A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Starting tomorrow (January 15, 2026) teams can make official signings for international players using their 2026 bonus pool if they turned 16 before the end of August 2025. Typically the players getting notable amounts of signing bonus will be those newly eligible, but the Phillies will typically sign a handful of older players, typically pitchers. … Read more
Starting today (January 15, 2025) teams can begin to make signings for the 2025 year. This season’s signings are obviously thrown into chaos by the Roki Sasaki free agency as the Dodgers, Padres, and Blue Jays may all seek to acquire signing money to lure him or sign players they have committed deals too. Additionally … Read more
We are starting to enter the season of ordered lists of prospects. I have started on mine and have had a few run past me, and there is something very evident, the Phillies system is kind of dull. It isn’t surprising that they will likely be in the middle 10 of prospect lists this offseason. … Read more
I am not an amateur, and I am very not an international amateur scout. Almost all of what I am about to say about players has come from various public sources. That said, much of the international signing deadline, like the draft is about process and philosophy. The Phillies philosophy in Latin America has been … Read more
The Phillies designated Ricardo Pinto for assignment over the weekend when they signed Scott Kingery to a major league deal and brought him to the majors. On Wednesday they traded Pinto to the White Sox for international bonus pool money. Unlike the trade that send Eliezer Alvarez to Texas for cash, the Phillies actually received … Read more
We need to rewind a month here, because I have yet to actually talk about an event that occurred on July 2. The Phillies entered this year with $4,750,000 to spend on international talent this year. We know the end of the story, but let’s go back to the beginning with who they signed, and … Read more
July 2 has come and opened up the new international signing period. The Phillies went ahead and signed six 16 year olds for decent chunks of money. They even added a center fielder whose contract had been voided in MLB’s crackdown on Boston doing what everyone else was already doing. There has been a lot … Read more
July 2 is just about two months away and the Phillies have the largest bonus pool. The fan expectation the last few years has been for the Phillies to spend a lot of money, especially on Cubans, and just blow their whole pol out. Those fans are going to be disappointed again as the Phillies … Read more
There are few in the business with a better feel for the pulse of the international market than Baseball America’s Ben Badler. This past week, Ben has been releasing various tables and rankings of total numbers spendings and signings, before then diving into individual teams. Ben does his breakdowns by calendar year, not signing period, … Read more
Last night the Phillies officially handed a 16 year old outfielder a $4,000,000 signing bonus. During what should have been a celebration it game to my attention via Ryan Lawrence and Eric Chesterton that the amount of Latin America players on the Phillies is concerning some fans. This got me realizing just how little press … Read more