A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Teams in competition windows are usually in the business of reducing their amount of minor league talent. It is the cost of obtaining players from other teams, and with team record and spending tied to how teams acquire amateur talent the pipeline is squeezed as well. The really obvious answer to this problem has always … Read more
The baseball offseason kicked off in earnest on Monday, especially on the minor league side. Teams needed to clear up their 40 man roster and minor league free agents became eligible at the end of the day. That leads to a flurry of claims, trades, additions, and saying good bye. The Cuts Phillies outright RHP … Read more
The minor league season is over, but there was some news and notes over the last week plus. Arizona Fall League The Phillies are sending 9 players to the Arizona Fall League this year. None of them are Andrew Painter, which is disappointing to some, but is not unsurprising given where he is in his … Read more
I want to do something fun and interesting (at least to me) with rankings this year and walking through my process. However, that requires doing some ranked choice voting, and I didn’t want to go down that full path without trialing it, so I wanted a test run with something a bit more light. So … Read more
Each year the Phillies honor one pitcher and one hitter (with some occasional small exceptions) with the Paul Owens Award as the best hitting and pitching performance of the year. It is not always the best prospect, but you can see below that sometimes the best prospect, particularly hitter just also is the best performer. … Read more
Pedro Peralta is listed at 5’11” 185lbs, and he probably is decently close to the height, and I am terrible at guessing weight, but my guess is fairly close there as well. Two weeks ago, July 27, he turned 18 year old. The Phillies originally signed him back in January of 2023 for $140,000, and … Read more
The Rule 5 draft has largely been rendered obsolete as a talent acquisition tool, but the threat of it and the managing of the 40 man roster spurs other parts of player movement. The Phillies under Dave Dombrowski have largely tried to keep their 40 man roster limited to players who can play in the … Read more
Today, as I start writing this, is Wednesday. There is no baseball game tonight, tomorrow there will also be no baseball game. Last Saturday, 30 major league teams and over 100 minor league teams played baseball. In the middle of that afternoon, MLB played its Futures Game. An event that it hypes only a little, … Read more
Yesterday the Phillies released RHP Starlyn Castillo. Castillo had a 3.34 ERA with the Jersey Shore BlueClaws, but had 20 walk to 20 strikeouts in 29.2 innings and the 22 year old was sitting 89-93 with his fastball. Given that Castillo had a 6.49 ERA over the course of his minor league career and that … Read more
We are currently 6 games into Spring Training, a time when we are still seeing minor league players get into games and the novelty of the return of major league baseball has not worn off. There are very few actual takeaways one can make from 6 games, and especially 6 games where a starting pitcher … Read more