2017 Phillies Top Prospect Lists

[xogfog]

Actually reading Law's assessment of his ranking them 14th was not that out of line in my opinion. His rational of "with six or maybe seven of their top 10 guys coming into the season underperforming, getting hurt or both" was not off base. The top tier of your prospects weighs a lot in the evaluation of your farm system. If the Phillies top prospects make good strides this year, they'll suddenly be in the top 5 or 10 ranked systems because of their depth.

[julio]

There's something weird about formatting on this site, I didn't highlight anything?

Not "something weird." You used the "number sign" before your ordinals - and the "number sign" is a control character in the site's markup language - it indicates a particular heading level. This only happens if you start a line with the "number sign." I've edited your post - you may want to go back and look at it in the editor, so you can see what I did.

[allentown]

Kris Byrant shouldn't be on this list. He was drafted so late, because he wasn't signable. He was redrafted and signed as a first rounder in 2013 -- he was the second guy picked in that draft and signed for almost $7 million. Adam Eaton likely is a victim of prejudice for being a very short OF.

[allentown]

Value isn't totally dependent upon circumstance. If Rupp is having a good year, Alfaro slamming the ball and showing good catching skills in AAA or not, he should have value at the deadline. Maximum value may well depend upon two teams needing a catcher and bidding against each other, but he should still have significant value, barring a regression in his performance. I prefer to take the optimist view on our young prospects and expect that most will continue to progress, rather than regress. To take the pessimist stance, almost all prospects except one or two or three uber-prospects per half decade will be traded away after the first whiff of success, lest they regress and lose value.

If we go into 2018 with Knapp traded and Rupp as Alfaro's backup, because we judged Rupp to be better than Knapp and didn't receive an adequate offer, I'm fine with that as well. I do accept that without an injury, one of our 3 young catchers must be traded by opening day of 2018.

[andyb]

Point is the top lists are going to be populated by high draft picks, MOST OF WHOM FAIL, while the surprises are numerous enough (because teams have so many draft picks and low level LA signees) that they constitute a significant portion of ML talent, even though the success rate is very low. The surprises don't show up on prospect lists until they reach the high minors, because early success is easily dismissed due to framing (must be a fluke b/c the player was drafted late).

Prospect lists are skewed toward names and higher draft picks, since once on a list, there's inertia toward removing them.

So prospect lists will be biased toward teams with lots of early draft picks or who spend on big names in LA.

Depth above rookie level (both performance and revealed, not scouted, talented, i.e. what they're showing now, not what they showed three years ago) is valuable because it means you own more viable "lottery tickets," as the marginal prospects are weeded out of your system.

Random lists don't really show anything except maybe how to mis-use statistics. It is a fact that top draft picks, especially those in the first 10-15 picks are much more valuable than lower picks. So your point that not all top picks succeed is pretty meaningless. Of course that is true. Look at your own list. 6 of your top 13 are in the majors and extremely valuable. You kind of prove that your own point is just not true.

Depth does get underrated because having 10 prospects in the 101-250 range is liable to produce a couple of top 100 prospects or good major leaguers in subsequent years. But the whole point of these lists is to assess with a neutral method where systems are. It is a pretty big strike against the Phillies that they do not have a whole lot of high end talents at the moment and our prospects ranked 2-6 (Alfaro, Moniak, Williams, Kilome, Sanchez) all have lots and lots of risk.

Case in point. Cornelius Randolph. I have consistently said he was probably a little over-rated because of his lack of defensive value. If he was to be a LF at best he was probably drafted 5-10 spots too high. He has a good hit tool, but defense, speed, and power are all mediocre for a LF drafted that high. All the tools are important even if some are a little more important than others. It is why Cozens is more valuable than some (like Law) might think IMO. His defense in RF looks to be decent (ML average, nothing special). Add current speed to steal 20 bases and he is adding value in other ways. He has the power tool and not the hit tool. But that does not mean those other tools add up to nothing even with the risk involved. I might be starting to like both him and Hoskins over a Randolph for that reason.

[Austinfan]

How about automatic listing, how do you turn that off?

[Austinfan]

The top of the Phillies list isn't that impressive, because they have lots of good prospects with flaws, rather than a few great prospects.
But their depth far surpasses anything I can remember, and I suspect is better than most teams.

One reason that I downgrade LA and rookie league guys in my ratings is I can't even consider them depth in the sense that they haven't played enough to confirm or deny scouting reports - to me rookie ball is more useful for exposing mistakes in scouting reports - example, I didn't expect a 17 year old Ortiz to destroy the GCL, but the fact that he was in better shape and more athletic than expected, and made solid contact is very encouraging. Randolph failing to show power is discouraging. Moniak looking like a talented, but physically undeveloped 18 year old was what should have been expected. But the actual performance, unless it's really bad (if it's really good they're soon promoted), doesn't matter.

Once a player has a year or two at A ball, you have a read on their "base" performance and actual skills, Gowdy at 18 is guesswork, in two years, when he has started a full season at Lakewood/Clearwater, we'll have a good read on his potential.

The reason I'm happy with the Phillies farm system is their depth is not primarily a lot of draft pick and LA signings the last two years who are all projection, they're the icing on the cake, rather, a lot of players who've shown well in A ball and Reading and may progress further.

[andyb]

Keith Law 100-81, no Phillies:

2017 prospect rankings: 100-81

I assume Moniak is ranked ahead of these guys. He and Alfaro (who I don't think Law is a fan of) are probably the only ones with a shot at Law's top 100 beyond Crawford.

[bkeich]

You do realize this list is just going to annoy the ... out of you, right?

I want to say I honestly don't really understand how a member of the media can so clearly have a problem with a franchise and always degrade them when he can. But really we also have Sal-Pal and Bill James who always give Philly Sports the best possible view and that doesnt bother me, so having members of the media that go the other direction should be OK too.

[andyb]

You do realize this list is just going to annoy the ... out of you, right?

It is kind of my personal love/hate relationship. I am closer opinion-wise to Matt Winkelman's list. But I also respect Law because he has one of the better grasps combining performance, tools, and projection. I don't have to agree with anything to think it is interesting reading.

[andyb]

MLB.com is rolling out their positional prospect rankings:

2017 Top 10 Catching prospects

Alfaro is #3 on the catcher list. Hoskins #9 at 1B and Kingery #7 at 2B. No pitchers on those lists. Crawford will be near the top of the SS list and I guess there is a chance Moniak makes the OF list. Their top 100 will be released next week.

[zambonir]

I have never had a problem with Law's supposed bias because it was a bias against the Phillies' old-school ways. His pedigree is BP/Moneyball. I suspect he probably has a much higher opinion of the new front office, and more personal/professional connections to it as well.

[Squire]

Feels like more than having ten guys have good seasons we need like 3 guys to explode.

[bigegypt0417]

first Phillies prospect on Laws list is Alfaro at 45

[andyb]

Better than I expected. Probably means Moniak is on the 21-40 list and Crawford should still be 1-20 (though potentially second 10).

[California_Dreamin]

Baseball America had a podcast and two things worth noting...they believe the Phils have done the best job of any organization in recognizing and signing international arms and Ben Badler said his favorite player outside the Top 10 was second baseman Daniel Brito. Thinks he is going to be very good.

[Austinfan]

They haven't done a great job with LA position players, but they do an outstanding job of finding numerous projectable arms, and I think they signed a bunch this year once again.

They had one burst with Franco, Galvis and Hernandez, and found Herrera in winter ball, but a lot of their signings, including their larger bonuses, like Pujols, Encarnacion, Grullon, Tocci, etc., have yet to impress.

However, they keep finding pitchers, Ramos, Neris, Kilome, Medina, Sanchez, Pinto, Elniery Garcia, Rivero, DOminquez, Nunez, Joaquin, Edgar Garcia, Taveras, and lots more in the LA farm teams.

I think the key is scouting, coaching and patience, they're willing to wait 2-3 years for LA pitchers to fill out, add velocity and develop secondary pitches, then bring them stateside.

[andyb]

We have done a much better job with Latin American position players than pitchers. We may have gotten "lucky" with Kilome and Sanchez as arms that fell through the cracks when they were 15-16 years old. The main value we have produced has been with position players. Yes we hit on Franco, Glavis, and Hernandez. But we also have invested most of our major signings in position players: Grullon, Pujols, Tocci, Encarnacion, Ortiz.

We have always been a minor player on the pitching side in the last decade. We got the number one arm in Morales this year. If there is a sense that we are doing well on the pitching side it is a brand new thing and worth noting.

[allentown]

You contradict yourself. You say we've spent most of our money on position players, which is true. That makes our scouting success in finding pitchers all the more remarkable. The pitchers have largely been done on the cheap. We've got $5+ million invested just in Encarnacion and Ortiz. I think something not remarked upon on the pitching is the number of older pitchers the Phillies have had success with. I'll have to count them up, but quite a few of these pitchers were not signed at age 16.

[andyb]

Though when anyone signs an 18-year-old pitcher for nominal dollars that develops into a real prospect the likelihood is that they are lucky. Maybe they have a good scout. But signing any 18-year-old 2 years after nobody would sign them is the equivalent of signing an undrafted U.S.free agent. In other words you get lucky if you sign an actual prospect.