A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Each year Mike Drago polls people involved with covering the Phillies’ minor league system for their Top 20 prospects and publishes a compiled list with his thoughts for the Reading Eagle. This year he asked if I would like to participate and so I updated my midseason list and sent it in. First lets look at … Read more
The Phillies traded Cliff Lee to Seattle on December 16, 2009 for Phillippe Aumont, Tyson Gillies, and JC Ramirez. Combined the Phillies received 67.2 innings of -0.7 WAR from that deal. Jerad Eickhoff has eclipsed that production just by existing, but he was just the 4th piece in the Hamels deal, Sunday he is joined … Read more
First the bad news, Nick Williams suffered a concussion during a collision at first base where the first baseman received the ball while standing on top of the base. I assume the Phillies will be slow with Nick’s recovery, and he may be ready by the Fightin’s postseason run, but that is small significance compared … Read more
The parade of rookies continues for the Phillies as Nefi Ogando gets the call up to replace injured rookie Elvis Araujo. Ogando came into the Phillies organization in a trade with Boston that sent out SS John MacDonald. Last year Ogando saw a big jump in fastball velocity and was sitting 96-98 touching 100 with … Read more
It is now August 28 the Phillies bullpen ailing more than ever under the strain of a rotation of bright eyed rookies and corpses, and September 1 can’t come soon enough. We already know based on hints that the September call ups are going to be underwhelming, but take some solace that Jerad Eickhoff, Aaron Altherr, … Read more
Something I have really struggled with in making the minor league more accessible is unmasking the mystery that is Latin American prospects. For the most part these players are well off the radar of casual and hardcore fans because there is so little information about them. Outside of the big money signings there is no … Read more
Before becoming on of the centerpieces of the Cole Hamels trade, Jorge Alfaro injured his ankle at second base. He hasn’t played a game since while rehabbing from surgery. Overall the injury was supposed to have ended his season and begun the speculation over where he would play winter ball. There had been word out … Read more
I have had it mentioned to me a couple of times in the past few weeks that Ricardo Pinto is the Phillies top prospect that people seem to know the least about. On the surface he has been really easy to overlook. At 6’0″ he is not physical or projectable. He came out of nowhere last … Read more
No one hears me say random things unfiltered about prospects more than my girlfriend. She has become good at picking out players I am not excited about and resent ranking or just overall don’t feel confident in my evaluations. No player has drawn this distinction more in recent seasons than Threshers right fielder Dylan Cozens. Let’s … Read more
This all starts with a question. If everyone is aware of a problem, knows the solution to the problem, and has a plan to fix it, is it really a problem? The answer is probably still yes, but the problem is a lot smaller than it really appears. If your pipes are leaking and you called … Read more