A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
At their best awards are just fun and meaningless. When there are a plethora of good candidates for something like the best minor league hitter in your organization, there really is no losers. In the past few years this has not been the case for the Paul Owens Award, where the winning candidates have been rough … Read more
It was a big weekend for hitting in the Phillies system. So this week is a jam packed spotlight, and it doesn’t even include any members of the Williamsport team that has started the year on a 9-0 run. Hitter Spotlight #1: Brian Pointer 6-9 3 HR 2 BB Pointer’s Saturday was probably the best … Read more
This transaction has been the worst kept secret in the organization as Malquin Canelo and Rhys Hoskins waited to play in the SAL All-Star game on Wednesday. Second round pick Scott Kingery and fourth round pick Kyle Martin have been waiting in Clearwater for the BlueClaws to get back from break before joining the team. … Read more
I was going to wait for BP to publish these all in one place, but they haven’t so I thought I would consolidate these reports in a single spot because I think they are very good and important to read. Baseball Prospectus’ Tucker Blair made the journey to Hagerstown where he caught most of a series … Read more
Clearwater technically has not wrapped up the first half of its season (it has two more games with Daytona before that), but the All-Star break gives as good a time as any to check in on the Threshers to see how things are going in Florida. Crawford Rampages: For a month J.P. Crawford used the … Read more
Pitching Spotlight #1: RHP Chris Oliver – 7 IP 7 H 0 R 0 BB 6 K (98 pitches/66 strikes) Oliver’s pro debut could not have gone much worse. The Phillies messed with his delivery and tried introducing a true slider (Oliver throws a slider that he calls a curveball) and the result was an … Read more
Team Page Overview: The BlueClaws are far from the most stacked team in the system, the only top 10 prospects are defensive minded Deivi Grullon and Carlos Tocci. The pitching staff is fairly unheralded, but features a pair of very interesting Latin arms in Ricardo Pinto and Elniery Garcia that join a pair of returning … Read more
Positional Overviews: C|1B|2B|SS|3B|LF/RF|CF|SP (Upper)|SP (Lower) Depth Chart: Age Likely 2015 Level Top 50 Ryan Howard 35 MLB Darin Ruf 28 MLB Chris McGuiness 26 AAA Brock Stassi 25 AA Art Charles 24 AA Rhys Hoskins 22 A+ 37 Wilmer Oberto 22 A- Positional Overview: Since 2005 the first base position on the major league level has … Read more
This group from 31-40 is full of the players I was excited to put in my Top 30, but the Phillies went ahead and, since August, acquired 7 players that are in the Top 30 of this list. This leaves a group of 10 players with some real talent and major league upside. Traditionally, because of the … Read more
Contrary to the name the BA draft Report Cards contain no grades, no comparisons, and to someone familiar with the Phillies system it is not going to add a lot to your knowledge. But the report cards are always fun little snapshots looking back at this past June. So here are some of the superlatives … Read more