A Critical Look at the Phillies Organization and Minor League Baseball
Things are not going well in the major leagues for the Phillies. This has meant that the state of the Phillies’ rebuild has been cast into doubt. The problem with this assumption is that in the minors that the Phillies rebuild in the minors is going fine (even if it is not going at the … Read more
In the last five weeks, we have seen Phillies 2B Cesar Hernandez suffer an oblique injury and AAA 2B Jesmuel Valentin have shoulder surgery, shutting down his season. Meanwhile, down in Reading, Scott Kingery continued to rake. All of Phillies nation has been clamoring for a while now that he should get the call-up to … Read more
I often get questions about whether the Phillies have elite prospects, prospects that are foundational pieces to the next great Phillies team. The answer is yes, and breaking up the list into groups of 5 highlights this. At this point, there is probably prospect fatigue on J.P. Crawford, Jorge Alfaro, and Nick Williams. Depending on … Read more
Just when you thought ranking season might be over another list comes along. This is the first list from 2080 Baseball, a new venture founded by former head of Baseball Prospectus. Their minor league team includes a lot of familiar names from previous scouting teams at places like Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs. The list this … 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
Team prospect list time is starting to wind down, and now we move into global top prospect lists, and Baseball Prospectus kicks things off with their Top 101. The list itself is a collaborative effort by their entire prospect staff (as opposed the Phillies Top 10 which was Jeff Paternostro‘s list with input from others). The … Read more
Prospect lists are an easy way to take a glimpse into an unknown future. If any player has made the majors, their stay has been short enough to not give us much. The problem with prospect lists is that they do not give a complete look into the young talent in an organization, and consequently … Read more
I could talk for days about how a player on the fringes of this list could contribute to a major league team some day, but the reality is that the future of the Phillies is really built on these ten players. This year, many of them will join former top prospects like Aaron Nola and … Read more
The Phillies have been slowly adding non-roster invites to big league camp from outside the organization, and today we get the internal candidates. Last year the Phillies invited almost no prospects who were not on the 40 man roster to big league camp, though Severino Gonzalez, Aaron Nola, and Zach Eflin all did start big … Read more
Much like Nick Pivetta in the Carolina League, the Phillies acquired some players at the deadline that had some previous pedigree. Today’s group come from the small (but prospect laden) Texas League and were the core of the deal that sent Cole Hamels to Texas to lead the Rangers to the playoffs (though Jerad Eickhoff … Read more