A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Not every player in the system is a prospect, and not every prospect made the top 50 prospects. Here are some minor leaguers with interesting backgrounds, major league tools, or previous pedigree. This list is not exhaustive, so I apologize if someone is missing. Just Signed International Players Starlyn Caba, SS – The pre-signing reports … Read more
Not all young players are prospects, and so looking just at prospect lists is not the holistic look at the young talent in an organization. The arbitrary cut off that is often used is players 25 and younger in the organization. The Phillies have 4 such players in their org who are noteworthy and making … Read more
Andrew Painter is probably the best Phillies pitching prospect of my lifetime. The only real arguments are possibly Cole Hamels and Aaron Nola in the exact moment before they made their major league debut, but no big deal as they are also easily the two best home grown Phillies pitchers of my lifetime. No matter … Read more
When you have an ascendent talent like Andrew Painter, it tends to set a standard that others around cannot obtain. Mick Abel has not broken out in the way that Painter has, and McGarry cannot paint the corners the way that Painter can. For both, that is ok, because there are maybe two other pitching … Read more
I have agonized about nothing more this offseason than the order of these three hitters. Ultimately, the order does not matter in terms of value, it is really all about the same. The reason it is agony is because it is close, but also it is because it is about the hardest thing to judge, … Read more
The Phillies system has a clear number 1 prospect, and for me a clear 2 and 3, followed by prospects 4, 5, and 6. There are some that disagree with the 3-6 order, but the top 6 are likely to universally be the top 6 on all lists. The gap to this group is a … Read more
When someone offers something risky we expect the other side of the equation to be some sort of reward. The same is true in baseball, if I say a prospect is at an extreme or high risk of not achieving their ceiling, it is much easier to accept that risk if the payoff is a … Read more
I already used the purgatory or waiting room analogy (or will later use it if you are coming to this late and starting from the beginning), so I won’t use it again. This group of 5 prospects are sort of a spectrum of the Phillies prospect experience. There is an older player who has broken … Read more
The bulk of any minor league system ranking like this is going to be made up of players with a major league upside, but with a low probability of achieving that outcome. It could be because they are so young and far away that they do not yet have the skills, and while the hints … Read more
Another year, another list. After an unexpected run through the postseason to the World Series, the way Phillies prospects viewed changes dramatically. No longer are prospects the future of the franchise on which hopes and dreams are solely placed. They are now pieces of a whole. Andrew Painter will have the weight of expectations upon … Read more