A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
The Phillies will be joining the Mets, Angels, Yankees, and Giants on the Scottsdale Scorpions roster for the Arizona Fall League. The Phillies are sending six players in RHP Victor Arano, RHP Miguel Nunez, LHP Brandon Leibrandt, 2B Scott Kingery, 3B Mitch Walding, and OF Andrew Pullin. The group lacks the star power of last year’s … Read more
The Lakewood BlueClaws were the Phillies’ worst affiliate during the first half of the 2015 season. They put up a 29-40 record on the back of a horrendous start. Then over the course of the season they had their 3 best starting pitchers (Luke Leftwich, Shane Watson, and Drew Anderson), three of their best hitters … Read more
It has been a good year for low minors pitching and it also has been a bounceback year for the Phillies much maligned 2012 draft class. The player that sits at the intersection of both is RHP Drew Anderson. Anderson currently has a 2.80 ERA across two levels and 13 starts to go with a … Read more
I put on Sunday’s Reading game with the goal of continuing to get looks at Andrew Pullin, who I still don’t have a grasp on. Instead it was Nick Pivetta on the mound who consumed my interest. Pivetta is not an unknown prospect, he ended up sandwiched between his Reading teammates Rhys Hoskins and Dylan … Read more
Today the Reading Fightins did Round 2 of their preparations for their playoff run. Roman Quinn is back to the team after his rehab assignment in the GCL. Joining Quinn in Reading are right handed reliever Jesen Therrien and third baseman Mitch Walding. Therrien helps add another arm to the Reading pen that lost some arms … Read more
I feel like I haven’t just written in a while so pardon me while I talk about the potentially inane, reliever promotions. We can start with the non pitcher move as Carlos Alonso adds another trip in his back and forth between Reading and Lehigh Valley. The infielder is a good org player who has … Read more
There has been a lot written about Phillies leadership mentioning rebuilding around pitching. Given that they received back a combined 17 pitchers in notable trades in the recent phase of their rebuild it is hard to argue against those comments. Most of those trades have brought back pieces in the high minors, what about rebuilding … Read more
Cesar Hernandez showed signs last year that he could at least be a quality MLB player. He did a solid job of getting on base out of the leadoff spot and working counts. This year, however, he has shown to be anything but a quality MLB player. He has a .248/.301/.301 slashline at the moment … Read more
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
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