A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Matt Winkelman 
Today Ben Lively was promoted to AAA to replace the injured Mark Appel. There is a lot of buzz around Ben Lively this year, a 1.87 ERA in AA will do that. Lively also has some name recognition. He was the sole return for Marlon Byrd and was a borderline Top 10 prospect coming into … Read more
I realize that I have not been writing as much here as I have been writing over at The Good Phight. I am not going to say I will be writing here more, I have a finite amount of time, but I will be still writing here. Also I am excited that we have a … Read more
J.P. Crawford is going from Reading to Lehigh Valley in what is his final tuneup on his way to the majors. Think of the IronPigs as finishing school for the talented shortstop, as I don’t expect him to spend as much time there as Maikel Franco and Nick Williams will ultimately spend there. Crawford’s approach … Read more
In an effort to get through as much as I can this week, not a lot of long answers and not a long intro. @comedicCPA – What can JP Crawford do to add power? change in approach? Can he do it while also keeping a .400ish OBP? The raw strength is there for Crawford, I saw … Read more
We are two months from the 4 year anniversary of the Phillies sending Hunter Pence to San Francisco for Seth Rosin, Nate Schierholtz, and Tommy Joseph. Joseph was the real prize of the deal, a former 2009 2nd round pick who was in AA blocked behind Buster Posey. In the Phillies system he would take … Read more
Much has been made of the Phillies’ record in 1 run games. The 11-3 mark has been pointed to as a mark for why the Phillies are sure to regress. But what if this is not a fluke, because 1 run games are an inherently narrow construct that fails to account for the circumstances that … Read more
July 2 is just about two months away and the Phillies have the largest bonus pool. The fan expectation the last few years has been for the Phillies to spend a lot of money, especially on Cubans, and just blow their whole pol out. Those fans are going to be disappointed again as the Phillies … Read more
I have been wanting to write about the Phillies’ run differential, its predictive value, and the overall construction of a team that combines the truly awful and the dominant, for a while now. The grander discussions of Pythagorean record will have to wait for another day because I want to talk about the amazing and … Read more
Coming into the season it looked like the #1 pick was coming to come down to pitchers with Jason Groome and Riley Pint from the HS side and A.J. Puk and Alec Hanson from the college side. Right now it seems the Phillies have focused in on Puk, but Groome remains the top player on … Read more
Start by some injuries and some returns from injuries there has been some shuffling on the minor league level this week. I am going to quickly run through all of the transactions and then talk about the impact. Adam Morgan recalled by the Phillies Luis Garcia optioned to AAA Alec Asher promoted to AAA Severino … Read more