A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
The rankings just keep coming out. This past week MLBPipeline threw their hat in the ring with their positional rankings and Top 100. The Phillies were well represented in the Top 100, but not on the positional lists. I have major problems with their rankings, but we will get to that later. Let’s start with … Read more
Team prospect list time is starting to wind down, and now we move into global top prospect lists, and Baseball Prospectus kicks things off with their Top 101. The list itself is a collaborative effort by their entire prospect staff (as opposed the Phillies Top 10 which was Jeff Paternostro‘s list with input from others). The … Read more
One of the interesting part of doing a top 50 is that it provides a large sample of the system’s health as well as some large scale demographic information. Without doing a lot of digging these are more fun than huge analysis. I may add a few more here as I get time, but for … Read more
Prospect lists are an easy way to take a glimpse into an unknown future. If any player has made the majors, their stay has been short enough to not give us much. The problem with prospect lists is that they do not give a complete look into the young talent in an organization, and consequently … Read more
I have neither the fancy software or the time to organize a chat. But, I do have Twitter and I do have the comment section here. Since many of you have asked questions that others would be interest in, I am going to compile the answers here. Feel free to ask questions here or on Twitter … Read more
I could talk for days about how a player on the fringes of this list could contribute to a major league team some day, but the reality is that the future of the Phillies is really built on these ten players. This year, many of them will join former top prospects like Aaron Nola and … Read more
This section of the ranking was the hardest part of this exercise. There was not a huge difference among these 10 players (and the last 2-3 of the Top 10), and in reality you could reorder this list with little argument from me. It is easy to point to the top of the system as the reason for … Read more
We are now into the Top 30, which for whatever reason has become our traditional unit of longer prospect lists. The back of the Phillies’ list is stronger than it has ever been, as new trade additions continue to force players further down the list. For the first time, this list takes a turn towards … Read more
I like writing a Top 50 because the players in this group don’t get left out. Almost everyone here is flawed, and many of them will fail. However, there are real prospects here, and there are players who will see limited major league roles as well. Most of this list would make the Top 30 … Read more
Time to kick off the actual list. The back end of any prospect list is going to be players with some serious flaws. For some players that is the lack of impact major league tools For others it is that they are half a decade from the high minors, or it could be specific struggles … Read more