A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
We will be spending all offseason talking about prospects, so this is the moment to honor those that put up the best statistical years for the organization. This list was put together with input from the staff here.
Catcher:
Andrew Knapp (.290/.354/.438 5 HR LKW)
It was a rough start for Knapp in his comeback from Tommy John surgery, but the former second round pick bounced back with a very good season in the South Atlantic League.
Every year the Paul Owens Award goes to the top hitter and pitcher in the Phillies organization. The award does not go to the best prospect in the organization, but rather to the one that has performed the best during the past season. The hitting award should easily go to Phillies top prospect J.P. Crawford who is not only putting up a great stat line (.286/.376/.401), but he has done it across two levels as a 19-year-old playing good defense at a premium position. On the pitching side the Phillies top prospects have been hindered by being hurt, ineffective, both hurt and ineffective, or having just been drafted this past June. This leads to a very wide open race for the Paul Owens for pitching.
The Paul Owens Award for pitching has not been the site of illustrious and major league successful names, but it does have its share of top prospects. The last 10 pitchers in reverse order to win it are Severino Gonzalez, Tyler Cloyd, Trevor May, Scott Mathieson, Kyle Drabek, J.A. Happ, Mike Zagurski, Carlos Carrasco, Robinson Tejeda, and Scott Mitchinson.
As everyone is aware Phillies 2014 1st Round pick Aaron Nola will be making his AA debut in Reading tonight. Nola is the first member of the 2014 draft class to reach AA and is widely assumed to be the first starting pitcher from the draft to make his major league debut. So far outside … Read more
Lets be honest, its been a rough month to be a Phillies fan. We built a delusion of getting a big payoff at the deadline in the form of prospects with names we didn’t recognize that we could dream on. Cliff Lee has been a shell of himself with an injured elbow that makes us … Read more
Ruben Amaro Jr. recently met with CSN reporter Jim Salisbury for a one on one interview in which the status of Jesse Biddle was discussed. Biddle, 22, had been recently placed on the temporarily inactive list to clear his head of some growing frustrations. Having grown up in Philadelphia, the young pitcher was placing a … Read more
Both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus released their Top 50 Midseason Prospect Rankings. The BA list can be found here and the BP list can be found here. Both lists did not include recently drafted players, although the BP list had a quick preview (where it had Aaron Nola as a guy in the Top 101 … Read more
I could tell you a bunch of box score scouting tidbits about what each player is doing, but you can do that on your own. So rather than that, here are some tweets by guys watching the players. They can tell you a lot more than me paraphrasing their work. Miguel Nunez (Clearwater) Miguel Nunez … Read more
Most of the draft picks are signed so it is time to revisit the preseason rankings. It is still a small sample size, and an even smaller one for those newly drafted, so this list may be a bit conservative on any large scale changes. In general the system is heading in the right direction, … Read more
The big news coming out this weekend is that Phillies first round pick (#7 overall), Aaron Nola will make his pro debut with the Clearwater Threshers today. On the mound Nola will bring a fastball that sits 91-94 but touches 96 when he needs it. He has shown the ability to command the fastball around … Read more