Almost 2 weeks from today Pitchers and Catchers will report to Clearwater. Mac has pretty much said how the starting rotation will look Nola, Eickhoff, Hellickson and Morton. Up for grabs will be the 5th spot and the front runner on talent would be Vincent Velasquez but that doesn't mean he breaks camp with the big club.
Vincent has amazing stuff but in the fold will be Brett Oberholzer as he has 0 options remaining. Adam Morgan will be in the convo seeing how he fared pretty well in 15 starts. He pitched to a 1.245 WHIP but his K/9 numbers are really low. It will be tough for Adam to sustain success in the big leagues with a K/9 of just 5.2.
Others who will be barking for a spot in the rotation at some point will be Mark Appel and Jake Thompson. Spring will be huge for Mark and I'm not sure he can do anything to break camp with the big club without first handling 8-10 Starts in LHV. Thompson is young at just 22. He is, in many circles our #2-#3 prospect so they may not want to start his service time until late this year.
Klentak has announced his approach to a rebuild with authority and it will weight heavily on pitching. In the lower levels names to watch will be Kilome, Pinto, Arano and Tirado all of whom are 21. Kilome and Tirado are flame throwers while Pinto and Arano are command and control guys.
There are other names too as in Eflin Asher, Pivetta, Lively and Eshelman
In terms of catchers the Phillies have Chooch and Rupp and most would say Rupp is going to see the majority of starts behind the plate with Carlos being a huge factor in support and teaching. Knapp will present the most interesting name in camp as far as I am concerned. He has the best hit tool of all the catchers in the system. His defense and game calling need a lot more polish however. Second to him is Alfaro. I have him rated as our #11 prospect Callis and Mayo have him higher and in the MLB top 50.
He's intriguing for sure. Plenty of raw power. The only question will be can he tame his aggressive approach to tap into that power all the while finishing his defensive skills behind the dish. Pitchers frankly don't care about their catchers offensive games. They want to know he can handle whatever they throw in the dirt and grasp the concepts of what they like to throw in different counts and such. The nuances of being a MLB catcher have much to do about pitch framing and communication skills as anything else.
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