Haseley not out of center field starting picture
The Phillies are 22 games into a 27-game Spring Training schedule, and Joe Girardi is only marginally closer to deciding who the starting center fielder on Opening Day will be. It’s possible that the quick return to health of Adam Haseley could put him further from a decision.
Haseley isn’t exactly making a late charge, after missing most of the last three weeks with a groin injury. But the 24-year-old lefty is back in the mix, doing what the others in the race have done: Not a ton.
Haseley went 0-for-3 in a loss to Detroit Wednesday, further muddying the picture with another contestant in the center field sweepstakes who hasn’t exactly laid claim to the job.
Haseley gets points for the tenacity with which he attacked his rehab, aided by having suffered a similar injury in 2019.
“I feel pretty good after tonight,” Haseley said via Zoom Wednesday. “Last night, a little bit of a late night and then a quick turnaround. Other than general soreness, I feel pretty good. No adductor pain or soreness. I’ve felt good for the last 10 days or so,
been able to have some days where I have a lot of at-bats in sim games and what not. Body feels good, feels normal for this time of year.”
Haseley is up to 12 spring at-bats, hardly a huge sample. He’s got three hits, a home run and three strikeouts.
“He’s had four at-bats and he’s squared up two balls, is what’s happened,” manager Joe Girardi assessed. “So that’s a pretty good percentage. … Considering he had all that time off, his at-bats were pretty good.”
“Pretty good” has been the order of the day for Girardi’s center fielders, to his chagrin. Odubel Herrera has led the team in at-bats, but at 9-for-40 with nine strikeouts, three homers and one walk, he’s been just OK, even if Girardi has added the caveat of how many lefties the once-suspended former AllStar has faced.
“I don’t look at his at-bats and say, they haven’t been good,” Girardi said. “That’s not how I see it. I think his at-bats are competitive. He’s had some tough at-bats against some lefthanders that have been pretty good.”
Girardi stopped short of declaring Roman Quinn the front-runner by default, though he’s gone 10-for-31 (.323) with a .382 on-base percentage. Scott Kingery got a hit Wednesday, but that only leaves him hitting .139 (5-for-36) with a double, homer and 15 strikeouts this preseason.
The late entry of Haseley to the race indicates just how unresolved it is. Given the general mediocrity, four spring games is enough to make an impression and maybe win the job, though that’s somewhat a matter of semantics given that Haseley,
Quinn and Kingery will almost certainly get looks as the season goes on.
Haseley, who was able to keep up with his throwing and swinging program through most of the injury and made up for lost time with up to 10 simulatedgame at-bats per day, is still viewing the competition as alive.
“Obviously to a certain degree, for me in my head, it’s a competition,” he said. “I know back from when we were here the first couple of games, I said it’s always been a competition against myself, and how much I can give the effort and the intensity, and it still is. I think a lot of it is out of my control, but the certain things I can control are how hard I run and how hard I approach the game and stuff like that. That’s always been the way I view how I perform, is how well I prepare for the game and how intense I can prepare.”