Phillies Minor League Monthly Retrospective – April 2026

Stock Changes

*Rankings are from preseason rankings

Stock Up

RHP Gage Wood (#4) – If I were to put out a ranking today, Wood would rank #2 in the system purely on graduations in front of him, but that sort of change in ordinal ranking doesn’t communicate how his outlook has changed over the first month of the season. The Phillies haven’t had Wood pitch deep into games as they look to manage his overall season workload, but his stuff has stayed consistent inning to inning and start to start. His fastball has averaged about 96 mph with good shape and solid outcomes. His slider has become a second plus pitch, while being a pitch he can throw for strikes. He has struggled against left handed hitters, and a lot of that can be attributed to his curveball and splitter flashing positive traits, but lacking consistency. Wood’s curveball was one of his big pitches in college, and a lot of his problem has been in commanding it and it is logical to see that improving with time. Wood has flashed high end upside, but looks like he should be a mid rotation starter if he can stay healthy.

RHP Brad Pacheco (#32) – Entering 2025 I had Brad Pacheco as a rising prospect, but he really struggled through the season and slipped down the rankings this offseason. His fastballs lacked positive shape and he lacked a high 80s bridge pitch. This season he is sitting 95-97, touching 99 in the breakout, and his four seam fastball shape is improved. He has added a high 80s cutter that looks like a plus pitch and is already bringing his fastball usage down. Still only 20 years old, Pacheco has now moved up into the tier of pitching prospects behind Gage Wood and if he can hold these improvements might have a mid rotation ceiling.

C Alirio Ferrebus (#29) – Ferrebus has been one of the best hitters in the FSL. He has high end raw power and elite contact ability. He does chase too much, and he isn’t optimized for the best contact quality outcomes, but he has turned a good number of ground balls into line drives and fly balls. Those sort of swing happy, high contact type hitters have a tendency to have their contact quality regress at higher levels, and we have seen that happen to Ferrebus in the past. However, the combination of contact and power is really impressive, especially if he can stay behind the plate. That is an open question though, and he still does not look particularly natural there. His offensive success this year helps quell some of the doubts that appeared after his time with the Threshers last year, and puts him back on the pace he was on in the middle of last season.

SS Bryan Rincon (#44) – Between injuries and ineffectiveness, it has been a very poor last two years for Rincon. After positive signs this spring, Rincon has seemingly turned everything around. He has gotten a bit more aggressive at the plate, but almost entirely when it comes to in zone pitches. He is hitting the ball a bit harder and eliminated some of his weaker contact. He isn’t quite having a purely Reading fueled breakout, but doubling his home run to fly ball rate points to some amount of variance and luck. He still strikes out a bit too much for a player who is not hiding some sort of untapped power potential, and that probably puts a ceiling on him as a player. He has a good glove, but he isn’t elite in a way that he won’t need to hit. He was the #9 prospect in the system prior to 2024 and had fallen to #16 a year ago before a precipitous drop this offseason, and he is probably back in the teens again. His upside is probably more second division starter or good bench player who should be positionally and platoon flexible due to his switch hitting.

RHP Luke Gabrysh (UR) – The Phillies talked Gabrysh up this offseason, due to a velocity increase. Gabrysh has sat mid 90s across multiple innings, and while it is not a particularly good fastball the added velocity does make it less of a liability. Gabrysh has been able to dominate with Jersey Shore (4 walks and 27 strikeouts in 18.1 innings) with his cutter and sweeper. That has allowed him to hold right handed hitters to a .495 OPS, however he has struggled against left handed batters (.812 OPS). Gabrysh will need to find a changeup or a better use of his cutter to compete against lefties, otherwise he is trending more towards reliever than starter.

Stock Down

OF Devin Saltiban (#16) – Coming off a good season in Australia and move back to the outfield, it looked like Saltiban might be primed for a breakout. So far both his defense and offense have struggled. His contact rate is up, but he is swinging more often with a sharp drop in walk rate and contact quality. If he isn’t a center fielder and he isn’t at least getting to his raw power, he isn’t really a prospect. The only real positive to Saltiban’s season is he is 10 for 10 on stolen base attempts.

RHP Gabe Craig (#26) – The selling point of Gabe Craig in the draft was that he was polished and would move through a system quickly, even if his bullpen ceiling wasn’t high leverage. Instead after walking 3 batters in 32 college innings last year, Craig has walked 7 batters in 8 innings. His fastball velocity is where it was last year, averaging 94, with the only real difference is that he also throwing a sinker. His sweeper is bigger than it was last year, but it is not missing as many bats. His pitches are all getting hit in the zone, and that is mixing with an inability to throw strikes and is leading to lowered chase rates. It isn’t that Craig can’t put it together, but he looks much more like the other arms in the org.

RHP Jean Cabrera (#13) – There is no such thing as a safe back end starting pitcher, and no one really thought Cabrera was better than that. Through spring training and his first start he looked very workman like. His fastball velocity is consistent, to up, from last year, but his stuff has not played in AAA. He is not getting whiffs on either fastball, and really only his changeup is missing bats. His four seam fastball is getting hit hard when they make contact with it, and hitters are not expanding the zone against it. His sinker isn’t getting crushed, but hitters are making contact on it in the zone. He is suffering from some bad luck, with a high BABIP and low stand rate, but he needs to get ahead of hitters better. It is sort of a similar situation to Andrew Painter last year, but with worse raw stuff.

Mixed

RHP Matthew Fisher (#7) – Fisher did not appear in a real game in April, instead making his debut with the FCL Phillies in early May. He struggled in Spring Training, with much of it because of his fastball and some shaky control. Fisher has sat 90-93 with his four seam fastball and sinker, and while they have ok shape, they are not particularly dominant. What Fisher has shown is a feel for spin, with 3 distinct breaking balls all with spin rates above 2800 RPM. He will throw some version of these pitches that look like future plus pitches, but what shows through is a base to build out a plus offspeed arsenal in the future. Given Fisher was moving to baseball full time, it was hoped he would take a step forward, particularly in velocity and just because that hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t.

OF Dante Nori (#6) – Nori burst onto the national scene with a great game against Brazil in the WBC, and then not look out of place for the rest of the tournament. Into the regular season, Nori has put up good top line stats, ones that would indicate he has taken a step forward. That isn’t incorrect, Nori has a .187 ISO in the first month of the year with two home runs, putting him halfway to his 2025 total. It has mostly come from getting under the ball more. His HR/FB rate is more than double his 2025 rate. The other side is that he has popped up the ball, a lot, and it hasn’t hurt his BABIP yet and his BABIP is nearly 40 points higher this year. He is also swinging more and missing more on those swings. His walk rate has started to rebound, but he is at 6% down from 13% with an increase in his strikeout rate. The increased aggression at the plate, coupled with a swing more geared to do damage on those swings is good. If Nori can keep the positives and reduce the negatives back to where they were in 2025, it is a big step forward, and makes him a more of an interesting offensive player.

SS Matthew Ferrara (#23) – The Phillies selected Ferrara in the 9th round of the 2025 draft and signed him to an overslot bonus. His brief time playing in 2025 didn’t go particularly well, and he has come out much better in 2026. In particular he has hit the ball harder and has 10 extra base hits in 21 games in April. He has also looked fine playing shortstop. The flip side is that he hit .225 with a 31% strikeout rate, due to a high chase rate and a high whiff rate against offspeed pitches. Ferrara’s current amount of swing and miss offsets the damage he has down with his pull heavy approach, and so he will need to find a more balanced approach or pitch recognition. Ferrara was the youngest player in the Phillies draft class and won’t turn 19 until June so he theoretically has time to work on adjustments.

Monthly Stat Leaders

Hitting

Pitching

Mailbag

@mattrouscher.bsky.social: Thoughts going on Brad Pacheco? Also how would you view the farm after one month of play? What stands out to you? And after 1 month who are you looking forward to tracking the rest of the season?

I already addressed Pacheco in the stock up section, but he sort of ties into the second part of the question. I am intrigued by the pitching. There aren’t a lot of breakout high upside prospects to backfill behind Aidan Miller (when healthy), Andrew Painter, and Justin Crawford so the question is can they refill the depth and can they show that they can take a draft full of pitchers like last year’s and improve them in a meaningful way. I am also tracking the DSL team, they look to be consolidating down and what they have left is actually a bunch of tall lanky hitters (particularly in the outfield) that can hit the ball hard.

@akhil-is-mad.bsky.social: In your opinion, is there any shot at all ferrebus can stick behind the plate? Also, random question sorry, how much would the phillies have to cut from their payroll to not drop 10 spots from their draft slot?

So we are two for two on questions about guys who are obvious breakouts. I do worry about Ferrebus’s ability to stick behind the plate.

The second part comes from before this hot streak. The Phillies would need to get under the $40M tax threshold and they are currently at $70.6M per Cot’s contracts. So that is $31M of pro-rated contracts. Assume they do it halfway through the year, you would have to dump one of Wheeler, Harper, Nola, Turner, or Schwarber and then all of your rentals to do it. It just isn’t worth it or going to happen.

@eanasir.bsky.social: Does the one game call up say anything about what the team thinks of McFarlane?

The Phillies calling up McFarlane for one game, not using him, and then sending him back to AA says they do not really view him as MLB ready. They were desperate for pitching enough to start Alan Rangel’s cooldown and get a fresh arm, but kept Hoffman instead of McFarlane. I don’t think they have soured on McFarlane’s long term outlook, but they said clearly that they didn’t want to see a major league look.

@papergreat.bsky.social: What are your thoughts on Aroon Escobar’s first month? And given that there’s slightly less likelihood of trading our scant few prospects this July, could you envision him as Stott’s replacement in 2028?

It has been fine (and helped by the time between this question being asked and answered). I don’t think he has looked great defensively at third, but they are committed to giving him reps there. He has seen a big jump in contact rate, while dropping his swing rate considerably. His ceiling continues to look like everyday second baseman who is solid offensively, and may struggle on defense.

I think they trade him. If the season doesn’t dictate making a deadline move, I think he is still likely to be moved in offseason. They like Stott, even if he is flawed, and I don’t know if Escobar is a guy you make room for. They are big bat short, and free agency is unlikely to provide that player, and Escobar just feels logical to be included in that deal.

@thomasmrobson.bsky.social: Non-player prospect question. Do you see any managers or coaches working in the lower levels who seem destined for a major league staff future?

The common answer for a while was Greg Brodzinski, but after serving as a manager in the system for a while he has become the Florida Complex Coordinator. That isn’t to say that Greg is less thought of, but that there is a grind for a lot of these guys that can potentially divert the path of slow level by level growth as opposed to former major leaguers or others swooping in. Anthony Contreras is now on the big league staff and Chris Adamson is now the AAA manager after Rob Thomson’s firing, and both are probably more on the Dusty Watham path, but if either ended up as a bench coach that got elevated like Thomson did, it wouldn’t be totally shocking. Wilson Ramos is the manager of the FCL Phillies and he feels like a guy to keep an eye on. As for non-managerial candidates, it is hard to know what everyone is great at. They have coaches they trust, but I don’t know if they are future major league coaches or they just are good at player development and their best role is working with say AA pitchers.

@michaelangiolillo.bsky.social: Is there a world where Anderson Araujo becomes something valuable to this team

If we define valuable as “could be a piece in a trade”, yes there is a clear path to where Araujo is a secondary piece in a low level trade, live Geremy Villoria in the Harrison Bader trade. I don’t currently see a big ceiling for Araujo, including the defensive ability to stick around for a long time. Catcher development can be weird so there is no point in writing him off, it is just he looks more like a second catcher currently than a guy on a starting trajectory.

@joelirvine97.bsky.social: Seems like a lot of the top prospects are in Reading and doing well in a hitters environment but who do you think is closest to getting the call?? Thank you!!

To the majors? I don’t know if anyone is hurtling towards a 2026 call unless it is late in the year for some of the Rule 5 eligible players. We could see Dante Nori’s timeline accelerate, but also he isn’t a great major league fit. I think it is more that when we get to the trade deadline that Nori, Escobar, DeMartini, and Rincon will all be a part of those discussions.

@marsegliaharvie.bsky.social: It’s early but has your top 10 prospect ranking changed significantly after 1 month

The answer is yes, but that is sort of cheating because I have graduated off Crawford and Painter because they are in the majors and not come back. The real answer is not really. So if you remove those two and insert in Francisco Renteria everyone has essentially not really shifted. Alex McFarlane (#11) leapfrogs some guys so the back of the top 10 actually stay in the same rankings. There is significant movement after that. I was totally wrong about Yoniel Curet (#12) and I already highlighted Jean Cabrera, so you see sort of a new cluster of guys on the fringes of the top 10 in Gabriel Marquez, Brad Pacheco, Cody Bowker, Mavis Graves, and Bryan Rincon before we get into some of the low minors hitters.

@jaypb08.bsky.social: It’s still early, but one month in, which prospects appear to be performing above your expectations going into the year, making them more intriguing players for the team’s future? And which ones have been the opposite, with disappointing starts such that their stock look like they may be dropping?

So this is the core of the start of this, but I can highlight some others. Mavis Graves, Griffin Burkholder, John Spikerman, Angel Liranzo, and Zuher Yousuf are all arrow up guys. On the other side Saul Teran, Dylan Campbell, Sean Youngerman, Logan Dawson, Anderson Araujo, and Andrew Walling all have my eyebrow raised about their future.

@papergreat.bsky.social: Not a minor-league question, but I’ll throw it out anyway: What do you think of Crawford’s CF defense so far?

It has been very mixed. I don’t think he is the worse defender in baseball, but his reads aren’t great and he has struggled near walls at times. It is sort of what we expected.

@jaypo.bsky.social: Any word on Obermueller and Fisher making their 2026 debut? Also, how would you rank what you’ve seen out of Wood, Bowker, Youngerman and Craig so far?

Obermueller is recovering from illness, I don’t know when we expect him back. Fisher is with the FCL team. I think Wood has looked great, I think Bowker has been weird but intriguing, I am not that impressed by Youngerman so far, and I addressed my worries about Craig above. I would keep an eye on Brian Walters. His stats aren’t that great and I don’t really think he is going to make it as a starting pitcher, but there is intriguing relief stuff.

@photodave219.fightins.online: Do we have an update on Aidan Miller? Also, what does the starting pitching depth look like for major league call ups

I can’t add anything on Miller beyond what has been publicly reported.

There isn’t really any depth. Alan Rangel is a swing type long reliever and Jean Cabrera has flopped. There was intrigue with Ryan Cusick, but he isn’t a starter. Wilson and Davidson have been bad, and I don’t think it works for Chuck King in the majors. Connor Gillispie looked on track to be the #6 starter but he is now out for the year. If they have a devastating starting pitching, they are in trouble. A little below that, I am sort of intrigued by Luke Russo and Braydon Tucker to be sort of Alan Rangel ceiling bulk reliever types.