A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Matt Winkelman 
The MLB draft starts today June 3 at 7pm. The Phillies have the #14 overall pick, but will not make a pick in the 2nd round, having surrendered their pick to sign Bryce Harper. This means that over 3 days the Phillies will make 39 picks. Follow along for daily recaps and pick by pick … Read more
The 2018 Phillies were a flawed team, and understandably so. They were young at nearly every position. They ran their rotation pretty ragged when all of their young arms stayed healthy all year. Their bullpen had some injuries, but ultimately could not get everyone healthy and effective at the same time. It was frustrating, but … Read more
The modern major league roster construction has bullpens made up of players with minor league options remaining. This means some of the young pitchers in camp such as Austin Davis and Yacksel Rios are functionally prospects, but not by service time and innings. There are no open competitions for the majors involving pitching prospects, but … Read more
Much of Spring Training excitement has been converted to Bryce Harper watch, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t games that are about to occur. Much of the Phillies roster is locked in place, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get a look at some prospects in games this spring. With the lack of camp … Read more
The Phillies continue an offseason of ok value moves by shipping their top prospect and one of their top young hitters to the Marlins for arguably the best catcher in baseball. Before going into what the Phillies gave up, it is important to acknowledge that J.T. Realmuto is very good. He is a well above … Read more
I just wrote 20,000 words about 50 prospects, I put a number in front of each of them. It was a prospect list, and it was my prospect list, and that is an important point here. As an evaluator of baseball players, I am highly biased. I am working with a limited information set, and … Read more
Last season, the Phillies transitioned from rebuild to attempting to contend. They emptied much of the top of their farm system to the majors with J.P. Crawford, Scott Kingery, Jorge Alfaro, Seranthony Dominguez, Roman Quinn, and Victor Arano all graduating to join the Phillies’ young group of players already in the majors. This left a … Read more
Much of writing about prospects is about hope and optimism for the future. However, it can also be about failure and what that means and what the paths out of it are. It is no secret that the Phillies system is down compared to where it was a few years ago. Some of that has … Read more
We want baseball development to be clean and linear, but it is messy and all over the place. A pitcher may only be a good secondary pitch away from becoming a major league starter, but that may be a totally different grip that a coach might introduce. A teenager could still be waiting on achieving … Read more
Not every prospect that will set foot on a major league field will be an impact player. The drafts under Johnny Almaraz have done a very good job of finding players who look like major league contributors regardless of the round they were drafted in. Pitchers like Kyle Dohy and Zach Warren may have been … Read more