{"id":3201,"date":"2017-01-16T14:46:10","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T19:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=3201"},"modified":"2024-12-28T10:36:18","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T15:36:18","slug":"michael-saunders-phillies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2017\/01\/16\/michael-saunders-phillies\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Saunders Signs with Philadelphia Phillies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Philadelphia Phillies have come to an agreement with outfielder <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/saundmi01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michael Saunders<\/a><\/strong>, reportedly\u00a0for\u00a0one year and $9 million. Saunders spent his last two seasons with the Toronto Blue Jays before being denied a qualifying offer this off-season.<\/p>\n<p>Saunders, 30, was drafted by the\u00a0Seattle Mariners in the 11th\u00a0round of the 2004 draft and made his debut in Seattle on July 25, 2009. Starting the 2009 season at Triple-A Tacoma, he was hitting .313 with 13 home runs, earning him the promotion. He exceeded rookie status during the 2010 season, appearing in 100 games. Saunders hit to a .211\/.295\/.367 line, hitting 10 home runs in 327 plate appearances that year.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Saunders, phillies deal guarantees $9M, nl source says. 2nd yr $11M option can escalate to $13M. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@Ken_Rosenthal<\/a> had the 9<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JonHeyman\/status\/821081438871322624\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 16, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Michael Saunders Signs with Philadelphia Phillies<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The Mariners kept Michael\u00a0Saunders\u00a0around for\u00a0six seasons before trading him\u00a0to Toronto for<a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/h\/happja01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> J.A. Happ <\/a>in 2015. Due to ongoing problems with his knee from tearing his MCL before the start of the season, Saunders only played nine games in 2015.<\/p>\n<p>2016 was Saunders\u2019 best season, hitting .253\/.338\/.478.\u00a0He hit a career\u00a0high 24 home runs and\u00a032 doubles, earning him All-Star honors. He started the season on a tear before slowing down considerably after the break. In the postseason, Saunders saw play in eight games, getting hot and hitting .381 with a double, one home run and one RBI.<\/p>\n<p>This is a decent signing for Philadelphia. The organization finds a cheap outfielder who finished 2016 on a good note. Saunders has\u00a0shown\u00a0to have some\u00a0power value from the left side, but struck out 157 times in 558 plate appearances in 2016. His play in the outfield has been a liability at times\u00a0with -21 defensive runs saved through his career, although most of that comes from his time in center field.\u00a0Saunders has always been a decent ballplayer when he can maintain his health.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s seen roughly equal time between left and center field in his career with some time in right (135 starts). Saunders has\u00a0shown he\u2019s flexible in his outfield role and\u00a0will likely\u00a0appear in right the most in the upcoming season as he would be an upgrade over <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.cgi?id=quinn-000rom\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Roman Quinn <\/a><\/strong>and<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/a\/altheaa01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Aaron Altherr<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0A big question mark for 2017 is whether or not he can stay healthy. His durability comes\u00a0under scrutiny\u00a0after electing to remove the damage to his MCL in 2015 instead of\u00a0choosing to fix it. If he can stay on the field, this will turn out well for both parties.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/614899526\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.666667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/614899526?et=2dpwfx8lTLB4Wb5rb30r_A&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=7dnbmk6KTKxD_NwShxlGiQkzBuFab7ck001HRcqMEsg=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Philadelphia Phillies have come to an agreement with outfielder Michael Saunders, reportedly\u00a0for\u00a0one year and $9 million. Saunders spent his last two seasons with the Toronto Blue Jays before being denied a qualifying offer this off-season. Saunders, 30, was drafted by the\u00a0Seattle Mariners in the 11th\u00a0round of the 2004 draft and made his debut in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1800,"featured_media":3216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,35],"tags":[68,542,149,69,2262,268,36],"class_list":["post-3201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-phillies","category-news","tag-baseball","tag-featured","tag-michael-saunders","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-free-agency","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-toronto-blue-jays"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1800"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}