Phillies Acquire Victor Arano to Complete Roberto Hernandez Trade

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A couple of weeks ago the Phillies acquired the first of two PTBNL in a trade that sent Roberto Hernandez to the Dodgers, in second baseman Jesmuel Valentin.  Today they completed the trade by acquiring 19 year old RHP Victor Arano.  Arano is already physically mature for a 19 year old (6’2″ 200lbs) so it … Read more

September 40 Man Roster Implications

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This morning at The Good Phight Dan Cormican wrote about some players who could get the call to the big leagues this September, so I am not going to rehash a list of minor leaguers and their chances.  Instead lets build on that and talk about the Phillies 40 man roster and what kind of space exists on the roster, what space can be opened up, and then from there everyone can make their guesses and assumptions about who can get called up.

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Roman Quinn Headlines Phillies Arizona Fall League Participants

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Here is your Phillies Arizona Fall League participants, outside of Quinn there are a lot of relievers trying to get protected from Rule 5 draft.

Roman Quinn – CF – Clearwater – .252/.330/.361 6 HR 30 SBs

Roman Quinn has returned from an Achilles injury better than anyone could have predicted, with his speed still intact.  In deference to J.P. Crawford, Quinn has moved to center field and the fall should give him plenty of reps in the outfield.  Quinn should be an outstanding defender in centerfield with his elite speed and plus arm.  The bat is now the main focus as Quinn will need to become comfortable from both sides of the plate and begin to show more ability to drive the ball.

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Phillies Diversify Minor League Talent Acquisition

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After half a decade of trading away prospects the Phillies system bottomed out in the winter of 2012-2013.  The system lacked impact and it lacked depth.  This lead to a large fallow period for the Phillies farm system, one that sat over Clearwater and bled up into the high minors.  The Phillies responded to this crisis of depth with high school heavy drafts in 2012 and 2013, and those prospects have been slow to move through the system.  The Phillies have started to do something they haven’t done in a long time to help their draft classes, they have started to diversify their talent acquisition.

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A Clearwater Revival

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Many times early in the season I was told by various people that the Clearwater Threshers were the worst team in affiliated baseball and that they had never seen a team with so little talent.  During the first half of the season the Thresher’s 17-51 record bore out that statement.  The team itself had one player (Dan Child) off of Baseball America’s Top 30 prospects and no players off of my list.  The team in the first half saw rehab and roster cameos by Top 30 prospects Andrew Knapp, Malquin Canelo, and Deivi Grullon, but the first real impactful talent to arrive was Roman Quinn (.252/.330/.361).  After that in the second half, top prospect J.P. Crawford (.278/.354/.430) arrived, and then there was a quick stop by 2014 top pick Aaron Nola.  The Threshers are currently 28-36 over the second half and it is not just the top prospects that have made the difference.  A group of players of of prospect watcher’s radars have had good second halfs taking the Threshers from historically bad to just mediocre.

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Roman Quinn’s Comeback From Surgery

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The Clearwater Threshers (45-86) are the worst minor league team record wise in the Phillies system and one of the worst in baseball. Their biggest prospect on the roster is slick fielding shortstop J.P. Crawford who the Phillies selected in the first round  of the 2013 MLB draft. Another name that should be on Phillies’ … Read more

GCL Phillies Unknown Starting Rotation

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The GCL Phillies spent much of the early season being the rehab point for many rehabbing and drafted pitchers as Yoel Mecias, Nic Hanson, Brandon Leibrandt, Matt Imhof, Jesse Biddle, and Drew Anderson all made starts this year.  But since the GCL Phillies have begun to settle into a 6-7 man rotation (double headers and … Read more

Reliever Spotlight

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I am one of the first to admit that reliever prospects get pushed down prospect lists and they are often overlooked if they do not have closer potential.  This is for many good reasons related to potential major league value, but it does leave a gap in our coverage.  So to close that gap some here are three relievers who have the chance to be impactful in the majors:

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The Uneven Distribution of Prospects

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There have been a lot of questions lately about the strength of the Phillies system.  This is not going answer where the Phillies are because Top 100 prospects are not an exact sign of the strength of system.  This is because not all prospects are equal, but also because the depth of the system factors into the overall ranking.  However, what we can do with Top 100 prospects is see how uneven the distribution of prospects is in baseball.

For this exercise we are going to use MLB.com’s Top 100 prospect list because it is the only fairly live updating list including the 2014 draft class.  What I did was see how many top 100 prospects each team had and then grouped them by the number in each and here was the results:

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The Ones that Got Away

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We always like to dream about the ones that got away, the draft picks unsigned, the draft picks untaken.  Here lets look at the guys the Phillies took, but couldn’t make a deal for some reason.

Those That Got Away:

Brandon Workman (2007 – 3rd round – 107 overall):  Workman was an up and down guy out of high school, he would show a fastball up to 95, but his mechanics scared scouts.  The Phillies offered him $275,000, Workman wanted $350,000.  Three years later, Workman was a second round pick of the Boston Red Sox and has racked up 104.1 IP in the past two years in the majors as a starter and reliever, his likely home is the back of the bullpen.

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