Minor League Games - May 24th, 2025

[Squire]

AAA: Buffalo at Lehigh Valley (RHP Mick Abel) - 4:35PM
AAA: Buffalo at Lehigh Valley (TBD) - Game 2
AA: Reading (RHP Luke Russo) at Portland - 1:05PM
High A: Brooklyn at Jersey Shore (RHP Estibenzon Jimenez) - 4:05PM
Low A: Clearwater (TBD) at Bradenton - 6:30PM
FCL: FCL Phillies (TBD) at FCL Yankees - 10:00AM

Rolling Scores Here - https://www.milb.com/scores/2025-05-24/all/all/phillies

Rolling Boxes Here - https://www.mlb.com/prospects/stats/affiliates?teamId=143&date=05/24/2025

[owaistabish]

The FCL Phillies team seems very weak this year. Noone can hit aside from Ferrebus and maybe Loreto. Hopefully the current year signings produce hitters who can put the ball in play regularly.

[andyb]

Keith Law notes on Painter. Fastball and curve look really good. Seems to be working on his slider which is not quite ML ready yet. In general he is really positive though even though he thinks another month or so in the minors would be good for him. Small bit on Crawford who he likes but really needs to stop hitting ground balls so he is not near ready yet either.

Scouting Andrew Painter, George Lombard Jr., The Password, and more MLB prospect...

[andyb]

Pretty good start from Abel back at LHV. 6 IP, 1 R, 3 H, 4 BB, 8 K. 98 pitches.

[bkeich]

Pretty good start from Abel back at LHV. 6 IP, 1 R, 3 H, 4 BB, 8 K. 98 pitches.

No better way to say “I am next up”. I am sure he was disappointed to be sent back down “that was always the plan) but starts like this are going to force the teams hand.

Great problem to have when you have the best record in the he league.

“We have too many quality Starting Pitchers”

[fish]

Pretty good start from Abel back at LHV. 6 IP, 1 R, 3 H, 4 BB, 8 K. 98 pitches

As far as prospect rankings, it’s Painter, Abel, Miller, Tait, Crawford, Escobar, McFarlane, Kemp, Chace and Burkholder for me.

Miller’s performance obviously doesn’t merit that but his tools are still there. Burkholder has largely stunk but if he can improve in the second half to put up at least average stuff at least his tools jump out to the eye.

[dcsman]

Crawford batting 328 looks good to me. Glad to see Abel continuing to perform well even with his demotion. Great to have him back as a solid prospect so it gives the big club options.

[phillychuck]

I think Abel is again a top 100 prospect based on his jump in performance this season. Miller is a head-scratcher for me. Reading fans say he has been unlucky with hard-hit batted balls, but his lack of production seems to be more than that. Nori and Burkholder have both stunk, but going right to CLW isn’t easy for HS kids. They are playing against the best rising LA players and a decent percentage of college guys. I don’t know what the “new” minor league system should look like for top HS talent, maybe it is just sink or swim in CLW (low-A) year 2.

[andyb]

I don’t know what the “new” minor league system should look like for top HS talent, maybe it is just sink or swim in CLW (low-A) year 2.

It really encourages teams to not draft HS players if they are not ready for Low A their first full season. After the first couple of rounds there just isn't an extra Short Season A level for them to play in.

It is kind of a 2 track system with one track for Latin American kids (DSL, FCL, then full season) and one track for college kids (directly to full season). The HS kids kind of fall in between and sink/swim.

[zambonir]

And presumably the HS players who are good enough to hit the ground running will be going to college more now.

[zambonir]

Law says MLB would like to eliminate another level in the next CBA. But which one?

College baseball coaches must be stopped from abusing pitchers’ arms: Law

[andyb]

To be fair they could just eliminate the domestic complex league level (FCL) and nobody would notice. Make the DSL a 2-tier league with an advanced tier and things would be similar to today.

Of course that is probably not the one they want to eliminate and likely they want to take 20-30 players off the domestic roster limit.

[zambonir]

Well, yeah that's the question. Do they want to ditch the hassle and expense of Lakewood etc. even when there is an external owner bearing much of that, or do they want to ditch a level that really costs them nothing in terms of facility and staff (and also allows for hands-on involvement organizationally).

Also would that be the MLB CBA or the minor league CBA?

Law's point is also germane. Passing off more development to college is one thing, but if you are now a college team paying a player more money in NIL than they are going to make from signing their pro contract, you're also not gonna worry about their development on a macro level. Individually, it becomes up to the kids/agents/parents to protect the player, even if it shouldn't be.

[phillychuck]

The player who is getting missed by the current minor league structure is the young-ish high school player who is not good enough to get much NIL money, and might not be at all interested in college. Those guys can’t really just jump to low-A in their draft-plus-one year and survive (see Nori and Burkholder). Too many good college players and advanced LA players play there. And there really isn’t another place for them--extended spring followed by a rookie league?

[allentown]

They can go to JC at a school with a plus baseball program. If they really want a start in baseball, they can be a low-$ draftee. I can assert from personal experience that many of the baseball players at our local, mid-level liberal arts 4-year college seem very uninterested in the academic side of college.

I'd hate to see another level eliminated. I think that would be a shoot-yourself-in-the-foot move by MLB, as it wouldn't save a lot of $ and would remove a big chance to build the MLB teams' fandom.

[andyb]

HS players that take 5+ years to develop are not efficient with the domestic roster limit. You can have 2-3 college players in that spot where you decide in a year and a half. DSL players can stay there for a couple of years now so they move quicker over here.

[allentown]

I'm not convinced that the domestic roster limit is all that limiting. Do you really think we have more prospects, even counting prospective fringe prospects, And, I'm including older, MLB shuttle/injury replacement types stashed in AAA.

[andyb]

The issue is we only have 20-30 real prospects. We draft kids with tools that need to be taught things. Or savvy players without tools. If we need 5-6 years to see if they are players it is not worth the effort. How many years did it take a fringe player like Aaron Altherr to make the majors for instance? It was his 7th season before he got serious roster time. These college pitchers with big fastballs and no command will normally sink or swim in 3. A Latin American player like Escobar can zoom through the stateside levels in 3 years while the 90% of the FCL team will be done in 2 if they do not progress.

It is a conveyer belt where the roster limits really narrow the type of player we want. If they are from HS they better be pretty good. No more Ben Brown development prospects. And if we don't sprinkle half of each roster with competent minor league players we get an awful team like FCL.

When you outsource development to the colleges, this is often what you get.

[zambonir]

The reality is if the young-ish high school player isn't good enough for NIL money they aren't good enough to get drafted by an MLB team in 2025, or maybe never were (I.e. they are yesterday's UDFAs who were just organizational filler, as were many draft picks after the first four or five rounds).

Junior College or Indy ball or the MLB Draft League - yes that still exists - are where they go.

Not saying it's right or fair, but not having space for these kids is a feature not a bug, whether it's cost-cutting or development philosophy or both. How many American high school players even represent the current MLB 26-man rosters, versus international and college?

[Matt_Winkelman]

Yeah there are less late bloomers, there are also less non-prospects who are good minor league baseball players, which leads to a lower quality game, less development for actual prospects, and more players at levels they shouldn’t be at. Also I think the biggest problem with the roster limits is positional, if you get hit with injuries in the wrong place you just don’t have say second baseman.