Live from Reading, it's Trevor May
Top pitching prospect Trevor May continues to dazzle at Double-A.
Live from Reading, it's Trevor May
David Murphy, Daily News Staff Writer
All you need to know about Reading can be learned from a quick examination of the names the local minor league baseball club has used over the last century: Coal Heavers, Pretzels, Coal Barons, Mariners, Aces, Keystones, Sox, Brooks, Chicks, Indians, Red Sox, and Phillies. OK, maybe not everything. But all you really need to know right now is that Trevor May is looking more and more like the next blue-chip pitcher to be shipped out of town join the Phillies rotation at some point in the next two or three years.
Last night, in front of an audience that included dignitaries like Phillies president David Montgomery, assistant general manager Benny Looper and pro scouting director Mike Ondo, May held the Richmond Flying Squirrels to one hit and two walks in six scoreless innings, striking out seven in the process.
May, ranked the No. 69 prospect in the minors by Baseball America prior to this season, has had a dominant start to his Double-A career. Through four starts (all of which have resulted in his picking up the win, if that kind of thing matters to you), May has logged 23 innings with 26 strikeouts, eight walks (a 3.25 K/BB ratio) and no home runs. In fact, he has allowed just one extra base hit, which came in his first start of the season. Over his last three starts, May has allowed two runs, nine hits and five walks with 20 strikeouts in 18 innings.
May's performance will be interesting to monitor this season given the current plotlines swirling around the team. Despite all of the young talent the Phillies have traded away over the last three seasons, they still have the pieces it would take to swing a high-profile trade. At 22 years old, May's stock is still rising. Many people think he will prove to be the same caliber of prospect as Kyle Drabek, who was the centerpiece of the Roy Halladay deal in December of 2009.
The other plotline is Cole Hamels' potential free agency. My gut says he ends up signing here, but I also expected a deal to be done by now. So who knows. Fact is, the Phillies have Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay and Vance Worley all under contract through at least 2013, and likely 2014 (Halladay has a vesting option for that season). At some point, they need to find a way to remodel the offense. Maybe they can do it by using May as a trade chip. Or maybe they decide that their best option is to save money by letting Hamels walk and then spend the savings on offense.
The smartest play, obviously, is to re-sign Hamels and look to deal for offensive talent. May still has considerable work to do before his is major league ready. As far as I can tell, the only Top 100 prospect he has faced is Giants outfielder Gary Brown, who was No. 38 on this year's Baseball America list. Last night, May walked Brown in the fourth inning but got him to ground out in the first and then struck him out looking in the sixth. In an earlier meeting, he again walked Brown, got him to ground out, and struck him out (swinging, this time).
Anyway, that's your Trevor May update for the day. I'm here in Reading watching the Phillies take on Flying Squirrels before a long bus trip up to Portland, Maine. Lots of talent on this Reading team, including outfielder Jiwan James and catcher Sebastian Valle.
Keep May...trade Dom Brown, Jon Pettibone and Cody Asche for Sox 3rd baseman Will Middlebrooks.— Romus- what the phillies, should really do, if there is no world series ,in sight, which dosent look likely,in the near future, as much as it hurts phillies fans-THIS IS WHAT SHOULD BE DONE-TRADE BOTH CLIFF LEE, AND YES ROY HALLADAY,a year sooner rather than later.SEND RYAN HOWARD
and CHASE UTLEY to the AMERICAN LEAGUE, AT the end of the season, or at least UTLEY to the AMERICAN LEAGUE-HOWARD anywhere.SEND ROLLINS, POLANCO,AND POSSIBLY PENCE PACKING AS WELL.KEEP at all costs HAMELS, WORLEY-WHO IS REALLY STARTING TO IMPRESS ME-LIKE EVERY GAME-MOXY &POISE!!you have a combination of MAY,PETTIBON,possibly BIDDLE & COLVIN, waiting in the wings.ALSO I BELEIVE VICTORINO, AND CHOOCH, still have value to be veterans to help out all the new top prospects, the PHILLIES will receive for all these well known,still
capable of helping a team win a world series, but not maintaining, that high level of winning baseball philadelphia needs in the coming
decade.we NEED NEW ENERGY AND BLOOD INFUSED into our PHILLIES ORGANIZATION!! -STARTING THIS YEAR!!!!
— flyers11 - Agreed. Take a page out of the FLYERS book. They traded their "top players", and got much younger, reloaded. The difference is ruben is NOT holmgren and doesn't have the guts to do anything like that. — kozykoz26
- The only to Phils with any sort of trade value whatsoever are Hamels and Victorino. Trading them would probably spell doom for the team this year (and beyond in regards to Hamels). Holmgren got really lucky that Voracek, Simmonds and Couturier panned out the way they have. But then, with the trading of Richards and Carter, what were the expectations of the Flyers this year? — ESFjellin
- 2013 - Goodbye Blanton, hello May!— hhkal
- You coulda tried your own headline:
'Blanton (or Kendrick) to Showers Brings May (who flowers)'
Clearly the Philly.com crew, split up to save money, has been sent in two directions - one to continue to prime the hate RAJ and CM crowd chronicling the latest blunders and poor outings; the other sent to buoy the hopeful, we need prospects crowd.
May is legit. He'll stick around. The Phils would be silly to shop him for Wright (in the same division) or for anyone other than Mike Trout in the Angels org, (or Harper - but the Nats don't need pitching). Overreaching? Yes. But the point being that trading for anything other than another ready prospect for this team is truly out of the question.— 24sDad - bring may here and send down kendrick n blanton or trade them both— hardball
- You cannot have enough pitching prospects. The majority will break down or flame out. As for Hamels, resigning him is priority number 1. However, if it comes down to the trading deadline and they are still far apart, then we may have to trade him for some blue chip prospects. That is probably only likely if we aren't in the race at that point. If we are, then he might just walk at year end.— MDefl
Comment removed.- sure Herndon and Kendrick for Cano and Granderson -- all you with great trade proposals always think someene would take Phillies overpriced trash - as in Asante Samuel deal, it's at the point where you dont get any value back if player's contract is above market and not valuable --thus more than half of Phils roster has absolutely zero value in trades (like Howard, Utley, Rollins, Polanco, Blanton, etc) unless Phillies agreed to pay bulk of salary --which of course negates any real value of trade....even "valuable" players like Papelbon are pretty much untradeable since, if anyone else thought he was worth $50 mil for 4 yrs they would have likely offered him 51 ...— warbiscuit
- guyinchage69 is right -- Amaro continually wastes top prospects every July to fill a need (starter or outfielder) that he should have filled in prior offseason free agent market and so has lost a dozen top prospects this way -- what a cluelss rube— warbiscuit
- I think its safe to say the Phils really screwed Dom Brown and his progression the minute they decided to keep him on the Phils when Shane got back from the DL. He could have used that time playing everyday instead of sitting on the bench. I would love to see him up with the club now, because you can't really judge someone on only 220 major league at bats, but his future probably lies with another organization. And warbiscuit please....you have already proven that you are 1) not a Phillies fan and 2) you don't watch the games, you just criticize the team based on the box-scores and what you assumed happened.— ESFjellin
- An aging team should make it a rule not to trade its leading pitching prospect nor its leading prospect at positions where they don't have young starters locked in to long term contracts. Phils don't have any of the latter. Not a good year to trade leading prospects.— Claudio Vernight
- Let him start and cut Kendrick.— z03mbm
- futures are great. for now can we fix our position player situation and cut bait with the softball players— jcaz
