Questions Going Into Midseason Rankings

I don’t think I have officially posted this, but the midseason Top 30 will come out on August 1.  The idea was that I wanted to account for any trades the Phillies make, but more importantly I wanted to let the short season teams play some and hear the reports on low level guys and draft picks.  So far so good with the plan as there is a lot more information now than there was a couple weeks ago.  This is important because rankings are about information, not order for me.  The order is really not that important because the writeups should tell you how valuable each player is.  What the order does is give me a quick way of going back to self evaluate over the years and my favorite part, the ability to question beliefs about what is more valuable.  Occasionally you reach points in the ranking process where two players are of similar enough profile you can say one is strictly better than another, but most of the time you are comparing two disparate things.  So with that said, I am going to fill the time from now until the rankings letting you behind the scenes into the debates and discussions I am having.  Here are some of those ideas, feel free to chime in if you especially want me to cover one or if there is another interesting topic to cover.

• Edubray Ramos is clearly the top relief pitching prospect in the system right now.  How does that rank against everyday players?  Where is the balance between upside, risk, and proximity lie with relievers?
• What is the risk/reward of Aaron Altherr in terms of final defensive position, how do we balance his value in center field vs right field?
• What is important for a catching prospect?  What parts of a game to we reasonably expect future growth in?
• Adonis Medina, Bailey Falter, and Sam McWilliams are in various stages of development in the GCL.  How do we separate previous organization developmental successes from a specific player’s’ future development?
• Jose Pujols has immense upside and is putting up huge numbers, what are our continued worries about his future and what kind of risk do they imply?
• Jonathan Arauz is very young, his hitting well, should be able to play shortstop long term.  When is too early to bump a guy up and how do we avoid overrating a player so that we can be first on them?
• Cord Sandberg is hitting better of late, is there anything tangible to it or are we reading into noise too much?
• Now that Tom Windle is in the bullpen, what does his profile look like and how does he fit in going forward?
• Luis Encarnacion is still only 17, but is a first baseman going forward.  How good does his bat have to be and what do we expect from him?
• Elniery Garcia and Ben Lively don’t have big stuff but both could be major league starters at some point, how valuable is a back end starter profile if it comes with risk?