Philadelphia Phillies: Who will be here in two years?

The Philadelphia Phillies are currently sitting in third place in the NL East and their rebuild looks to be ahead of schedule.

No one expected the Philadelphia Phillies to be good this season but they are beginning to defy all expectations. Under the leadership of team president Andy McPhail and nurturing of manager Pete Mackanin the Phillies look to be only 1-2 years away from being a legitimate threat to compete for the NL East crown.

Andy McPhail has some experience with rebuilding teams as shown by him bringing in the nucleus of the Baltimore Orioles. McPhail acquired Adam Jones, Chris Tillman, Chris Davis, JJ Hardy and he also drafted Matt Wieters and Manny Machado. Three years after his departure from the team, these players are still producing at a high level and have also led the Orioles to two playoff appearances.

The Philadelphia Phillies made a few massive trades during the past year and those trades are already starting to bear fruit. The Philadelphia Phillies are off to their best start since 2013 and the rotation is anchored by Aaron Nola, Jared Eickhoff and Vincent Velasquez who are all under team control for the foreseeable future. The Phillies also have bats to build around in the form of Maikel Franco and Obdul Hererra.

120 Sports discusses if the hot start is hurting the Philadelphia Phillies below:

These players were expected to contribute but outside of Nola and Franco, none of them were expected to perform at the levels that they are at right now. A lot of the success of young players has to be owed to the steady hand of Pete Mackanin leading the ship for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Mackanin has heavily influenced the team since he took over as interim manager and earned his three-year extension that will allow him to oversee the rebuild. Over the next few days, we’re going to take a look at the roster breaking players into categories based on what we feel that their roles will be in the coming years.

These are the players currently on the Philadelphia Phillies active 25-man roster that will be expected to be building blocks for the team moving forward.

Pitchers:

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SP Jerad Eickhoff
SP Aaron Nola
SP Vince Velasquez
RP Elvis Araujo
RP Hector Neris

Position Players:

3B Maikel Franco
2B Cesar Hernandez
OF Odubel Herrera

Looking at this list it’s easy to see what we already know. That the Philadelphia Phillies’ pitching is ahead of the hitting development wise. I struggled between picking Cesar Hernandez over Freddy Galvis but the fact that Hernandez is a year younger and plays second base is what gave him the edge. All of these players have room to grow but they are off to impressive starts to begin this season showing their potential to be regulars on a winning baseball team.

Franco and Nola are the furthest ahead on the development curve but the others aren’t too far behind. The pitching trio of Eickoff, Nola, and Velasquez has the potential to be scary for opposing hitters in the future. With those three the Phillies are currently leading the MLB in strikeouts showing how nasty their arsenal of pitches are. Herrera is coming into his own this season leading the Philadelphia Phillies in batting average (.324), hits (36), runs (20), and on-base percentage (.445). Hector Neris is looking like a gem in the bullpen as he has ben nearly unhittable this season. He has a 1.80 ERA to go along with a .80 WHIP. Neris earned his first career save recently and there could be a lot more where that came from.

Next: Phillies Series Preview: the Atlanta Braves

I can’t think of many teams that would turn down a crop of players to build around and with the calvary coming up they’ll only get a better supporting cast. Join us at Section 215 tomorrow as we break down the calvary.

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