The Philadelphia Phillies need to get reliefers by the deadline, and they have a stupid guy. Jhoan Duran, a 27-year-old Minnesota twins, is occupying land eastward. This is the seller’s market for reliefers, and Duran is the best market. Of course, any long-term team control is best left, and now Emmanuel Clase is left undisclosed.
Given Duran’s record of gifts, durability and reliability, and two full arbitration years, the cost is high: rookie right-hander Mick Abel and teenage catcher Eduardo Tait. Abel, the first high school pitchers in the 2020 draft, made unstable progress among minors but showed glitter in limited major league action. Tait is a fresh invitation to future games, a 18-year-old catcher, so it’s primitive, but he has the tools to be a great defender and even adds power to the board.
It’s not Andrew Painter, or even Aidan Miller, but it’s a lot of cargo from a not-wealthy farm system to get a reliefer of a round. Why do Phillies do this? OK, don’t be rude, but they’re a little desperate.
In 2023 and 2024, the Phillies finished the top five bullpen in the regular season before watching their championship hopes disappear when their high-leverage men packed the bunk. My cardiologists get mad at me whenever I think about what happened to Craig Kimbrel (and to a lesser extent Orion Kerkering) in Game 4 of the 2023 NLC, so if you want more details you can find them on YouTube.
The blame for the NLC’s withdrawal from the Metropolitan last year was almost universal. Phillies weren’t out of sin last year except for Zack Wheeler, Nick Castellanos and Bryce Harper. But what I want to mention: In the NLDS, four highly leveraged Phillies reliefists (Kerkering, Matt Strahm, Jeff Hoffman and Carlosestévez) merged to become the Minus-14.85 champion WPA. In the context, Corey Seager, in the 2023 World Series (the most influential game in the playoffs of that year), Paul Sewald was worth 14.79 CWPA in Paul Sewald’s ninth inning home run.
The Phillies’ two All-Star Rescuers, their big deadline and last year’s incredible Wunderkind deserve the opposite of a Ninth Inning World Series home run. No Phillies lost less than three times in the first round series. José Alvarado made a appearance, allowing two runs, hits and two walks, with only two-thirds of the inning.
This kind of thing will complicate your fans and increase the pressure on the front desk to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The surprise of pennant running in 2022 has almost disappeared. It was a harsh time for Dave Dombrowski and his 30s-something core.
The bullpen puzzle became even more tricky when Hoffman left Toronto in free agency, and Alvarado made 80-game PED timeouts, which would also put him out of the playoffs. The experiments of Joe Ross and Jordan Romano are incredibly watching, and if Dombrowski just put 40-year-old David Robertson back into the mixer and called it “a day,” the WIP’s phone line would melt.
Last season, Dombrowski tried to go on the middle road by trading Estévez, with the rent on good but irrational main qualities. It turns out that the intermediate path is covered by a spider.
This time, he left. Philadelphia people love pitchers, they shoot, and Duran is one of the best pitchers in baseball. He has a three-digit four-digit number with an outrageous carry. The heater plays the upper 90s chipper, which looks like four holes, drops in the last second. It was the stadium that made Paul Skenes famous, but Duran threw it first.
He also has two top 80s breakout balls. There is a knuckle curve that he throws to the right and left-handed, and a sweeper with less drops and more horizontal movement to use the right-handed opponent in a small amount. The sweeper is more or less new this year, and when he can let his opponent swing, his flagella rate is 55.6%. The curve ball pedestrian is more pedestrian, if you want to call it 41.5%, but the opponent has an average of 0.155, against the Hook in his career. It’s been 11 months since anyone hits the knuckle curve to get an extra base.
This has drawn interesting points about Duran. A pitcher, who works as hard as a knockout ball, seems like a big strikeout. While Duran got a waste, his strikeout, chase and swing numbers were good, but not good. It’s not Hoffman, Edwin Díaz, or even Griffin Jax, and Phillies are reportedly interested.
Duran is more like Tim Hudson’s rocket fuel version. His barrel rate is 3.0%, which is unconsciously tiny and fourth among qualified reliefers. He has the second highest GB% among qualified rescuers. His expected statistics based on contact quality are all elite: 95% Xwoba, 96th percentile XSLG, 99th percentile Xiso.
Duran had only 4.5% of the balls in the air and pulled the side during the game. This is the most dangerous type of contact that a pitcher can allow for at some distance. The league average is 16.6%, and pitchers with only 100 or more goals this year are lower than Duran. He looks like a bat wrong monster, but in fact he is a monster that continues to impose.
My danger of team control over rescuers lasted for a while, and Duran brought back a bigger reward than someone like Ryan Helsley, who had been under team control until 2027. Even elite rescuers were hurt, lost the strike zone, or dropped the fastball rating without warning.
But Duran is now the best close-up on the market. These two additional ARB years mean that if everything goes well, Dombrowski doesn’t have to pass through all these Rigmaroles anymore. It’s not a good reason to prioritize one elite rescuer over another, but it’s a nice bonus and worth the extra cost.
Phillies do have to delve into this industry. Philadelphia’s farm system has an undeniable elite prospect, Andrew Painter, who will not give up on Garrett crochet. Apart from that, there is not much striking depth. Top player prospect Aidan Miller starts showing some cracks in Double-A. The rest of the list is pitcher heavy or distant.
The twins didn’t manage to land on the Painter or Miller (although the request was no harm) or even caused, even Justin Crawford, one of the highest speeds in professional baseball. If Crawford went to Minnesota, it would have been just revenge for the Ben Revere trade, but he also stayed in the Phillies organization. If he was still there on Friday, he might end up in the major league game.
The best prospect in this deal is Tate. Crawford knocked on the big league door, Tait still had a few years off, but I still prefer to have the latter. His figures in the Florida State League (.255/.319/.434, 11 home runs) look good, but there aren’t three things in the stats line.
First: He is a great defensive catcher, a very good maker, radiating some baby fat and gaining muscle over the past year. Second: “Baby Fat” is accurate, as he turns 19 next month, making him one of the five youngest full-time job players in the FSL. Last year’s high school graduation prospects, such as Konnor Griffin and Bryce Rainer, were at this level (or since Reiner was injured). Griffin is four months older than Tait. Rainer is over one year old.
Third: Tait has above average raw power, with potential plus raw power, at an outlet Velo high of 116 mph. His EV90 is 106 mph; now, that’s average for Major League Baseball receivers.
A good defensive catcher with plus raw power (and any clue how to access it in the game) is as rare as the type of player present in baseball. There may not be five players in the entire major leagues that fit this description.
I’m going to give you a warning so you won’t be on the skis below, here’s it: Tait is 18 years old in the A-Ball. (The twins are sending Thais to the high-end cedar rapids, which isn’t even close to the most frustrating mission of the Midwest League. Tait has some absolutely shocking plate discipline numbers; if he intends to get into the professionals, someone will have to tell him that the strike zone is not nine feet wide.
But, this is Cal Raleigh’s starter kit. It’s been a long and dangerous journey from here to here, but Tait’s highest realistic cap for any player traded to date so far.
Abel needed much less projections because he had reached the professional level. He was incredible in his major league debut, hitting nine games in six no-scoring walk-free innings. Things get a little tricky once he has to play anyone other than the Pirates, but it’s still there, and the efforts of major league starters are still there.
Not long ago, Abel was seen as a joint prospect for the Phillies with the painter, but he had a tough journey among minors. Last year, his ERA was 6.46, and at the start of 24 triples, he was 6.46 and his walking rate was 15.1%. Things have turned around this year for him. The biggest change is that Abel threw his curve ball more to left-handed and right-wingers. This curveball is a kind of beauty, a slow and cyclical devotion that disappears when he commands it.
Abel stands out and supports the slider, which is based on the logic that the slider better complements his fastball shape. This logic only works if the pitch itself is good, but back to rotation, Abel’s curve proceeds.
If Abel could command his slider and get any use from his changes, he would be the medium starter. If not, he is still a major league for back-end starters or high-leverage reliefers. If Abel had played on any team except the deepest rotation of baseball, he might have been in a full-time rotation. And if he’s with the Phillies, he’s likely running in the playoff bullpen, which could be in multiple innings or carrying a role.
As anyone can tell, the twins didn’t get into the bottom of the rock for years tanks. If they keep Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa and (possibly?) Joe Ryan, they will compete again in a year or two. Abel fits that schedule; I would be surprised if he doesn’t break camp with Minnesota next year.
So it’s a top pitcher with extra air and a high-risk prospect with potential to become a star. This may not be what the twins hoped, but they were able to take advantage of the Phillies situation (the major leagues started pitching and couldn’t wait for Tait to develop) and get two players who they might not be able to pry open any other team.
The Phillies still have holes, but they get the best players they might have in desperate need without giving up the prospect of top three. This is not a guarantee of anything, but it is a step to make the baseball season last longer and restore the statue to its end.
