A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Matt Winkelman 
You cannot predict baseball, it causes wonder and excitement, it can also cause crush heartbreak and sadness. No player exemplifies this like Tommy Joseph. A former 2nd round pick and fringe Top 100 prospect, Joseph was the prize of the the trade that sent Hunter Pence to San Francisco in 2012. He was a big … Read more
The Phillies entered the season with two good reliever prospects. One of those (Jimmy Cordero) went down early in the year, the other blazed through the minors to make his debut at age 23. Edubray Ramos’ journey to the majors has not been a straight one. He was out of baseball less than a year after signing … Read more
With the influx of new starting pitching prospects into the system from trades it was inevitable that some of the old wave of starting pitching would get their chance in the bullpen to resurrect their careers. If you look at Severino Gonzalez’s season in the right light it looks like he might have a bright … Read more
The Phillies entered the year with a lot of excitement around their young pitching. Zach Eflin was one of three starting pitchers in the Phillies Top 10 prospects that would open the year in AAA. Eflin would power his way through Lehigh Valley and reach the majors first among that group of young starters, making … Read more
Middle relievers get a reputation for being fungible and replaceable. In this era of hard throwing arms and shutdown bullpens that mindset may be changing. However, if you want an example of the fungible reliever the Phillies have many examples. This year they graduated RHP Colton Murray, who has already seen his time on the … Read more
At the beginning of the year I made a bunch of stats predictions as an exercise in thinking about players, level of competition, park factors, and other things. I was wrong on a lot of things, so might as well revisit it. The original predictions are here. Batting Average: Prediction: Rhys Hoskins Actual: Mark Laird … Read more
For the second year in a row the Phillies attempted to catch lightning in a bottle with an outfielder in the Rule 5 draft. Unlike Odubel Herrera, Goeddel came with some hype as a former first round pick who has an established hit tool. It turns out that jumping from AA to the majors is … Read more
The ranking season continues with the Eastern League and Florida State League Top 20s. Florida State League: #14 – Scott Kingery Eastern League: #6 J.P. Crawford #12 Jorge Alfaro #13 Dylan Cozens Thoughts: Before jumping into my normal bullet points of thoughts, I wanted to talk about Cozens at #13 on this list. It is … Read more
There was a time when some worried that the Phillies had too much left handed starting pitching. Their rotation was headlined by Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels, and their top prospects were Jesse Biddle and Adam Morgan. This year the only left handed starting pitcher the Phillies used was Adam Morgan. The top pitching prospects … Read more
Ranking season goes ever onward and we are now firmly into Baseball America’s league Top 20 prospects. Joining the GCL list we now have the NYPL list and SAL list. I am going to address the NYPL list first before going into my philosophical differences with the SAL list. New York-Penn League Top 20: (Link) … Read more