A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
The modern major league roster construction has bullpens made up of players with minor league options remaining. This means some of the young pitchers in camp such as Austin Davis and Yacksel Rios are functionally prospects, but not by service time and innings. There are no open competitions for the majors involving pitching prospects, but … Read more
Not every prospect that will set foot on a major league field will be an impact player. The drafts under Johnny Almaraz have done a very good job of finding players who look like major league contributors regardless of the round they were drafted in. Pitchers like Kyle Dohy and Zach Warren may have been … Read more
Last night was the deadline for teams to add prospects to their 40 man rosters to protect them from the Rule 5 draft. As expected, the Phillies added RHP Adonis Medina, RHP Edgar Garcia, and SS Arquimedes Gamboa. The additions bring their roster to 38, though it is functionally 37 with Justin Bour reportedly put … Read more
I decided to do a Top 30 list this year because it was as deep as I felt I could go while keeping the integrity of a list. However, 30 is just an arbitrary cut off and there are more players worth talking about. So here is a collection of other prospects I have thoughts … Read more
Development is not linear. It is easy to look at many in this group of prospects and see disappointment. It is true that some of the prospects in this range dropped off cover the 2017 season, others jumped forward as they started into their pro careers, and two in Victor Arano and Ben Lively made … Read more
Last year the Lakewood BlueClaws rode a rotation of Dominican RHPs to the South Atlantic League championship game. This year that core group (Franklyn Kilome, Jose Taveras, Alberto Tirado, and Seranthony Dominguez) was supposed to be the center of the Clearwater rotation. They were joined by 2016 5th round pick, Cole Irvin, a polished 22 … Read more
There are many flaws with ranking prospects. One of the biggest is where to end your list, and in the end we gravitate to nice round numbers because they are more aesthetically pleasing. This leaves us with an abrupt end to the creation of the list and an abrupt beginning to the journey. These lucky … Read more
There has been a lot written about Phillies leadership mentioning rebuilding around pitching. Given that they received back a combined 17 pitchers in notable trades in the recent phase of their rebuild it is hard to argue against those comments. Most of those trades have brought back pieces in the high minors, what about rebuilding … Read more
Last year I held off until August 1 to a midseason ranking, with the Phillies big trade chips it made sense to wait to integrate them. This year I am going to hold off until August 1 for a different reason, I want time. Right now the Phillies have not signed all of their draft … Read more