Philadelphia Phillies ink Grady Sizemore to minor-league deal

According to a report by Ryan Lawrence of the Philadelphia Daily News, recently released outfielder Grady Sizemore has signed a minor-league deal with the Philadelphia Phillies. Lawrence notes that the Phillies lack depth in the outfield, necessitating the Phils taking the chance on the 31-year-old.

There’s this from Lawrence’s report:

"Taking a flyer on Sizemore can’t hurt given the Phillies current outfield situation. They arguably have the least productive outfield in baseball.Domonic Brown (.596) and Ben Revere (.615) have the third and fifth worst OPS, respectively, among the 60 major league outfielders that qualify. Only Atlanta’s B.J. Upton has struck out more times than Marlon Byrd (89 Ks) among major league outfielders."

Having any offensive output from the outfield would be beneficial to Philly. Phils outfielders own a combined slashline of .239/.294/.368. Only the Chicago Cubs outfielders have a lower combined batting average. And Philly’s combined OF fWAR of -0.4 is second-lowest in the league.

Despite that lack of outfield production and being in last place in the National League East, the Phillies trail division-leading Washington by only six games. Guess you could also say Philly is fortunate that no team within the division is able to run away from the rest of the pack.

In his somewhat short stint with the Boston Red Sox, Sizemore produced a less than flattering slashline of .216/.288/.324 with a pair of home runs and 15 RBI in 205 plate appearances. He also scored 14 runs.

Sizemore got off to a hot start, displaying a slashline of .364/.440/.591 after his first seven games of the season (25 PA). But the wheels started to fall off soon thereafter. In his final 43 games, his slashline fell to .194/.267/.271 in 172 PA.

Sizemore can’t do worse, can he?

The Red Sox had released Sizemore on June 18.