Phillies Minor League Monthly Retrospective – August 2026

Stock Changes

*Rankings are from Trade Deadline List

Stock Up

3B Carson DeMartini – DeMartini had an ok start to the year before then missing two and a half months to a wrist injury. He came back on fire in August, hitting for power and average, while walking more than he struck out. DeMartini is pulling the ball more, especially in the air while also swinging at a patient rate instead of a fairly aggressive one. His overall contact rate (75%) is now at acceptable levels and he has traded an increase in called strikes for a decrease in whiff rates. His HR/FB rate (19.4%) is almost certainly being inflated by the minor league ball, but he has the raw power to have a higher HR/FB rate by maximizing his directional fly ball hitting. If the contact is real, he once again profiles as an average regular at third base who should give power and some on base over hit, with solid defense at the hot corner.

RHP Brad Pacheco – Pacheco was good, but not great in August after a great July, but this is more about the changes he made at the beginning of July and how they have carried forward. The splitter and sweeper are now permanent fixtures of his arsenal, and that has led to more strikeouts and more success overall. His velocity has slipped, but he has also gone from 45.1 innings in 2025 to 101.1 so far this season so it is fair that signs of fatigue have set in. If the velocity bounces back next year to be more around 96 than the current 94, to go with the revamped arsenal, he should move pretty quickly and project in that #3/#4 starting pitcher range. It has been a really nice season for him overall.

RHP Cody Bowker – It has been quite the 2 month stretch for Bowker, with a 2.87 ERA and 6 BB to 44 K over a 37.2 inning blitz from Jersey Shore to Reading. His stuff has not really gotten better, he is sitting 89 to 93 with his fastball while throwing a pair of breaking balls and a decent amount of changeups. He is actually striking out fewer batters over this stretch than he did to open the year. What he isn’t doing is walking anyone. He has struggled all year with runners on base, and by reducing the number of free passes he has had situations not explode quite as much. It hasn’t been a big shift overall either, his strikes looking, swinging, and overall have not changed that meaningfully during this time he just isn’t losing on that final pitch as much. His weird delivery makes his arsenal play up, but there is still a lot of concern about whether his stuff is actually good enough to start.

Stock Down

LHP Cade Obermueller – If Cody Bowker has found his footing at higher levels, than Obermueller has lost his. The fact that his walk rate has spiked is a bit puzzling because he is only missing a few more bats while getting the same amount of called strikes, except that opposing hitters have just stopped swinging against him. We don’t have pitch level data for Jersey Shore, but he wasn’t throwing his changeup in the zone at all in Clearwater, and it doesn’t look like that has improved enough that batters can’t just ignore it, and he doesn’t throw his fastball and sweeper in the zone enough to punish them otherwise. His velocity is sitting 91-93, and he is rarely touching the high end during starts anymore. His arsenal is screaming for a better changeup and a cutter/gyro slider to bridge the fastball and sweeper, and getting that second breaking ball needs to be an offseason priority. He also needs to find more velocity or he is really trending towards a middle reliever.

OF Nathan Humphreys – The Phillies bumped Humphreys from Clearwater to Jersey Shore after a good run with the Threshers. It has been a rocky first month, driven in some part by a collapse of contact quality both in the power and BABIP side of things. The other part has been on the contact side. We don’t have zone level metrics, but he is swinging more and making less contact and it looks like he is probably chasing more. One month at a new level is bordering on not a meaningful sample size, but Humphreys was older for Clearwater so there is real fear if he was just feasting on lower level pitching. There isn’t enough left in the season to really change the direction which means we will likely enter the offseason with some real questions about Humphrey’s ceiling.

OF Griffin Burkholder – Burkholder also had the jump from Clearwater to Jersey Shore with a drop in results. He does have some plate discipline changes, but they aren’t as stark. He is swinging slightly more, but swinging less in the zone. His contact rate is actually up, trending more towards acceptable. This, plus some bad luck is driving a collapse in contact quality. He is hitting the ball on the ground more, with a decent number of line drives, but almost never in the air. Much of his contact is now to the opposite field, likely a product of making off balance contact than an intentional change in approach. This has led to mostly identical walk and strikeout numbers, but no extra base hits in his first 24 games with the BlueClaws. While it was a bounce back and mostly healthy year for Burkholder, his contact numbers whether they are whiff or quality have been concerning all season, and this latest month has had the aspect of showing what the bottom dropping out looks like.

Mixed

2B Aroon Escobar – In a season where everyone with a modicum of power is hitting the ball out in the minor leagues, the fact that Escobar has a 7.4% HR/FB rate, just over half of what he had last year is sort of bizarre. It isn’t that his contact quality is optimized, but he hits the ball hard enough he shouldn’t be sitting at 9 home runs for the season. When it comes to the approach numbers, his macro level numbers are fine if slightly still aggressive at the plate. In August he once again hit under .200, though he did hit for power, unlike July. He has a .209 BABIP for the month, and is at .244 for the year and you never just want to say it is bad luck or a guy is snakebit, but he is also near the bottom of the Eastern League leaderboard in BABIP while also not being a guy who just pops the ball up continuously. It is a step back year for Escobar, but it is also hard to look at his last three months with 14.1% BB% 14.8% K% and .224 BABIP and think there is a better player hidden in here.

SS Juan Villavicencio – Villavicencio has been on an upward trajectory all season, but after a scorching July, a promotion to Jersey Shore has been a speed bump. Villavicencio has definitely been a beneficiary of the livelier baseball, but his 104.0 mph 90th EV in Clearwater is solid raw power so he wasn’t just getting away with cheap home runs. However, Jersey Shore’s park and better pitches means his HR/FB rate has plummeted. His contact rate also has dropped to concerning levels, and contact quality has suffered as well. Some of this has been new level adjustment, he hit .206/.324/.317 with 11 walks and 21 strikeouts over his first 3 series (16 games). Over the last 2+ series (14 games) he is hitting .260/.383/.360 with 10 walks and 12 strikeouts. The bounce back after the stumble alleviates a lot of the immediate concerns, but it puts some dampener on his continued rise.

Monthly Stat Leaders

Hitting

Pitching

Mailbag

@jaypo.bsky.social: anything interesting to Jonathan Hogart? Or just an older dude mashing against kids?

There are some things interesting, but he is well below Nathan Humphreys (even with struggles post promotion) on the interesting 2025 UDFA list. He is hitting .237/.379/.467 for the year, and probably more relevant is hitting .241/.391/.537 against LHPs. He has put up solid raw power numbers, 104.0 90th EV / 110.3 max which are a little over 70th percentile for a league he is old for. He doesn’t chase while being decently aggressive in the strike zone. The problem is contact, he has 76.4% zone contact rate, which is 19th percentile for the league and is really not going to cut it. He doesn’t have disastrous rates against offspeed and high velocity which means he has problems with everything. His strikeout rate is better against LHPs, but not meaningfully better so there are contact issues on both sides. He is probably an org player with a remote chance at short side of a platoon up and down corner bench bat.

@kleshreen.bsky.social: As a non-Phillies fan who is in multiple fantasy dynasty leagues, please just tell me Francisco Renteria is awesome. And talk about how awesome Ramon Marquez was. Then I can use it as propaganda to trade them if I want.

He is awesome.

He has some flaws and if you want to look deeply into them you will find some not superstar level outcomes. It is really hard to say a guy facing the type of pitching a guy like Renteria is facing is a star because the environment just does not allow you to make those definitive judgements. I think personally think he is really good.

Ramon Marquez’s changeup is very very good. His fastball is probably above average because of the velocity and how it plays off the changeup. I like his harder slider/cutter, but it isn’t for everyone. He doesn’t have feel for spin in a way that is going to allow him to really expand his arsenal. The changeup is good enough that he could just make it work, and Cristopher Sanchez makes it work with a turbo charged version of this, but there are less levers for him to work with if it goes sideways.

@thattizzank.bsky.social: Is Dante Nori anything, or did we just get excited over 2 HRs against substandard pitching in the WBC?

Dante Nori is still Dante Nori. Missing nearly 3 months to injury is a definite setback, especially since he had a weird start to the year. The hype at the WBC was always misplaced, because as you said much of it came against the worst teams in the tournament and pitching below what he is facing in AA. I will probably write him up this winter as somewhere around an average regular ceiling as a center fielder who should hit at the bottom of a lineup and provide enough aggregate value to possibly be a 2-3 win player at his peak. There just isn’t a ton of ceiling there, and that all was true a year ago, all that has really happened is he isn’t as ready as some may have thought he was.

@melkasinkas.bsky.social: What do the recent front office changes mean for the system now and will it move the needle much in the future

It depends on who they hire. They have been dysfunctional and disorganized since they promoted Preston Mattingly and didn’t hire a dedicated replacement. I think there are some good things going on, but there is inconsistency and players falling through the cracks. That isn’t to say there are top develop org things going on or a hire will get there, but they can probably pull themselves more into the middle of the pack by just all getting on the same page again. It would be good if they made an outside hire who did bring some of the things top orgs are doing from technology to development plans for players.

@breakerofchairs.bsky.social: This year definitely feels like a turning point for Phillies amateur scouting in east Asia. Phillies are last big market team not to sign an Asian star from NPB, KBO, or CPBL, to a major league contract. Does this feel like the year the Phillies finally sign one?

Maybe. It is one of those things where process and results don’t always align. It would take a player being available that fits the roster, the Phillies think will be worth the contract, and wants to come to the Phillies. They have reportedly shown interest in Teruaki Sato, but also he will be an in demand free agent and we don’t know how they view him defensively and if they will be the highest bidder. I don’t think they are just going to make a signing to make a signing. On top of all of that the CBA negotiations and lockout could throw a real wrench in signings this offseason.

@mattrouscher.bsky.social: 5 pitchers look like depth options for the Phillies in 2027 to me (Wood, Bowker, Graves, Obermueller, & Riojas potentially) what are the outlooks on if we see of them in the majors next year? With that, with the lack of lefty options could you see them moving Obermueller to the pen to speed things up?

I don’t think Obermueller and Riojas are really MLB options next year. I also think Obermueller to the bullpen would be more because he failed as a starter. I would say that Wen-Hui Pan will either be on the 40 or right on the cusp. Also they have Bowlan, Duran, Shugart, Kerkering, McFarlane, Backhus, and Kilian under control for next year so they have depth. They probably will want to get a lefty or two, and maybe they also bring Mayza back for another 1 year deal.

Graves is a middle reliever type with maybe a bit more. Wood is a #6 entering the year who could pitch like a 4 if they have injuries. I don’t know if Bowker’s thing will actually work, but he could function as depth next year. It is also important to note their whole current rotation is also under team control.

@frankvisco.bsky.social: I understand its small sample, but stuff model wise, McFarlane is putting up FB and Slider values that rank up with the most elite pitches in the league. Is his stuff actually of that caliber with only the location being a barrier to him being a monster?

Yes… The fastball aren’t devastating monsters to me outside of the velocity, but the velocity is going to be enough to throw them in the zone without huge consequences most of the time and there are certain batters he is just going to blow away. The slider and sweeper are just monster pitches at their velocity and spin. If he can continue to pitch them off of each other enough it is going to really work. I would like to see the sweeper in the zone just a touch more (it is currently 16%) because then hitters have to think about enough that he can go backwards if needed. He also doesn’t even need to get to precise location, he just needs to threaten the zone enough that guys will chase.