A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Ranking season is nearing an end, and this week MLB.com has been rolling out their Top Prospects by Position rankings. Aaron Nola missed out on the RHP rankings, but Maikel Franco comes in at #5 on the 3B rankings. The full rankings and writeup are here, with the Top 10 being: Kris Bryant – Cubs … Read more
Creating any prospect list is a ton of work behind the scenes, but along the way there are many neat little facts and discoveries. One of my favorite is the list itself. The names involved in it can tell you a lot about the organization and how it acquires talent. There is not a lot of … Read more
The past year has seen a lot of changes in the Phillies system; as the major league club transitions into a rebuilding phase, more and more emphasis is being put on the farm system. A criticism often levied against the Phillies system is that it lacks impact and near term help. As for the impact, I … Read more
As we get closer to the top 10, the players in the system start to separate themselves into specific tiers of talent and profile. In the last three groups of 10 the players could arguably have been slotted in many different orders. Here those groups become smaller and the order starts to become more important. I am making … Read more
The Top 30 seems to be the standard for long prospect lists, and so it becomes the standard of comparison across multiple lists. Given that we started at 50 we can see the transition into the Top 30 is fairly gradual, but as we start to really climb up the list we see real quality … Read more
This group from 31-40 is full of the players I was excited to put in my Top 30, but the Phillies went ahead and, since August, acquired 7 players that are in the Top 30 of this list. This leaves a group of 10 players with some real talent and major league upside. Traditionally, because of the … Read more
The Top 50 starts at the very bottom, where the differences in rankings are very slight compared to the differences between players towards the top of the list. That does not mean it lacks for talent, but these ten players still have a lot growth in front of them before we can consider them among the … Read more
There seems to be no better time to kick off the most ambitious ranking project I have undertaken than the beginning of the year. The whole exercise was both very exhausting and fun, and I am very excited to share the finished product with everyone. Before moving into the actual ranking, I just wanted to … Read more
I have heard a lot lately about how bad the Phillies farm system is, and frankly it bugs the crap out of me, so you all get to join me on the exploration process. Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, and Fangraphs have put out varying amounts of lists, so we are going to compare them to … Read more
Both Zach Eflin and Tom Windle were not eligible for the list because the Jimmy Rollins trade has not been officially finished. Also due to BA’s publishing deadlines neither will appear in the book on the Phillies list, and will be listed for the Padres and Dodgers respectively. Today Baseball America released their Phillies Top 10 prospect … Read more