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Lively, Eflin and Windle discuss the trauma of trades

The Phillies' double-A Reading affiliate has a rotation of top prospects as well as centerfielder Roman Quinn on the roster. Inquirer columnist Bob Brookover was on the just-completed six-game road trip with the team. This is the second in a series of stories about the Fightin Phils.

Reading pitchers (from left): Zach Eflin, Ben Lively, Jessie Biddle, Tom Windle and Aaron Nola. (Ed HIlle/Staff Photographer)
Reading pitchers (from left): Zach Eflin, Ben Lively, Jessie Biddle, Tom Windle and Aaron Nola. (Ed HIlle/Staff Photographer)Read more

The Phillies' double-A Reading affiliate has a rotation of top prospects as well as centerfielder Roman Quinn on the roster. Inquirer columnist Bob Brookover was on the just-completed six-game road trip with the team. This is the second in a series of stories about the Fightin Phils.

HARRISBURG, Pa. - The terminology tends to dehumanize the process. We call them "prospects" and describe them as being "down on the farm." The truth is they are young men trying to find their way in a survival-of-the-fittest world by throwing, hitting, and fielding a red-stitched white ball with a circumference of 9 to 9 1/4 inches.

Three members of the starting rotation with the Phillies' double-A Reading affiliate had another of those dehumanizing labels attached to their names during the offseason when they became "transactions." Lefthander Tom Windle and righthander Zach Eflin joined the Phillies in the trade that sent franchise hit king Jimmy Rollins to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Righthander Ben Lively arrived in a trade that sent outfielder Marlon Byrd to the Cincinnati Reds.

Those trades represented emotional times, but the game of baseball is about dealing with the ups, the downs, and sometimes the moving around. During Reading's six-game road trip to Erie and Harrisburg, the three newcomers to the organization talked about being traded for the first time and a variety of other things, including their most recent performances on the mound.

Here's some insight into each pitcher.

For Windle and Eflin, the trade process was extra difficult because they had to play a waiting game after the initial news broke Dec. 10 that they were going to be involved in the Rollins deal. It did not become official for nine more days.

"I found out the day it was first reported and I kind of sat on it for a week, not knowing what was going on," Windle said. "I didn't hear from anybody from the Dodgers or Phillies. It was weird. Everybody was texting and calling me - 'Congratulations on getting traded' - but I hadn't heard anything, so I wasn't sure how to react until it finally went through."

Windle's reaction was fine. He had a friend in the Phillies system. Seth Rosin, a pitcher the Phillies acquired in the 2012 trade that sent Hunter Pence to San Francisco, was a few years ahead of Windle at the University of Minnesota.

"He left the year before I got to Minnesota, but he had a ton of buddies that I played with and I saw him in the winter and I got to know him pretty well," Windle said. "The funny thing with him was when he got Rule 5-picked to the Dodgers last year, we ended up as teammates in spring training and we became throwing partners in the winter, and this year when I got traded he was actually the first one to call and he said, 'Are you following me?' "

Rosin is with triple-A Lehigh Valley after being returned to the Phillies from Texas as part of a circuitous three-team trip through the Rule 5 process.

Windle, 24, is a 6-foot-4, 215-pound lefthander who was selected by the Dodgers in the second round of the 2013 draft. That seemed unlikely after his sophomore season at Minnesota because he had been moved to the bullpen after some early-season arm soreness.

The highly regarded Cape Cod League changed everything for him.

"That was a really big year," Windle said. "During my sophomore year in college, I had a sore arm and I think it got blown up to be more than it was. I just took a week off and I was put in the bullpen.

"I thought since I threw in the bullpen at Minnesota that I was going to be in the bullpen and I kind of just asked if I could start because that's what I wanted to do. I just kind of took off and had a productive summer."

He posted a 2.35 ERA in seven starts, striking out 47 and walking seven in 381/3 innings.

"I think that was huge getting my confidence going into my junior season, which ultimately put me in a good position to be a professional," Windle said.

The trade process was even more complicated for Eflin. He pitched last season in the San Diego Padres organization and was shipped to the Dodgers as part of the Matt Kemp trade before ultimately joining the Phillies.

"I was really sick that day," Eflin said. "I had a high fever and I woke up to a text from my buddy Matthew Shepherd from the Padres that said I was being traded. I was like, 'No way. Are you serious?' "

He was.

Eflin, a 6-4 righthander who turned 21 last month, eventually got a call from Padres general manager A.J. Preller as confirmation and found himself confronted by a split reaction to the deal from his family. His father, Larry, and his special-needs sister, Candace, live in Oviedo, Fla., and they were thrilled that Zach would be back on the East Coast and playing spring-training games in nearby Clearwater.

His oldest sister, Brittany, on the other hand, was disappointed. She is a traveling nurse in Arizona and was able to watch her younger brother's games when he was with the Padres.

"She asked me if there was any way I could just stay with the Padres," Eflin said. "I said, 'I have no say in anything that is going on.' She was kind of upset."

Larry and Candace got to see Eflin pitch for the big-league Phillies during a spring-training game against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Bradenton. It was an 18-4 loss during which the Phillies made three errors and infuriated manager Ryne Sandberg. Larry Eflin also has seen his son pitch twice at Reading this season, and that matters a lot to Eflin because family is at the core of his being.

In addition to having a nurturing oldest sister and a vibrant No. 1 fan in Candace - she constantly yells her brother's name at games - he also lost his sister Ashley to leukemia in 1995 when he was just an infant. Tragedy forged a closer relationship between his sisters and father, but his mother, Cathy, became mostly estranged and Eflin does not have much of a relationship with her.

Despite being part of a tight-knit family, Eflin decided against pitching for the University of Central Florida after his senior year in high school even though the school was a 10-minute drive from his home and both sets of his grandparents lived close to the school. He had met Lively on his recruiting visit, but when the Padres made him the 33d overall pick he decided with the help of his family that he wanted to begin his pursuit of a professional baseball career.

"My family is all about what we each want to do," Eflin said. "We follow our hearts, and at that point in my life I wanted to follow professional baseball."

He was so eager to get started that he signed for a bonus of $1.2 million, which was $300,000 less than the slotted amount for a player picked 33d overall.

"I wasn't in a situation where I wanted to talk money," Eflin said. "Money wasn't the only thing to me. I just wanted to get my career started, and the situation that we were in, anything was life-changing money for us. I followed my heart and it was exactly what I wanted. I don't want to get too much into the personal stuff, but it has changed our family's lives. It has allowed me to help the people I care about out."

Ben Lively

Jeff Graupe, the player personnel director for the Reds, kept trying to call Lively on New Year's Eve morning, but he was not getting an answer. Lively, a fourth-round pick by the Reds in 2013, was in New Orleans preparing to bring in 2015 with his friends. At the time Graupe called, Lively's preparation consisted of sleeping.

The idea of being traded never crossed Lively's mind. A month earlier he had been in Cincinnati for a fan festival, sitting with Johnny Cueto and being honored as the Reds' minor-league player of the year. He had found an apartment in Pensacola, Fla., the double-A home of the Reds and a 15-minute drive over the Pensacola Bridge from his hometown of Gulf Breeze.

Lively finished the 2014 season by making 13 starts for Pensacola, including his double-A debut in front of family and friends at Bayfront Stadium.

"It was awesome," Lively said. "The first game, everyone was there . . . and I made the mistake of looking into the crowd that first inning. I literally saw everyone I grew up with, my old teachers, all my friends. I got goose bumps a little bit that first inning. It was a weird game that first game. I did good and I did bad, but it was a cool experience."

It was one he thought would continue in 2015 until he returned Graupe's call from his hotel room in New Orleans.

"I kept seeing this random number on my phone," Lively said. "I didn't have [Graupe's] number because I had just gotten a new phone. Finally I called him and I said, 'What's up?' He goes, 'Where have you been?' I told him I was sleeping. He says, 'Well you just got traded to the Phillies and [Reds general manager] Walt Jocketty is going to be calling you.' It caught me off guard, but there were no hard feelings."

The fact that he had been traded for Byrd, a former all-star, was flattering.

"It's definitely cool to be in a trade with somebody like that, a big-time veteran," Lively said. "Now I have to prove myself. You can't just show up here. You have to live up to the expectations."

And there is a lot expected of high-profile prospects down on the farm.

@brookob