Phillies Prospect Lists

[nycphils]

Awesome that we spent the 10th pick in the draft on this:

Scouting grades: Hit: 45 | Power: 45 | Run: 40 | Arm: 55 | Field: 45 | Overall: 40

[bigegypt0417]

that's one assessment...fangraphs has him at 45+

[andyb]

I believe he was referring to Mr. Randolph. Haseley was the 8th overall pick.

[bigegypt0417]

I believe he was referring to Mr. Randolph. Haseley was the 8th overall pick.

ugh, yeah...Randolph is a failed pick at this point.

[allentown]

Thanks, Squire. I don't know how I missed him, since I was looking specifically for him, since he was a guy with huge divergence of opinion over on Phuture Phillies.

[Squire]

BA Top 30 for the Phillies seems pretty different than the MLB.com list too:

1. Alec Bohm 3B
2. Luis Garcia SS
3. Adonis Medina, RHP
4. Adam Haseley CF
5. JoJo Romero LHP
6. Enyel De Los Santos RHP
7. Spencer Howard RHP
8. Ranger Suarez, LHP
   9 Francisco Morales, RHP
9. Mickey Moniak CF
10. Colton Eastman RHP - didn't make the MLB.com top 30 at all
11. Logan O'Hoppe C
12. Mauricio Llovera RHP
13. Starlyn Castillo RHP
14. Kyle Dohy LHP
15. Edgar Garcia RHP
16. Zach Warren LHP
17. Austin Listi OF
18. Cole Irvin LHP
19. Rodolfo Duran C
20. Daniel Brito 2B
21. Jhailyn Ortiz, OF - much lower than others here
22. Rafael Marchan C
23. Nicola Torres 2B
24. Connor Seabold RHP
25. Arquimedes Gamboa, SS
26. Matt Vierling OF
27. James McArthur RHP
28. Dominic Pipkin, RHP
29. Deivi Grullon, C

[andyb]

Pretty aggressive ranking for Logan O'Hoppe too. Not sure what he has done to be ahead of Duran and Marchan for instance. One observation whether one likes the ranking or not, is that after the top 10-15 our prospects are pretty speculative. Weaker than in recent years clearly.

[bigegypt0417]

The top 8 or so are better prospects and most have a bunch of upside.

I'm not sure saying it's weaker than usual is probably accurate but it's not by much.

[allentown]

Yeah, it seems like flavor of the month. It's now Listi and not Hall. Yes, it is a weak list. Most telling is their MLB top 100 -- studded with young Braves prospects (they've got 8, well positioned. Lots of RHP); Sixto would have been top 15 -- I guess they believe he is healthy and will become durable; We have nobody in top 50, just Bohm at 65 and Garcia at 88. That's the worst top 100 showing of any NL East team. It's also why we had to make ample and efficient use of our money to win our division anytime soon. Once you get past Howard on our list, just a ton of questions on everyone. I agree with AndyB, it's our weakest list in at least several years. They are delivering a verdict, right or wrong, on both Randolph and Ortiz as basically failed prospects. I buy that on Randolph. I still have hope for Ortiz.

[Austinfan]

As the report on the Reds scouting showed, BA lists past the top 20 are about as useful as our assessments. And the BA top 20 are generally the "no brainers."
So I don't fret too much, we are going to be down rated now that we lost our marquee prospect, until some players come "out of nowhere" the way Sanchez did in the first place.

I'm going to wait and see if the changes they made to minor league coaching makes a difference, I'm not sure we've been drafting that badly or our player development is below average - and this year we may find that out. Klentak moved out a lot of coaches and seemed to be unhappy with the status quo.

Ortiz is a good example, he may have been an overpay but still looked like a top prospect.
But these things are so fickle, all it takes is a couple prospects to turn the corner, Cozens, Pujols, Gowdy, etc. and the perception of the farm system turns 180 degrees.
So fingers crossed, maybe they saw something they were doing wrong and corrected it.

[Taudawg]

A lot can change in a year. The Padres were ranked in the 20's for 2015 and 2016, then jumped quickly in 17. I'm not disagreeing with anything written above, and I agree with only about the top 20 really being sure things. While not a lot of projectable stars, many analysts think the Phils have good depth and lots of intriguing young arms.

[zambonir]

Nature of the beast but one thing that jumps out at me is how quickly a small chunk of the pitching on that list could get hollowed out, whether that's good or bad. De Los Santos, Suarez and Irvin probably not on the list next year, but will it be because they succeeded (or got traded) or because they went the way of Eshelman and Anderson (who is at least still on the 40)?

[andyb]

A "problem" though is that we have not had any Sixto Sanchez or Adonis Medina appear out of nowhere in the last few seasons. You take it upon faith that the Phillies are smarter than everyone else with their low dollar Latin American signings. The reality is that Sanchez and Medina were as much about luck as anything else and we can't really count on finding great prospects that way.

Our system is below average now. More because of the complete lack of top 50 prospects than anything else, but our depth is also nothing special these days either. Just saying no lists are meaningful after the top 10-20 does not mean one cannot assess the depth of the system. Our depth is very average now. Rankings on average are meaningful. It is hard to predict the success of any single prospect, but when there is less depth there is less chance of getting that surprise prospect contribution.

[Austinfan]

There are lots of guys with upside, not players like Eastman, but go down the pitching lists in A ball and below and there are plenty of projectable pitchers, lots of LA bonus players who haven't broken out, etc. This isn't a decade or two ago when the cupboard was bare up and down the system.

It only takes 2-3 prospects to break out to move you 5 slots up these sorts of rankings, maybe the light goes on for Moniak and he posts the .900+ OPS in Reading that he should as a #1 pick, or Haseley puts it all together, etc. As far as guys appearing out of nowhere, you don't know if that's going to happen until it happens by the nature of the beast. Maybe Silva added 20 lbs and 3 MPH this winter?

The primary problem has been the failure of top ten draft picks to develop, and that's the $64K question, bad scouting, bad development or both. Maybe both, as it may have been the "uncoachable players meet the incompetent coaches."

[allentown]

But here's the thing... the Braves have 8 players on the top 100 to our 2. That doesn't mean we have more guys ready to explode onto the scene than they do. In fact, logic suggests they are the ones who may have more potential breakouts, since they have had more guys show plus already, which speaks positively to their scouting and development. All teams have a lot of young guys with upside and projectability. That's what gets them drafted and signed as LA talent in the first place. All of the top 10 bonus guys in every draft/international signing period for every team should have ceiling and projectability. I don't know why you think we are uniquely rich is such guys.

One thing that a glance at the BA top 100 shows me is the large number of guys who are projected to MLB by age 20-21-22. Where are those guys in the Phillies organization? We've had generally more primo draft picks than the Braves. I don't think they ever gave an LA teenager the $4 million we gave Ortiz. Our guys might yet make it, but the guys who become stars seem to jump out fast. Hamels jumped out early. So did Utley. Nola was good from day 1. I think the failure of Moniak, Haseley, Ortiz to really jump out by now puts a ceiling on their ceiling. They may well develop into solid MLB starters, but I think star is definitely off the table and plus starter soon will be.

I agree this isn't the bad old days of the early Giles Phillies, but I think you've lost track of time. Going back around a decade and a little more is when the core of the 2008 champions were coming through the farm. That championship is now over a decade ago. The Hamels draft pick was 2002. Those were the glory days of the Phillies farm. The cupboard was far from bare back then, it vastly eclipsed what we have today.

[Austinfan]

The 2008-2012 Phillies were basically built on a few HRs and a lot of marginal free agents:

Utley (#15), Rollins (2nd), Burrell (#1), Hamels (#17), Myers (#12), Happ (3rd), Madson (9th), Victorino (Rule 5), Werth (SFA) - that was most of the WAR on that team. 33.7 of 41.6.

Ruiz was the only LA player, Bastardo in 2009

They used a lot of their picks for trades:
Garcia for Floyd (#4),
Lidge for Bourn (4th), Costanzo (2nd), Geary (15th)
Blanton for Spencer (3rd), Cardenas (#37), Outman (10th)
Lee for Knapp (2nd), Carrasco (LA), Donald (3rd), Marson (4th)
Halladay for D'Arnaud (#37), Drabek (#18), Taylor (5th)
Pence for Cosart (38th), Singleton (8th), Zeid (10th), Santana (LA)
Mayberry for Golson (#21)
Oswalt for Happ, Gose (2nd), Villar (LA)

The last five years they've worked to turn it around, but the big push came from good trades (RA did something right on his way out the door) and those players are now mostly in the majors.

The Braves "cheated" in LA, and eventually got slapped for it, but not until they got a good haul, we should have been doing so but until Middleton took over, the powers that be were too cheap. While Middleton can't spend crazy money, the fact that we've kept the Venezuelan Academy open (which is risky financially) and Klentak seems to have carte blanche to spend on scouts and coaches bodes well for the future. In the future, it is this kind of spending that will provide a competitive advantage on the margin, since the salary cap limits the "Harper" strategy and spending caps limit going crazy in the international market.

[allentown]

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Ruiz, Burrell, Utley, Rollins, Hamels, Happ, Myers, Madson. That's one heck of a home-grown core and an incredibly productive farm, especially when you add Kendrick and consider Victorino and the guys traded for with prospects over those years. The current home-grown nucleus and farm don't compare, which is the problem, and why I thought it odd that you would say today's farm is so much stronger than the farm of 10-20 years ago, when the 10-20 year ago farm is the source of that most recent golden age of Phillies baseball. What have I missed here, or have you just proven my point

The reason we need more than marginal FA to contend today is precisely because of the weakness of the farm now and the prior few years. Nola was a great get and I think Seranthony will be a big help. Kingery has yet to show he's a plus starter,

[zambonir]

This doesn't even seem like a big area of debate to me. The Phillies drafting and development was mostly a horror show between 2004 and 2013, with a few exceptions here and there (some of whom were traded. One of whom is Roman Quinn). Sometimes that was by mistake and sometimes that was by design (giving up draft picks under Amaro, and arguably just not caring in Gillick's case). And maybe also because the picks were so late. The last big international signings under Amaro were Sanchez and Ortiz so I guess that one is a wash if you don't care about the money.

But what's done is done. All that matters/is in question now is whether the Almaraz/Klentak regime (Crawford and Nola being Wolever picks) is headed in the right direction. The current ranking reflects some disappointing years, including the first couple under Almaraz.

[Austinfan]

One problem is it's too early to judge most of the last four years of drafting.

2015:
Randolph (#10) - flop
Kingery (#48) - rushed and struggled, but they think enough of him to lock up long-term
Gilbert (6th), Leftwich (7th) outside chance at a BP role
Pellitier (34th) - won't turn 21 until August, still has a shot

2016:
Moniak (#1) - turns 20 in May, filled out, strong finish, too early to write off
Gowdy (#42) - TJ, we'll see how he rebounds, was a 1st rd value
Romeo (4th) - stuff to be a middle of rotation lefty
Irvin (5th) - drop in velocity concerning, but very effective in high minors so far
A Brown (13th), Young (22nd), outside shot as LH SPs

2017:
Haseley (#8) - steady progress for college hitter, will turn 23 in Lehigh
Howard (#45) - gamble on 1 year starter seems to be paying off
Seabold (3rd) - outside shot as back of rotation guy
Parkinson (12th) - similar to Irvin with a tad more velocity
Warren (14th) - revelation as LH RP
Dohy (16th) - another promising LH RP
D Jones (18th) - shows promise as LH SP
B Brown (33rd) - big bodied power pitcher turns 20 in September

They obviously have a better eye for pitchers, though as Klentak revamps the organization, I'm not sure trends from the first few years will be good indicators of future performance.

[zambonir]

It's definitely too early to write anyone off but it's also definitely better to have guys about whom you don't have to say, "it's too early to write him off."