Keith Law’s Top 10 Phillies Prospects

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Following up his Top 100 yesterday, Keith Law released his Top 10 Phillies prospects.  The list actually goes out to 15 as he mentions the rankings of 5 more players in his writeup.  Here is the list:

  1. J.P. Crawford
  2. Aaron Nola
  3. Maikel Franco
  4. Roman Quinn
  5. Zach Eflin
  6. Tom Windle
  7. Matt Imhof
  8. Franklyn Kilome
  9. Ricardo Pinto
  10. Cord Sandberg
  11. Ben Lively
  12. Severino Gonzalez
  13. Deivi Grullon
  14. Jesmuel Valentin
  15. Victor Arano

He does mention Jesse Biddle with this paragraph:

Jesse Biddle was a low top-100 prospect two years ago, but his career is on the ropes, with the latest setback a concussion he suffered when he was hit by a hailstone in the spring. His stuff has gone backward over the past 24 months too.

Some other notes:

  • He is adamant that Nola and Franco should be on the opening day roster
  • His sleeper is Franklyn Kilome who he thinks could be in the Top 100 in a year or two
  • The omissions are numerous and puzzling as the list does not contain mentions of Kelly Dugan, Carlos Tocci, or Yoel Mecias
  • He has Kilome at 94-96 EDIT: After checking with multiple people, the best anyone has was that he was 90-93 T94 late in the season
  • He has Pinto touching 95 with a plus changeup (both match previous reports)
  • There are some real disagreements on some of the top Phillies prospects (more on this when we get to consensus rankings)

3 thoughts on “Keith Law’s Top 10 Phillies Prospects”

  1. I don’t think Law really spends much time thinking about these lists. At least not outside of the top teams and the best prospects on each team. Notice how Arano and Valentin and Eflin and Windle are back to back in their rankings. Makes you think it’s not so much a coincidence as it is Law thinking of who he can fill the spots with as he goes as opposed to considering the farm as a whole and then forming a list.

    Lively also ranked in the top 10 on the Reds, so it’s funny to see him rank lower in a farm system 8 spots behind the Reds. You’d think moving from a middle of the pack farm system to one Law sees as nearly the next to worst would cause Lively to jump up on the list.

    • That’s a great point. IMO, the rankings are just fan fodder anyway.

      Scouting is essentially descriptive, the eventual single number next to “future value” is understood to conceal as much as it reveals. Rankings ignore all that description and try to boil it down to a single number. You can kind of do this when you’re evaluating what a player did do in the past (e.g. stats like WAR), but not looking forward without making all kinds of assumptions.

      How do you rate a high-upside/high-risk prospect vs. a low-floor guy? Quality vs. quantity in prospects? Do you put higher value on systems where the talent is evenly distributed among positions and levels? Do you care if top prospects line up with big-club needs, or not?

  2. Why in the world MUST Nola and Franco be on the opening day roster? Will the Phillies suddenly become contenders if they do so? No. Are they completely finished their development to the point they can’t get any better from at least 2 months in the minors? No. So why not give them more seasoning until they go past the point of eligibility?

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