Name Tommy Joseph Role Baseball player | Education Horizon High School | |
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Current team Lehigh Valley IronPigs (#38 / Catcher) Profiles | ||
Tommy joseph switches teams
Thomas Richard Joseph (born July 16, 1991) is an American professional baseball first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball (MLB).
Contents
- Tommy joseph switches teams
- Phillies rhp ethan martin warming up with c tommy joseph
- High school
- Professional career
- References
Phillies rhp ethan martin warming up with c tommy joseph
High school
Joseph attended Horizon High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he played for the school's baseball team. A first baseman in his first three years of high school, Joseph became a catcher in his senior year. In 2009, he was named the Arizona high school player of the year.
Professional career
The Giants selected Joseph in the second round, with the 55th overall selection, of the 2009 Major League Baseball Draft as a catcher and first baseman. In 2010, Joseph was named a South Atlantic League all-star for his performance with the Augusta GreenJackets. He suffered a concussion during the 2010 season. The Giants invited Joseph to spring training in 2011. Joseph played for the Richmond Flying Squirrels of the Class AA Eastern League in 2012, and appeared in the All-Star Futures Game that year.
During the 2012 season, the Giants traded Joseph with Nate Schierholtz and Seth Rosin to the Philadelphia Phillies for Hunter Pence. The Phillies assigned Joseph to the Reading Fightin Phils of the Eastern League. After the 2012 season, he was assigned to the Peoria Javelinas of the Arizona Fall League (AFL), and participated in the AFL Rising Stars Game.
Joseph played in 36 games in the 2013 season due to a concussion. The Phillies added him to their 40-man roster on November 20, 2013, to protect him from being exposed to the Rule 5 draft. Joseph suffered a wrist injury in 2014 which limited him to 27 games played, and required season ending surgery. Joseph began the 2015 season with the Lehigh Valley IronPigs of the Class AAA International League, where he suffered his third concussion in May 2015. Due to the concussions, the Phillies converted him into a first baseman.
After posting a .347 average and a .611 slugging percentage in the first 27 games of the 2016 season, the Phillies promoted Joseph from Lehigh Valley to the major leagues on May 13, 2016. He hit his first major league home run on May 17. On June 1, Phillies manager Pete Mackanin announced his plans to give Joseph extended playing time at first base and keep the slumping veteran Ryan Howard on the bench. Joseph officially supplanted Howard as the everyday first baseman on June 10, and he punctuated the move by hitting his sixth and seventh home runs of the season that day, with Mackanin calling Joseph "the real deal".