Philadelphia Phillies: The Tommy Joseph era was all too brief

It was a decade of forgettable players for the Philadelphia Phillies, but perhaps nobody went from “part of the future” to afterthought faster than Tommy Joseph.

When the Philadelphia Phillies surprisingly traded Hunter Pence to the San Francisco Giants in the summer of 2012, people were at least comforted by the fact they they seemed to have acquired their catcher of the future, Tommy Joseph, in the deal. At the time, nobody realized how completely sideways that plan would go, nor how ultimately unfulfilling his time with the Phillies organization would be.

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The first real stumbling block was Joseph’s health. After suffering a number of concussions (the first of which came when he was still in the Giants’ system), the decision was made that he could no longer play behind the plate. Right there, a good amount of his value was zapped instantly, and his career prospects took a significant hit. When you’re expecting someone to be a potential offensive standout at the catcher position, having to move them anywhere else is a big concern.

For the Phillies, being in the National League and without the benefit of a designated hitter spot where Joseph might have still been able to shine, this meant that he had to shift over to first base. But at least there was an opening there, as Ryan Howard was literally limping toward the end of his career.

Joseph showed pretty well in his rookie season of 2016, finally getting to the bigs nearly four years after the Phillies had acquired him. In 107 games, he produced a .257 batting average to go along with 21 home runs and 47 RBI. It was something to build on for a 24-year old who had overcome adversity to earn his shot.

In 2017, the first base job was all Joseph’s to begin the year after Howard’s contract was bought out. It looked like it was going to be the first full season for a player headed for a productive Phillies career, but what followed were 142 games where Joseph was only passable at first base, a position where you need the kind of power production that he was not really cut out for. He hit .240 with 22 home runs and 69 RBI. Those numbers aren’t terrible, but they’re not good enough at first base. Joseph had an on base percentage under .300, and he didn’t show anything special in his hit tool that would mark him as a franchise building block.

Throw in the fact that super rookie Rhys Hoskins arrived on the scene in the season’s final months, and the organization clearly began to re-think which players were part of the future in Philadelphia. The Phillies must have looked themselves in the mirror after the 2017 season and said that Joseph’s numbers would play for a catcher, but in all honesty he was now a man without a position. He was the kind of replacement-level player that you couldn’t afford to trot out at first base every night if you hoped to compete.

And so the Phillies signed Carlos Santana that offseason, making Joseph’s path to potential playing time even more onerous. Joseph was clearly not going to siphon any starts away from an established, switch-hitting first basemen with better plate skills and defensive abilities than him. And with the outfield seemingly firm with “rising stars” Hoskins, Odubel Herrera, and Nick Williams, Joseph could only hope to provide a bat off the bench.

But everyone knew where it was headed, and the Phillies waived him during spring training in 2018. It was a forgettable end for a player who produced two actually decent seasons with the team, managing 20+ homers in each of them. Usually, players like that find a way to hang on. Or they at least get a shot with another team. For Joseph, however, that hasn’t happened yet.

He was claimed on waivers by the Texas Rangers, but he spend the entirety of 2018 in their minor leagues. In 2019, he couldn’t hook on with any MLB organizations, and so he was forced to start the season playing in Korea. He signed with the Red Sox last August, but his stateside return failed to produce any big league appearances.

He’s back with the Red Sox organization in 2020, but he’s waiting along with the rest of the baseball world to see what happens next. In what could legitimately be his last shot to make a major league career for himself, Joseph is no doubt frustrated at the way things have played out. There was so much promise, then injury setbacks which he overcame, but not to a level that was satisfactory enough for the team that gave him his first (and so far only) taste of the majors. Now, he’s living the life of a baseball hanger-on.

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Tommy Joseph’s “blink and you’ll miss it” two-year tenure in town was better than what a lot of other Phillies have produced recently, and the team moving on from him really seems like one of the more unfair decisions they’ve made in recent years. But you can totally understand why they did it, choosing to let go of mediocrity, even at the risk of Joseph putting everything together somewhere else. So far, it looks like a sound decision by the Phillies, but everyone should wish Tommy Joseph the best in his quest to resume his MLB dream.

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