A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Matt Winkelman 
Let’s get the tough part out of the way. This is a sad day. Ruiz was the underrated member of the championship Phillies, the heart and soul of the team and was the maestro of one of the greatest pitching staffs ever assembled. He won’t be a Hall of Famer, but he should be a … Read more
The Lakewood BlueClaws were the Phillies’ worst affiliate during the first half of the 2015 season. They put up a 29-40 record on the back of a horrendous start. Then over the course of the season they had their 3 best starting pitchers (Luke Leftwich, Shane Watson, and Drew Anderson), three of their best hitters … Read more
For the second year in a row Mike Drago of the Reading Eagle asked me to participate in his end of year prospect rankings. The rankings aggregated rankings from bloggers, beat writers, announcers, and those that cover prospects for public sites. You can read about the 2015 list here and I am going to do kind … Read more
I am continuously asked on Twitter about who the Phillies will protect in the upcoming Rule 5 draft. We are still over 3 months from the protection deadline with both September call ups and Arizona Fall League between now and then. This may all change, but I wanted to touch on the names and some … Read more
It has been a good year for low minors pitching and it also has been a bounceback year for the Phillies much maligned 2012 draft class. The player that sits at the intersection of both is RHP Drew Anderson. Anderson currently has a 2.80 ERA across two levels and 13 starts to go with a … Read more
I put on Sunday’s Reading game with the goal of continuing to get looks at Andrew Pullin, who I still don’t have a grasp on. Instead it was Nick Pivetta on the mound who consumed my interest. Pivetta is not an unknown prospect, he ended up sandwiched between his Reading teammates Rhys Hoskins and Dylan … Read more
Last year at the trade deadline the Phillies traded Cole Hamels and Jake Diekman for a package of players widely considered to be the building blocks of the next great Phillies team. At the center of the deal were 3 Top 100 prospects in Nick Williams, Jake Thompson, and Jorge Alfaro. At this point it … Read more
Today the Reading Fightins did Round 2 of their preparations for their playoff run. Roman Quinn is back to the team after his rehab assignment in the GCL. Joining Quinn in Reading are right handed reliever Jesen Therrien and third baseman Mitch Walding. Therrien helps add another arm to the Reading pen that lost some arms … Read more
The Phillies don’t have the best farm system in baseball, and it is easy to look at a list like this and see a system bolstered mainly by the trade that sent Cole Hamels to Texas. This list does give me a chance to peel back the top of the system a bit to show … Read more
I feel like I haven’t just written in a while so pardon me while I talk about the potentially inane, reliever promotions. We can start with the non pitcher move as Carlos Alonso adds another trip in his back and forth between Reading and Lehigh Valley. The infielder is a good org player who has … Read more