A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Matt Winkelman 
Ranking season is nearing an end, and this week MLB.com has been rolling out their Top Prospects by Position rankings. Aaron Nola missed out on the RHP rankings, but Maikel Franco comes in at #5 on the 3B rankings. The full rankings and writeup are here, with the Top 10 being: Kris Bryant – Cubs … Read more
The Dominican Winter League ended with a tour de force by Maikel Franco who capped off a spectacular playoffs by going 3-4 with two home runs and 7 RBI, including a grand slam. Outside of the short appearance of an injured Darin Ruf, the Dominican was kind to members of the Phillies 40 man roster. … Read more
Even before the Phillies started acquiring minor leaguers, Joe Jordan and the Phillies front office have been hinting that they are going to be taking it slow with their prospects. This morning, Jake Kaplan (New Matt Gelb) had an article up with some more quotes and speculations on the subject. Since each of these moves … Read more
Creating any prospect list is a ton of work behind the scenes, but along the way there are many neat little facts and discoveries. One of my favorite is the list itself. The names involved in it can tell you a lot about the organization and how it acquires talent. There is not a lot of … Read more
The past year has seen a lot of changes in the Phillies system; as the major league club transitions into a rebuilding phase, more and more emphasis is being put on the farm system. A criticism often levied against the Phillies system is that it lacks impact and near term help. As for the impact, I … Read more
As we get closer to the top 10, the players in the system start to separate themselves into specific tiers of talent and profile. In the last three groups of 10 the players could arguably have been slotted in many different orders. Here those groups become smaller and the order starts to become more important. I am making … Read more
Ten Phillies prospects are in town right now, and tonight they went to a Sixers game and there was a picture taken of all ten of them. Top #Phillies prospects at tonight's @Sixers game! (Photo Credit: David Dow, NBA Photos.) pic.twitter.com/6lfFU325vG — Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) January 14, 2015 Can you need them all L to … Read more
The past week and a half I have been buried in writing the Top 50 and generally neglecting the news around the organization. So lets pack some important things into a single post. Phillies Prospect Program: This week the Phillies are hosting their upper minors prospects in Philadelphia for their Prospect Program. The usual participants are … Read more
The Top 30 seems to be the standard for long prospect lists, and so it becomes the standard of comparison across multiple lists. Given that we started at 50 we can see the transition into the Top 30 is fairly gradual, but as we start to really climb up the list we see real quality … Read more
This group from 31-40 is full of the players I was excited to put in my Top 30, but the Phillies went ahead and, since August, acquired 7 players that are in the Top 30 of this list. This leaves a group of 10 players with some real talent and major league upside. Traditionally, because of the … Read more