A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Spring training is upon us. There are pitchers throwing baseballs, hitters taking batting practice, and hope in the air. So what better time than to speculate wildly answering your questions. Thank you all for giving me things to write about. I did combine some similar questions. I hope you enjoy it. Chris Gold: Thoughts on the … Read more
It is really easy to get caught up in shiny new prospects, and why not. There is nothing but pure excitement around the Phillies this spring. There are plenty of prospects in camp, especially on the pitching side. Aaron Nola and Jerad Eickhoff will return to the big league rotation, Vincent Velasquez will try and claim … Read more
Ranking season is almost over, with only a few more lists to go. Today we got our strangest list so far from ESPN’s Keith Law. First the ranking and then a lot of thoughts about it. You can find the full piece here. J.P. Crawford Jake Thompson Mark Appel Nick Williams Jorge Alfaro Scott Kingery … Read more
Last week I talked about what was written in the 2016 Baseball America Prospect Handbook. At the end of the week, BA put out their revised organizational rankings as well as their Top 100 prospects. The org rankings did not change much with the Phillies staying constant at #8, but the Top 100 offered plenty … Read more
There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the 2016 Phillies. Their defense is going to be better, their starting pitching is going to be better, they are are going to get a full year of Maikel Franco, and then there are the prospects on the way. The bullpen is going to be … Read more
Prospect rankings move ever onward, and today Keith Law follows up his org rankings with his Top 100 prospects in the minors. Law’s list is always going to have more outliers than any other public list because it is his individual ranking. This has lead to him being higher on some individual Phillies over the … Read more
Noted hater of your favorite prospect and team, Keith Law, has kicked off his minor league rankings with his farm system rankings. Not a lot to go on here other than optimism. The Phillies come in at #6 and are behind the Braves, Dodgers, Twins, Cubs, and Brewers. I would take the Phillies’ system over … Read more
There has been a lot of talk about rebuilding a baseball team. Because baseball is a copycat league the natural inclination of many people is to look to the successful teams for how they were built, and right now those teams are the Cubs, Astros, Mets, and Royals. The Royals are far enough removed from … Read more
Each year I look forward to the BA Handbook. From a Phillies’ perspective it is the largest national list of players, which gives me an opportunity to see what others are thinking about some of the lower level players in the organization. Outside of the Phillies, it is a great resource for fantasy baseball as … Read more
Prospect ranking never seems to truly end. Today we have the Phillies’ list from John Sickels of Minor League Ball, the whole list is free so you can go read it and get John’s thoughts here. The reason I wanted to quickly look at John’s list though is that he applies grades to players which … Read more