The rankings just keep coming out. This past week MLBPipeline threw their hat in the ring with their positional rankings and Top 100. The Phillies were well represented in the Top 100, but not on the positional lists. I have major problems with their rankings, but we will get to that later. Let’s start with the rankings and then talk about them.
Top 100.
5. J.P. Crawford
55. Jake Thompson
64. Nick Williams
70. Mark Appel
84. Cornelius Randolph
96. Jorge Alfaro
99. Roman Quinn
Top 10 Catchers:
3. Jorge Alfaro
Top 10 Second Basemen:
10. Scott Kingery
Top 10 Shortstops:
2. J.P. Crawford
Now onto some thoughts:
- Grade inflation for everyone! The grades on this are way out of line unless you take them as pure ceiling grades. Only one player earned an overall grade of less than 55 (meaning they just are an average player), which is ridiculous given how down a year it is for prospects.
- When the grades did feel right the ranking was way out of order. Nick Williams received a 60H 55P 55S 50A 50F rating, which is a bit low, but even if it is low a player with those qualifications (likely .280 20 HR 15 SB in center field) is a player that should be ranked much much higher on a list.
- Nick Williams’ ranking overall is a complete mystery and I don’t know how to rationalize it.
- I get Thompson being lower than the BP list, his stuff is not dominant enough to erase all of your questions.
- Julio Urias over J.P. Crawford is bad.
- Franklyn Kilome was not on this list, but Quinn and Randolph were. The Top 8 in the Phillies’ system are all in the Top 150 prospects in baseball, there is personal preference at the bottom of the list.
- The prospect points shit is shit. Without tiers it tells you nothing and in its current form it says that a bottom 10-20 prospect is worth about as much as players off the list and that the #1 prospect is worth 100 times as much as the #100 prospect which is laughably bad.
- I get no Andrew Knapp on the catcher list, but I also don’t know all of the catching prospects in the minors to make an argument either way.
- Overall the rankings are slow and reactionary, and seem heavily swayed by AFL stats and hype.
- I would also like to once again emphasize how flawed and unreliable the tool grades are for the list as a whole.
They will attempt a Top 30 Phillies prospects at some point in late February.