John Sickels has put his Phillies Top 20 list up in Minor League Ball. John is consistently higher on established players than low minors players. I will highly recommend his writeup on Jesse Biddle and the effects of a concussion. The piece is free to read so I won’t summarize the paragraphs, if you want to know who I think is high and low you can compare it to my Top 50. So here is the list.
- J.P. Crawford
- Aaron Nola
- Maikel Franco
- Ben Lively
- Jesse Biddle
- Zach Eflin
- Roman Quinn
- Jesmuel Valentin
- Matt Imhof
- Kelly Dugan
- Aaron Brown
- Tom Windle
- Odubel Herrera
- Yoel Mecias
- Dylan Cozens
- Carlos Tocci
- Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez
- Victor Arano
- Aaron Altherr
- Deivi Grullon
Others Considered: Drew Anderson, Elvis Aruajo, Willians Astudillo, Luis Encarnacion, Arquimedes Gamboa, Elniery Garcia, Franklyn Kilome, Andrew Knapp, Brandon Leibrandt, Colton Murray, Nefi Ogando, Andy Oliver, Cameron Perkins, Ricardo Pinto, Jose Pujols, Andrew Pullin, Edubray Ramos, Joely Rodriguez, Cord Sandberg, Jiandido Tromp
Who is Andy Oliver?
Probably Chris.
The other Rule 5 guy they took, former top prospect with Tigers, showed flashes of dominance out of the pen last year as a LHP at 94-97. Poor control
DeFriggin…here is a nice report from MLB’s Bernie Pleskff’s (former scout) on LHP Andy Oliver:
“…….strong arm and can bring his fastball from 93 to 97 mph. … throws a very credible slider. The Phillies will work with him to refine his control, as he walked an average of 6.6 hitters per nine innings last season. But the southpaw also struck out 12 per nine. A starter in his past, Oliver can work in the bullpen as well”
But he is a Rule 5 guy and for some reason, people seem to get overly excited about Rule 5 acquisitions.
Matt —
I see Sickels is taking pre-orders for his prospect guide. I realize this might be dicey question for you, but do you have any thoughts on which of the many annual prospect books you’d recommend newbie? I’ve just recently started getting into the minors, and while I’d like to have them all, I can only afford one …
My critera would be
1) broad coverage of a large number of prospects, not just the top ones
2) grades for all tools, not just a paragraph that only talks about one
3) I really, really like analysts that are honest about saying where they differ from the consensus.