A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Matt Winkelman 
Let’s jump right into the mailbag. Rei De Bastoni 1 – Why are command and control considered separate tools? Isn’t it impossible to have better command within the strike zone than ability to throw strikes in general? 2 – For pitch sequencing, is it enough that either the pitcher or the catcher has a good … Read more
I have had the draft for this post around for a while and keep forgetting to publish it so I get to cheat a little but with a week of data that could be either instructive or misleading. Anyway I think predictions are fun to think about, and so I viewed making this with more … Read more
Jim Peyton has posted up the first Extended Spring Training roster for the Phillies. Before getting into the specific players, it looks like the Phillies have brought over a lot of latin players (16 Dominican Republic, 22 Venezuela, 2 Panamá, 2 Columbia, 1 Mexico). The number of players from Venezuela is bit surprising and I … Read more
This winter Ricardo Pinto turned a few heads with some high rankings on Phillies top prospect lists. He had just made his stateside debut in Williamsport on a team that does not get a ton of eyes. On first glance Pinto is not physically what you would expect from a good starting pitcher prospect … Read more
Joe Jordan confirmed RHP Drew Anderson had Tommy John surgery last week. Out for the year. #MiLB #Phillies — Jay Floyd (@PhoulBallz) April 14, 2015 Injuries really suck. Anderson was in the back of my Top 30 prospects after a successful 2013 campaign in Williamsport. He dropped to #48 this year after an injury filled … Read more
I have been trying to find things to say about 5 games of minor leagues, but we are still too early to take anything but small sample size observations of things that look slightly different (like Ben Badler’s report that Windle’s velocity was up this season). So with that I will be taking all of … Read more
Team Page Overview: The BlueClaws are far from the most stacked team in the system, the only top 10 prospects are defensive minded Deivi Grullon and Carlos Tocci. The pitching staff is fairly unheralded, but features a pair of very interesting Latin arms in Ricardo Pinto and Elniery Garcia that join a pair of returning … Read more
#Phillies prospect Jesmuel Valentin suspended following domestic arrest: http://t.co/g8823HizCy — NBC Sports Philadelphia (@NBCSPhilly) April 11, 2015 The arrest appears to be related to domestic violence. It is unknown if Valentin will return to the Phillies at any point and right now this is no longer about baseball.
Team Page Overview: Last year the Threshers were possibly the worst team in minor league baseball at the start of the season. They had no players in my Top 30 Phillies prospects and even beyond that it was mostly filler to make out of a roster. Eventually Roman Quinn and J.P. Crawford arrived, and they … Read more
Team Page Overview: Ever since the Phillies completed the trade of Marlon Byrd to Cincinnati for Ben Lively there has been whispers of a stacked Reading rotation. It turns out those whispers have become truth and the Fightin Phils will roll out a rotation of Aaron Nola, Zach Eflin, Jesse Biddle, Ben Lively, and Tom … Read more