win season and an NL playoff berth.
That was the first of three consecutive postseason appearances for the Pirates. McCutchen had two hits and two walks as the Bucs swamped the Cincinnati Reds by a 6-2 score in the 2013 NL Wildcard Game. Pittsburgh then took a 2-1 lead in the NLDS before the Saint Louis Cardinals rallied past them to take the series in five games.
The Phillies signed Sean Rodriguez and invited him to spring training
The Philadelphia Phillies announced the signing of another free agent on Friday morning. Unfortunately, he once again is not the name that fans are hoping to hear.
Sean Rodriguez is a 33-year-old (turns 34 in late April) multi-positional player with 11 years of big-league experience. The Miami, Florida native was originally drafted by the Anaheim (now Los Angeles) Angels in the third round of the 2003 MLB Amateur Draft out of a Miami high school.
Rodriguez rose through the Angels minor league system before finally making his Major League Baseball debut during the 2008 campaign. After appearing in 71 games for the Angels over the 2008-09 seasons he was dealt to the Tampa Bay Rays in December 2009 as the player-to-be-named-later in a trade in August of that year in which the Angels had landed pitcher Scott Kazmir.
Rodriguez would play five seasons with Tampa Bay, becoming a versatile piece for manager Joe Maddon, who used Rodriguez at every position other than pitcher or catcher during that time. He also appeared in a dozen postseason games with the Rays between 2010-13, with seven of those coming as a starter.
In December 2014, Tampa Bay shipped Rodriguez to the Pittsburgh Pirates where he would help the Bucs reach their third consecutive NL Wildcard Game. After two years in the Steel City, Rodriguez signed with the Atlanta Braves as a free agent. The Braves dealt him back to the Pirates in August 2017, and Rodriguez again played last season in Pittsburgh.
Over his 11-year career, Rodriguez has slashed .226/.300/.380 with 77 home runs and 119 doubles over 2,761 plate appearances. His best season came in 2016 with Pittsburgh when he produced career highs of 18 homers and 56 RBI, slashing .270/.349/.510 over 140 games.
Florimon played parts of the last two seasons with the Phillies
The Philadelphia Phillies announced that infielder Pedro Florimon has been outrighted from the 40-man roster. He cleared waivers and has been officially placed for now with the Triple-A Lehigh Valley IronPigs.
Florimon has a little more than two years official MLB service time accrued. However, he has also been waived three prior times in his career. Unless some agreement is struck with the team, the 31-year-old will become a free agent.
A native of the Dominican Republic, Florimon originally signed with the Baltimore Orioles organization in 2004 as a teenager. He got his first big-league cup of coffee with the Orioles in September 2011 but was then placed on waivers and claimed by the Minnesota Twins.
With Minnesota, Florimon appeared in 43 games in the 2012 season. Then in 2013 he became a regular for the lone time in his MLB career, appearing in 133 games as the Twins starting shortstop. He slashed just .221/.281/.330 with 15 stolen bases across 446 plate appearances that season.
Over the next three years, Florimon played as a backup infielder with both Minnesota and the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Phillies then signed him as a free agent in December 2016, and then again last November.
In parts of two seasons with the Phillies, Florimon slashed .274/.320/.444 with two homers and 11 RBI. He also stole one base and scored 19 runs across 125 plate appearances over 65 games.
Florimon appeared in 21 games at shortstop this past season with the Phillies. He also played in four games at second base, one at third base, one in center field, and four games in right field.
On two occasions this year, Gabe Kapler used Florimon on the mound. During a 15-2 rout at the hands of the Braves in Atlanta on March 31, Florimon pitched the bottom of the 8th inning, surrendering a two-run homer to Lane Adams.
During a 12-4 defeat to the Cardinals in Saint Louis on May 18, Florimon retired the side in order in the bottom of the 8th inning. He then stepped up to the plate in the top of the 9th and drilled a home run.
The Phillies now have just 35 players on their official 40-man roster. Three or four of the openings can be expected to be filled by some combination of prospects Adonis Medina, Tom Eshelman, Arquimedes Gamboa, and Daniel Brito, all of whom would need to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft in December.
That would leave one opening for a new player, either added via free agency or acquired via trade. Of course, the Phillies can always make more room by releasing even more players should the need arise.
The most likely players to go could include pitchers Drew Anderson and Yacksel Rios and infielder Mitch Walding. If they are unsuccessful in finding a trade partner, you may see veteran infielder Cesar Hernandez non-tendered at some point down the road this winter.
With the release of Florimon, the Phillies have made just the first of what promise to be a number of roster moves this off-season. While this one was relatively minor, we should expect at least a couple more significant moves coming down the pike.
Bonifay spent two seasons on the Texas Rangers coaching staff in 2016-17
Sources have reportedly told Matt Gelb of The Athletic that the Philadelphia Phillies will name Josh Bonifay as their new farm director.
The likelihood is that a formal announcement will not come until after the World Series has ended. That could come by Sunday but will definitely happen by sometime next week at the latest.
The 40-year-old Bonifay was born in Macon, Georgia, but attended high school and college in North Carolina. He was drafted twice by the Pittsburgh Pirates, first out of high school in 1996 and finally out of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in the 24th round of the 1999 MLB Draft.
Bonifay played for seven seasons in the Bucs minor league system, rising as far as the Double-A level. He then moved on to the Houston Astros organization for one final season as a player with Double-A Corpus Cristi in the 2006 season.
After his retirement as an active player, Bonifay returned to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington where he worked towards and received his business degree.
In 2011, Bonifay re-joined the Astros organization, this time as their minor league rookie-level hitting coach in Greenville. He then filled the same role the following season with Houston’s High-A level affiliates at Lexington.
For the 2013 campaign, Bonifay went back to Greenville in order to gain his first managerial challenge. Not only did he gain valuable experience, he took the club to the championship round and was named as the Appalachian League Manager of the Year.
After two years at the helm in Greenville, Bonifay was moved to Low-A Quad Cities to become the manager there. Bonifay then left the Houston organization to take his first big-league opportunity, serving on the Texas Rangers staff during the 2016-17 seasons.
This past season, Bonifay returned to Houston as the Astros minor league field coordinator. Per Gelb, Bonifay comes with a tremendous baseball pedigree:
“Bonifay, 40, comes from a baseball family. His father, Cam Bonifay, was Pittsburgh’s general manager for almost a decade and later the director of player development in Tampa Bay. His grandfather, brother, nephew and cousin were players, scouts or executives in baseball.”
Phanatic and home fans won't see the team for two weeks
We're now past the Fourth of July, and the Philadelphia Phillies currently are holding a National League Wildcard playoff spot.
Thanks to victories in six of their last seven games, the Fightin' Phils trail the first-place Atlanta Braves by just one game in the loss column in the NL East Division standings.
The Phillies hold a two-game edge in that loss column on the Los Angeles Dodgers for the second NL Wildcard.
Following an off-day in the schedule on Thursday, the Phils head out on an 11-game road trip during which they will visit four different ball parks, all in the Eastern time zone.
The Phillies begin with a three-game set this weekend at beautiful PNC Park against the host Pittsburgh Pirates. Losers in 11 of their last 16 games, the Bucs (40-46) are currently struggling along at 11 games off the pace and in fourth place in the NL Central Division.
Next week opens with a Monday true doubleheader at Citi Field. This begins a four-game series with the floundering host New York Mets. The NL East-rival Mets (34-49) have dropped 11 of their last 14, and struggling to stay out of the division basement.
After their trip to the Big Apple, it's a weird single-game visit to Camden Yards for a game with the host Baltimore Orioles. The Phillies just swept the O's (24-61) in a two-gamer at Citizens Bank Park earlier this week, and their hosts will likely still own baseball's worst record when the Phillies arrive.
The trip finishes up with the last-place team in the NL East, the Miami Marlins. The Fish (36-52) have actually played better of late. They just wrapped up a 5-5 home stand at Marlins Park, and could jump the Mets to escape the cellar by the time the Phillies arrive in South Florida next weekend.
After that comes the four day break for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, which will be held this year at the home of the division-rival Washington Nationals. The Phils have now moved six games up on the Nats in the standings.
The Phillies don't play in front of the home fans at Citizens Bank park again for more than two weeks. On Friday night, July 20, the San Diego Padres will come to South Philly.
This road trip will be very telling for the 2018 version of the Phillies. The team has bucked a weak offense and generally sloppy defense to control a playoff position. The pitching staff has carried much of the load in reversing five years of losing baseball by the organization.
All of the teams that the Phillies will be facing on this trip have losing records. Their cumulative win-loss record is 74 games under the .500 mark.
However, the Phils have built their record up by winning at home, where they have an excellent 30-16 record. On the road, their 17-21 mark includes a 2-4 record in previous visits with the Mets, Marlins, and Orioles.
“Look back to where this franchise was a year ago and compared that to where we are now, we’ve made enormous progress in a year’s time,” Phillies general manager Matt Klentak said. “From being on pace to having one of the worst seasons in franchise history a year ago to being in playoff contention. It’s a dramatic improvement.”
The spotlight is going to be squarely on Klentak while the Phillies are away. Can he swing a deal or two to help bolster the Phillies roster? The stats say that the club could really be helped by a couple of key additions.
This is a big opportunity for the 2018 Philadelphia Phillies. A successful road trip against four losing teams would have to be a winning road trip. Anything less than a 7-4 result would have to be considered at least a minor setback.
It might seem as though Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Tyler Glasnow has been around in the prospect game for a long time. In fact, he has indeed.
He has steadily climbed the MLB Pipeline pre-season rankings. Prior to the 2014 season he was ranked as the 27th overall prospect. In 2015, he moved up to #12, then to #10 in 2016. Finally, prior to this season, Glasnow was ranked as the #9 overall prospect in the game.
For the last three years, Glasnow has been a Top 25 prospect in the rankings as presented by both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus.
Selected by Pittsburgh with their 5th round choice in the 2011 MLB Amateur Draft out of a California high school, Glasnow turned 24 years old just three weeks ago.
He was called up for his first taste of life in the big leagues in July of 2016. Then in September, Glasnow re-joined the Bucs to finish the season.
Overall in 2016 he appeared in seven games, making four starts. He allowed 22 hits over 23.1 innings while striking out 24 and walking 13 batters. The right-hander threw just 59% of his pitches for strikes.
While it was a largely inauspicious beginning, it was a beginning. Most prospects struggle during their first go-around in Major League Baseball. Glasnow had at least gotten his feet wet. It was hoped the experience would serve him well entering 2017, when he was expected to fill a rotation spot with the Pirates.
On Monday night, the Pittsburgh Pirates rallied from behind for a 4-2 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers at PNC Park in Pittsburgh.
With that win, the Bucs drew to within three games of the .500 mark on the season.
They also pulled within six games in the NL Central standings of the first place Brew Crew, and within eight of the second NL Wildcard spot.
The Pirates are suddenly hot, winners now in eight of their last 10 games. They are also about to get star left fielder Starling Marte back in the lineup. He has missed the first 80 games of the season due to a PED suspension. As the MLB trade deadline approaches, they appear to be a team on the bubble.
It’s difficult to get a read on exactly where the Pirates are right now, as far as their overall organizational status and ability to contend. Are they buyers or sellers here in July? That is the decision GM Neal Huntingdon and the rest of management will need to make in the coming weeks.
After earning an National League Wildcard playoff spot for three straight years, Pittsburgh regressed last season. The Pirates finished five games below the .500 mark in 2016, and were 8.5 games out of that Wildcard position.
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and the MLB divisional races are just beginning to take shape. Perhaps surprisingly, the most competitive race to this point has been in the National League Central Division.
The NL Central is home to the defending World Series champion Chicago Cubs. The North Siders were expected by many to run away with the division, much as they did a year ago. The Cubs finished 17.5 games ahead of their nearest divisional rival last year.
But thus far, Chicago appears to be suffering from a Fall Classic hangover. The Cubs are just 25-23 after being shutout by the Los Angeles Dodgers last night. This drops them into the middle of the divisional pack, albeit only a half-game off the lead.
That surprising new NL Central leader this morning would be the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brew Crew has not finished on top of the division since the 2011 season.
The Pittsburgh Pirates reached the MLB postseason in three straight seasons from 2013-15. But last year the club finished five games below the .500 mark in third place in the NL Central Division.
There were any number of factors that contributed to the downfall of the Bucs a year ago. But despite missing the playoffs and finishing with a losing record, a bounce-back is possible in the coming 2017 season.
Catching the young and multi-talented Chicago Cubs in the division race is probably not within reach this year. But winning the division is not the only route to the postseason.
Pittsburgh finished just 8.5 games in back of an NL Wildcard berth, even though nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
“I think he’s going through an absolute metamorphosis in terms of his physical understanding, how to really manage his body over the course of a 162-game season, what the greatest red flags are for him that could sideline him or take him down,” said Ben Fairchild, the owner of Fairchild Sports Performance near Taillon’s hometown of Houston, Texas per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Bill Brink.
“I don’t know that I’ve seen a pitcher of his prospectus at his young age that had endured so much severe injury, frankly,” Fairchild said.
For the Pittsburgh Pirates and their passionate fan base, the 2016 season was one of extreme disappointment. After three consecutive playoff appearances, the beloved Bucs missed the postseason party.
The Pirates struggled to a record of 78-83 last season, good only for third place in the National League Central Division.
In each of the prior three years, Pittsburgh came in second place, with the team repeatedly falling just short of a division crown. The club finished within two games in 2014 and 2015 after falling three games short in 2013.
In 2016, the Bucs fell 7.5 games short of the second-place St. Louis Cardinals. But that was not their biggest concern heading into the offseason. Pittsburgh also finished a distant 25 games behind the eventual World Series champion Chicago Cubs in the division race.
It was a rough season for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2016. After three straight playoff seasons, the Bucs fell to 79-83 and third place in the NL Central Division.
A six-game winning streak at the end of April lifted Pittsburgh to 15-9, just three games out of first place.
They would never be that far over the .500 mark, or that close to the division lead again.
In examining what went wrong this season in the Steel City, you find a number of factors came in to play. The starting pitching rotation suffered through injuries and ineffectiveness. The club got little production out of either the catcher or first base positions.
But another key element in the Pirates’ struggles this past season was a noticeable decline from center fielder Andrew McCutchen.
The Pittsburgh Pirates were an NL Wild Card team for three consecutive seasons from 2013-15.
But the 2016 campaign was a step back, with the club finishing 78-83 in third place in the NL Central Division, a distant 25 games behind the Chicago Cubs.
It was a disappointing 20-game drop for the Bucs from their 98-win season in 2015.
Now a team that finished within three games of the division crown in each of the last three seasons is looking like it has a way to go before it can get back to that level.
Manager Clint Hurdle just wrapped up his sixth season at the helm. He has a 509-462 record as the Pirates skipper, with three winning and three losing campaigns.
General manager Neal Huntington and his team have their work cut out for them as they try to provide Hurdle the extra pieces it will take to again catch up with the Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals in the division.
A highly controversial former MLB superstar will again be eligible for Baseball Hall of Fame voting this year, and he deserves to be elected and inducted.
There is little doubt that Barry Bonds is one of the most controversial figures in Major League Baseball over the last few decades.
Bonds is in a category with all of those players other than Rose. Issues with gambling on the sport are keeping the game's all-time hit king from being enshrined at Cooperstown as a ball player. The issue with Bonds and the others is performance enhancing drugs. Use of PEDs appears to have been chronic throughout the 1990s and into the early part of this century.
The problems for Bonds can almost certainly be traced to the 1998 home run chase in Major League Baseball between McGwire and Sosa. That summer, the pair captured the attention and hearts of fans as they chased the single-season home run record of 61. That record was set by Roger Maris all the way back in 1961.
MLB was still trying to recover from the devastating effects of the strike of 1994.
The Pittsburgh Pirates missed the MLB postseason this season for the first time in four years and will need to address their pitching depth in order to return.
After a drought of more than two decades, the Pittsburgh Pirates returned to the Major League Baseball postseason as an NL Wild Card team in 2013.
The Bucs then returned to the playoffs in each of the next two seasons as well, again as one of the NL’s Wild Card clubs.
The Pirates won that Wild Card Game in 2013 over the Cincinnati Reds, but were eliminated in a tough five-game Division Series by the eventual world champion St. Louis Cardinals.
The Pirates were then beaten in the Wild Card Game in both 2014 and 2015. This season, Pittsburgh slipped to their first losing record in four years.
They finished in third place, 25 games behind the eventual World Series champion Chicago Cubs.
A look at the Pirates lineup reveals that with a couple of tweaks, the club could return to at least that NL Wild Card level of playoff contention.
Add a legitimate power threat at first base, maybe a better catcher, and you can hit with most teams.
But the real key to any chance of the Pirates returning to the playoffs will be their pitching staff.
Our annual process of polling the staff at TBOH as to their predictions for the coming season has been completed, and so we’re rolling out those picks in a series of pieces.
The TBOH staff will reveal our cumulative staff choice, as well as our individual picks, for the order of finish in each of Major League Baseball’s six divisions, the two Wildcard teams from each league, and our World Series favorites.
To determine the staff cumulative pick for each division, I took the predicted order of finish from each of our writers and assigned a numerical value.
Teams picked for first place received one point, teams picked to finish in fifth received five points.
Thus, the lower your overall total points, the higher your predicted finish. The total points are listed next to each team name.
We’ll also be revealing our staffers picks for the Most Valuable Player Award in both the National and American Leagues, as well as the Cy Young Award and Rookie of the Year Award winners in both leagues.
Finally, our staffers have chosen their MLB manager who is most likely to become the first casualty of the season, the first to be fired this year.
Enjoy our picks, and we would love to hear your own. Please feel free to leave your choices in a comment. We’ll be sure to read them.
