PHL Anon
So, if you’ve been living under a rock, Ken Giles was trade from the Phillies yesterday to the Houston Astros. It sucks seeing a crazy talented young player be moved, but these are the moves that you’d never see RAJ make. He’d hold Giles through a rebuild, waste him, and then trade him for pennies on the dollar after an arm surgery and he was approximately 100 years past his prime.
So, what did Klentak get in the deal? A package we couldn’t pass up.
Vincent Velasquez, RHP, 6’3″ 205 lbs., 23 yrs old
Velasquez has been a standout talent when healthy, but he has a long history of injuries. He had a strained ligament and stress fracture in his throwing elbow in his junior year of high school, then after going in the 2nd round and throwing 29.1 pro innings in 2010, Velasquez missed all of 2011 with Tommy John surgery. He’s moved slowly since but appears ready to be unleashed at age 22, with a strong season so far in the High-A Cal League and an Arizona Fall League assignment announced yesterday. Velasquez sits 91-95 with a plus changeup and a curveball that flashes average, to go with some feel to pitch. There’s mid-rotation potential if Velasquez’s arm can handle the workload.
Brett Oberholtzer, LHP, 6’3″ 235 lbs., 26 yrs old
At 26 years old, Oberholtzer has had some trouble sticking with the big club in Houston over the first three years of his career. He went 7-4 in 12 starts in Triple-A in 2015 with a 3.86 ERA while splitting time in the majors.
He’s probably best remembered during his stint with the Astros for throwing at Alex Rodriguez during a game in June.
The lefty doesn’t have overpowering stuff. His fastball won’t go much higher than 90 mph, but he has some off-speed pitches that could baffle opposing hitters.
According to Brooks Baseball, Oberholtzer has a changeup, slider and curve that are all within four miles per hour of each other. With a nearly identical release for all of those pitches, it’s difficult for batters to recognize which pitch is coming at them.
Derek Fisher, OF, 6’1″ 207 lbs., 22 yrs old
Fisher, spent 2015 playing A-ball, where he hit .275 with 22 home runs and 87 RBI.
At 22 years old, he still has plenty of work to do on his game both offensively and defensively. His arm is average, which would be an invitation for aggressive runners to take advantage of if he does one day patrol the outfield and Citizens Bank Ballpark.
His swing, while nice, is a bit long, and he needs to work on making contact at the plate. If he can’t put the ball in play, promotions to the upper levels of the Phillies organization will be few and far between.
Thomas Eshelman, RHP, 6’3″ 210 lbs., 21 yrs old
Eshelman is your quintessential NCAA Friday night starter- he’s durable, throwing over 360 innings in his college career (which is kind of insane), and has impeccable control, as he’s walked only 17 hitters in his entire career, coming from the same school as minor league slugger J.D. Davis.
His fastball sits in the low-90s, occasionally hitting 93, with a few decent breaking balls mixed in. He won’t blow hitters away with his stuff, but the command he’s show against good competition makes him a valuable pick at this point. Eshelman has the polish to move quickly through a system and slot into the back end of an MLB rotation. Think of him as a replacement of sorts for Andrew Thurman, who was projected to be a mid-rotation starter after he was selected in 2013. Eshelman probably isn’t a mid-rotation guy, but Houston gets the chance to start over with a proven NCAA pitcher, especially after Thurman battled ineffectiveness before he was traded to Atlanta.
The one concern with Eshelman is his workload. Like many college starters who’ve been as durable as he has, Eshelman has been worked hard over his college career. He threw 100 pitches on Saturday in CSF’s Super Regional, 143 pitches the week before in the regional, and pitched the final inning tonight to send Fullerton to the College World Series. That’s a great accomplishment, but hopefully it doesn’t have a negative impact on his arm. Look for the Astros front office to take Eshelman’s assignment slowly this summer; they may even shut him down completely by mid-July to limit his innings, and come back fresh next spring.
So what do you think of the haul that Klentak got? Let us know in the comments and on social media.