This week has been Phillies prospect week across the internet it seems. Yesterday Baseball HQ put out their top 15 Phillies prospect list. The list is devised with an eye towards fantasy so the order may be slightly different than a standard list, but the writer of the list Brent Hershey put it best in a conversation I had with him, that in the end we are still looking for impact players. If you have been reading here for a while, you are also well aware that the actual order of a list is not as important as what is written with the list. So while there are some fantasy baseball bits to this I wanted to highlight the list because Brent is in the Northeast and attends a good amount of Phillies affiliate games and the writeups here are good. The full article is free and you can find it here (and you should read it).
Here is the list itself:
- J.P. Crawford
- Nick Williams
- Mark Appel
- Jake Thompson
- Roman Quinn
- Jorge Alfaro
- Cornelius Randolph
- Franklyn Kilome
- Adonis Medina
- Andrew Knapp
- Ricardo Pinto
- Scott Kingery
- Zach Eflin
- Jhailyn Ortiz
- Jose Pujols
Overall the list is not really out of the ordinary, we can argue the order but no one looks to be egregiously out of place. So just a few other thoughts from the writeups:
- Good luck nailing down what Jhailyn Ortiz will be. The power is real, the risk is real. He could be 40+ HR monster in LF or he could be first baseman that never reaches the upper minors. He is going to be fun to follow.
- Jose Pujols is Ortiz 3 years in the future with not all the adjustments made and better defensive tools. I will wait until he comes up in the Top 50 to gush about Pujols’ raw tools, but the kid has huge upside.
- Brent echos something that Jeff said in the BP writeup about Adonis Medina (and you could carry this to Ricardo Pinto as well), people are going to knock the size of a lot of the Latin arms that are smaller 6’0″ 6’1″ guys, and not the big physical pitchers like Eflin/Appel/Thompson. At the end of the day, stuff matters and while there is not infinite growth being 19 with a FB up to 97 and potential for three plus pitches is more than enough at any size.
- Appel over Thompson might give pause to some of you, but if you believe that Appel can fix the easy things and lower his volatility while also worrying about Thompson’s changeup, they are easy to flip back and forth.
- It is weird that Cornelius Randolph might be the safest hitter outside Crawford on this list. Almost all of his risk is proximity based, no one has any doubts about whether he will hit.
it’s not that i don’t like Jhailyn Ortiz, i think it’s too early to put him in Top 20 considering how deep the Phillies farm system had become. there are good signs from Ortiz during the lnstructs, but i will withhold any judgment until he played and performed in an organized league. So Ortiz ranked ahead of Cozens, Hoskins, Canelo and Grullon (I’m only counting the hitting prospects) this early i think is out of ordinary.
To me, Encarnacion (rather than Pujols) is a good comp to Ortiz. Encarnacion cannot crack Top 20-25 after 2 1/2 yrs playing so i’m a little cautios to rank Ortiz in my Top 30 (for now).
That would be a fairly strong indictment of Sal’s crew. We dropped $4 mill on Ortiz. Encarnacion is the second highest recent bonus, although far short of Ortiz.
@allentown1 – indictment is a strong word that i don’t even use since i don’t think you get my point. Ortiz alone (and Encanacion if you include him) should not determine the overall success of Sal’s group.
Except for Ortiz splurge, Sal’s team always work within the spending limit, thus, limiting their ability to get the premium latin talents which eventually warrants higher ranking because of their pedigree alone. The success of Kilome’s, Pinto’s, Medina’s Canelo’s and the overall impact of the Latin prospects in the depth of the Phillies Farm System is the barometer to gauge Sal’s Team. IMO, they did a VERY GOOD job considering the resources they have, and i hope that new FO will appreciate that.
Ortiz’s ranking is different from Sal’s work. First, The Phillies’ Farm in 2016 grew deep that they are a lot of legitimate prospects. Maybe after XST, when Ortiz starts to play and hit against pitchers, he might show us that he’s legit. But as far as I’m concern, he is still 2-3 years to make impact in the farm system.
What i dont understand is why their intl resources are limited. This team has been shedding payroll for 3+ years now. An international draft is closer than ever. A wealthy team who doesn’t blow out their IFA cap before the draft is established is not using a good strategy.
I know there are consequences for overspending, and they havent wanted to “pay” the two year peanalty. Unfortunately, that has put extra emphasis on the Ortiz decision. They never went all in on guys like Puig, Moncada, Mondesi, Guerrero, etc to avoid restrictions on future IFA classes. Ortiz, so far, is the culmination of all this waiting. He will always be compared to these other guys.
I have always given Sal and his team credit for finding gems like Kilome among the lower-priced LA talent. They do an excellent job at that half of their assignment. To me, a successful scouting team also has to hit on the guys they utterly fall in love with — the players for whom they lay out $1 million or $4 million. This is where the bulk of the budget is spent and where you should expect to harvest your stars. Depending whom you read, Ortiz cost us $4-4.2 million to sign. For those $, more than we generally spend in a couple years of international bonuses, he had better be among our top 20 prospects. You comped him to Encarnacion and said that after 2-1/2 seasons, Encarnacion cannot crack our top 25. Yes, you didn’t use the word ‘indictment’, but if our two biggest $ recent signings by Sal and his crew can’t crack the top 25, that is a severe indictment. Pujols has tools, but is a long shot, who hasn’t established himself as a solid prospect after 4 seasons in the organization and is still in short-season ball, OPSing .670 at Williamsport. If you really believe that Pujols is a good comp for Ortiz, that is an extremely damning indictment for a guy we gave over $4 mill, just about our entire international signings haul for this current signing season.
Why is Rhys Hoskins not more highly regarded? All he’s done is hit, hit for power, and shown great consistency so far over 3 levels of minor league ball in his year and a half as a pro (from the college ranks).
Because he is a first baseman without standout tools. He has a solid hit tool and solid power, but nothing that says more than ordinary first baseman as a major leaguer at his best. Because he is R/R that means he is at a slight defensive disadvantage and that if his bat slips he is on the wrong side of the platoon.
In the end it is a combination of the lack of ceiling and risk that put him a bit lower in this system. A year ago he is probably a top 10 prospect, but he is not going to get that kind of buzz right now.