A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
The draft picks have all signed and the trade deadline is next week, so like last year I am going to combine the two into a rankings update and thoughts on the trade deadline. Like always I have divided the list up into tiers. Within a tier the order is my preference. It isn’t 100% … 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
Last Week’s Schedule *Game was part of a double header # Game was suspended This Week’s Schedule #Continuation of a suspended game *Part of a double header Hitter Spotlight OF Carlos De La Cruz 9-26 3 HR 2 BB 4 K .346/.414/.692 It wasn’t the best week that Carlos De La Cruz has had this … Read more
Last Week’s Schedule #completion of suspended game *double header This Week’s Schedule #completion of suspended game Hitter Spotlight 2B/SS William Bergolla 10-21 2 2B 1 HR 2 BB 2 K 1 SB As part of the BlueClaws barrage on the Greensboro park this year, Bergolla hit his first home run of his career and had … Read more
News broke Sunday night from Milb Central that the Phillies would be making a variety of promotions at the start of the next minor league series, most notably shortstop Aidan Miller and right handed pitcher George Klassen would be moving from Clearwater to Jersey Shore. As of now the other reported moves are catcher Luis … 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
For those that were not in the weeds of the minor leagues, it may not have been noticed that domestic minor league rosters were cut down to 165 during the season and 175 during the offseason. This change has had impacts on many different groups of players and there are outstanding concerns as the season … Read more
Whit Merrifield used to be a really solid baseball player. He came to the major late as a 9th round pick out of college who spent a bunch of time in the minors. At his peak he was a second baseman who had above average offense due to great contact rates, and great speed (which … Read more
The Phillies were a flawed team entering yesterday’s trade deadline and there wasn’t really a way out of it for the Phillies front office. The main problem that has plagued the team all season has been the lack of performance from their well paid players, particularly hitters. The Phillies weren’t going to solve that at … Read more
The Phillies spent the offseason building a team that many joked was made entirely of DHs. It was on top of a team that was already filled with large contracts, and one that after the moves still had some massive holes going forward. To be a sustainable contender going forward, the Phillies were going to … Read more