Simon Muzziotti was not supposed to make his major league debut last season, but he did.

Basically, the Phillies needed a warm body that was already a part of the 40-man roster, so he jumped from Double-A to the majors and had seven at-bats with the Phillies, going 1-for-7 (.143) and was also hit by a pitch.

From there, Muzziotti didn’t even get a thank you gift of being optioned to Triple-A. Instead, the Phillies sent him where they thought he would start the season had he not been in the majors: Double-A Reading.

With Reading, Muzziotti hit .259 with a career-high five home runs for the Fightins, and made a quick trip to Lehigh Valley - where in five games he batted .313 (5-for-16).

This season, Muzziotti opened the year with the IronPigs and has been nothing short of impressive. In 34 games, he is batting .388, and had a 13-game hitting streak broken in Friday night’s game against Memphis.

The next night, Muzziotti was supposed to have the night off, but pinch-run and stayed in the game as the DH and got a hit in his only plate appearance. He followed that up with a single and a walk on Sunday.

In the month of May, Muzziotti is batting .405 with a .490 on-base percentage and a .522 slugging percentage.

In a weekend interview, Muzziotti admitted that he had developed some bad habits in spring training.

“I got a new routine after spring training,” he said. “I started lazy in spring training, but I’ve got a new routine, new drills. They have helped me get better.”

The new approach has certainly helped the 24-year-old outfielder, and the results are impressive.

But, Muzziotti is in that purgatory sort of place in baseball where for long-term results, he is better served playing regularly at Triple-A than sitting on the bench in the majors.

Like most players, he would prefer to be a major leaguer than playing at Triple-A, but the decision is not his to make. There just are no regular at-bats for him with the Phillies and he would rust on the bench without regular playing time, so he continues to take long bus rides as an IronPig.

While some believe Muzziotti could be playing everyday in the majors, the facts do not quite support that.

This is the first season where Muzziotti has been able to put together an extended, successful streak and over the past two seasons, injuries and visa problems have limited the Venezuelan prospect to just 66 games. The season prior to that was when there was no minor league baseball because of the pandemic, so Muzziotti lost an entire season.

It is likely that with the new approach and newfound maturity, Muzziotti is hitting his stride, but that doesn’t mean he is ready to be an everyday player at the highest level. Instead, it is likely he will only see the majors as a necessity - much like the Phillies faced last season - or as one of the four September additions to the roster.

HANG OUT FOR A WHILE … Even the pitch clock could not keep the IronPigs and Memphis Redbirds from breaching the three-hour time of game barrier. The average length for a nine-inning game in the International League this season has been 2:38, but Memphis and Lehigh Valley had trouble keeping their games to just nine innings. The last two games of their recent series were 10 and 11 innings respectively, taking 3:11 on Saturday night and 3:52 for a Mother’s Day afternoon game. The games were two of just seven IronPigs games that went three hours or more this season, with Sunday’s game being the longest at Coca-Cola Park this year, but the longest of the season was two minutes more when the Pigs played in Syracuse on May 5, and the game went 3:54 for 11 innings. Four of those seven longest games of the season went extra innings.

COUNTING IS HARD ... A lot has changed in baseball, but the number of balls for a walk has been constant. That changed Saturday night at Coca-Cola Park when Memphis first baseman Luken Baker walked on three pitches. There had been a challenge made on a pitch that led to the count being changed, and it apparently confused everyone on the field. On a 2-2 pitch, Baker took a pitch and slowly walked to first, discarding his bat on the way. After media members watched a replay of the at-bat, it was confirmed that it was only three balls, not four. If Baker or anyone in the Memphis dugout knew it, they would stay silent, and nobody in an IronPigs uniform questioned the count.

MIXED REACTION ... Average fans at Coca-Cola Park were confused by the new challenge system being used in minor league baseball. There’s a high percentage of fans at minor league parks that are casual fans and are not up on the rule changes and honestly, teams have not done enough to educate fans on the changes. Those who did know what was going on had a mixed reaction to the challenge. One obvious question is whether the system will be used to evaluate umpires? On Saturday night, not only did the umpires lose track of the count and allow a three-ball walk, but there were 14 challenges on pitches, with 11 calls being overturned. In other words, Brian Walsh, the home plate umpire, was wrong 11 out of 14 times that were challenged, and was responsible for allowing the three-ball walk to Baker. Not a good night.