A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Matt Winkelman 
Baseball analytics still exist in a paradigm where the goal for many is to find or develop a “holy grail” singular stat that says whether a player is good or not. This is not limited to the WAR based pursuits that will likely at some point start to include data from things like StatCast to … Read more
We won’t be getting one of these tomorrow as the Rays have not yet moved into the 21st century. The pitching was not great as Pivetta was stymied by a combination of poor command and bad defense. The same would plague Elniery Garcia, who was once again 91-93 with his fastball and broke off some … Read more
This afternoon the Phillies took on the Rays and were crushed. Before talking about baseball players I would like to take this opportunity to talk about how unwatchable the Phillies TV broadcast is. During Drew Anderson’s first inning of work the broadcast talked about how great it is to see the young players in camp … Read more
I didn’t get a chance to watch this weekend’s games live so I am just catching up on them now. Quick Thoughts: The Clearwater gun has a history of being hot, but Ricardo Pinto’s 95-97 was a good 3-4 mph faster than where Appel and Rodriguez were. There is a chance he ends up in … Read more
The Phillies lost to the Yankees in the Grapefruit League opener. Some Quick Thoughts: J.P. Crawford is working counts but not getting anything for it, two weak groundballs in 3-1 counts today. Nick Williams took some aggressive hacks in his AB, but lining the ball up the middle is a good sign. The bad relievers … Read more
I don’t write for money, the ads on this site last year made enough money to pay for the domain name and website hosting. This isn’t my job, it is a hobby, it is an obsession, and one I am not sure if I want to make it my job. This has led to a … Read more
When the Phillies traded Cole Hamels they were supposed to get 3 big time prospects and 2 other guys. It turns out one of those other guys (Jerad Eickhoff) should have been a bigger time prospect, but the eyes were still on the other prospects in the deal. Thompson was the 3rd player from the … Read more
It is hard during this time of year to interact with prospects without running into a ranking list. This got me thinking about the first ranking I wrote and how results don’t equal the process. I had been writing for Phuture Phillies for a few months and had somehow ended up as the de facto … Read more
One of my favorite parts of doing a Top 50 prospect list is the exercise of statistically breaking down the list. I think it provides a larger snapshot of trends in the system. Because of things like risk, the Top 50 itself slants older and higher level. It also favors starting pitchers to relief pitchers. … Read more
I often get questions about whether the Phillies have elite prospects, prospects that are foundational pieces to the next great Phillies team. The answer is yes, and breaking up the list into groups of 5 highlights this. At this point, there is probably prospect fatigue on J.P. Crawford, Jorge Alfaro, and Nick Williams. Depending on … Read more