Today, even more cuts have arrived in Clearwater
With the end of spring training near and the team in need of roster clarity, there have been more cuts made to the current roster to help achieve that clarity sooner.
Prior to today’s game, the Phillies reassigned the following players to minor league camp: RHP’s Koyo Aoyagi, Jose Cuas, Joel Kuhnel, John McMillon & Guillo Zuniga, LHP Nick Vespi and INF Rodolfo Castro.
— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) March 15, 2025
These are more pitchers that were taking up innings that need to go to arms that have to get ready for the regular season, which of course makes sense. Rodolfo Castro has been sent out, but he was never really in contention for the final bench spot anyway.
We’ll always have that player option, Rodolfo.
As far as the arms being sent out, there is some bottom of the roster intrigue here. A few thoughts:
- It doesn’t really look like Aoyagi is anywhere close to being able to pitch in the major leagues. Maybe he’s still getting adjusted to the MLB baseball, but in his outings, he just wasn’t very good. Maybe he’ll end up getting used to everything here, but don’t plan on his helping the big league team any time soon.
- John McMillon was the darling of every online “stuff” expert once his numbers came through after his first outing, but since that initial sheen has worn off, you can kind of see why he was made available by the Marlins in the first place. The stuff is good, but he needs to tame that control if he wants to have another shot in the majors.
- Zuniga and Vespi look like pitchers that get a shot at some point in the season as waiver fodder, i.e. the guy who gets called up to see lightning can be caught in a bottle, but the team won’t lose sleep if he moves to another organization.
We can start to see how the team will look on March 27 with every round of cuts that comes through.
Get ready for “Taijuan Walker: relief pitcher” everybody!