Phillies Prospect Lists

[bkox]

Jay Bruce is the first reclamation that worked for them

Its too early to say Jay Bruce worked. His BA is 50 points higher than his career average and his OPS is 100 points higher than hes ever had for a full season even in his prime. Regression would be expected here soon

[fish]

Not sure I agree the organization is trending down any more (pending prospect trades of course). Once we dealt Sanchez and Crawford and had other promotions we were trending down cumulatively the last few years.

This year was more about leveling off and we have had some decent minor league performances of prospects a bit beyond the top 100. Muzziotti, Damon Jones, Bohm of course. Francisco Morales. Kyle Glogoski. This has not been an awful year for prospect performance and the GCL and DSL teams look above average. I am also positive on this draft even though we know nothing about the number 1 which is of course half the draft.

We were already around 20th in the league in talent before the season. I don't think that standing has dropped really during the season. Of course losing draft picks and international allocations will not make it easy to improve, but we did at least trade for additional international slots last year. Cautiously optimistic that the system is trending a bit up now.

In my mind the first year of winning after a long rebuild there should be a wave of players coming through at the upper levels. That happened and petered out 2 years ago for the Phils. I really like Bohm and Stott. I've even reached a point where I like Haseley and Moniak, at least to the point where one, both, or some combination should provide valuable big league depth if not regular starters. I like Howard. After that though the guys you can hope on to be big leaguers is pretty thin without squinting real hard to make it look like you want it to look. Personally, I find the rosters in Williamsport and both the GCL teams to be entirely uninteresting so far.

There shouldn't be any more high picks coming, at least no time soon. The days of being excited from the stream of promising Latin pitchers (Sixto, Medina, Morales) dried up and all that's left are guys you could hope to be another Ramos or Garcia. And Latin hitters...oofff.

[Lawman]

Basically, the Phillies stink at scouting and drafting.

[bigegypt0417]

exactly!

[andyb]

The days of being excited from the stream of promising Latin pitchers (Sixto, Medina, Morales) dried up and all that's left are guys you could hope to be another Ramos or Garcia. And Latin hitters...oofff.

Starlyn Castillo is hopefully the guy this year. Sanchez and Medina clearly were a bit lucky. You just can't count on low bonus guys to become top 100 prospects on a regular basis. We had a dry year or two in Latin American pitching (i.e. look at who we promoted to Williamsport this year), but the wave behind them seems better (currently at GCL or DSL).

[Dirk41]

How Almaraz can go from being one of/the most prolific evaluator of Latin talent to this is puzzling. Makes you think it has to be organizational. He essentially built the model team in your own division

[andyb]

We know little about the success of the international signings since Almaraz took over, especially since Ortiz was likely a prior commitment.

Francisco Morales might be the first real test (though some others like Brayan Gonzalez look bad now). It would be nice to hit on 1 out of 3 signings in the $500K range. That is like hitting on 4th round draft choices. Starlyn Castillo is the latest big bet. Luis Garcia has also generally held his own as a prospect so far.

[zambonir]

Dirk means Almaraz was insanely good at his job as the Braves' international guy, though he also had a lot of success with the Reds domestically. With the Phillies Almaraz has no say over international, any more than Sal had anything to do with Mickey Moniak. They are both Directors who report to an Assistant GM.

Obviously it is still too early to truly evaluate him, and there are far too many variables for us to definitively blame him for any cluster of failed picks (which are still ultimately kind of random/small sample). But, he's the boss, and Klentak kept him.

[andyb]

I was assuming Sal reports to Almaraz. Sal does the scouting, but it would make sense for the overall director to set budgets, manage development, and approve the big signings and strategy (how much to spend, where and when).

[zambonir]

I really don't think he does. Minnitti is the guy who sets the budgets and approves the big signings and strategy. With Almaraz for domestic and with Sal for international. With Klentak signing off of course.

Now, Wolever held the title of Assistant GM, so it's possible Sal reported to him, but I believe Benny Looper was actually Sal's superior during those years.

[Austinfan]

Some points:

1) the recent "success" was all due to trades, once those players graduated (Pivetta, Eflin, Velasquez, Arano, etc.) there was a big hole at the top of the farm system. The rot has been in place for a decade.
2011: Quinn #66, Morgan #120, Rios 12th rd
2012: Anderson 21st rd
2013: Crawford #16, Knapp #53,
2014: Nola #7, Hoskins #142, Davis 12th rd
2015: Kingery #48 [Falter, Leftwich, Gilbert best prospects left]
2016: too early to tell, Moniak, Gowdy, Irvin, Dyer probably best shots at ML career
2017: Haseley, Howard, Seabold, Warren, Dohy, Jones

2) Klentak has made significant changes the last couple years, 2 GCL teams, hiring additional coaches, a new emphasis on video and analytics, but this shift in organizational philosophy takes years to implement and probably won't pay off for a couple seasons.

3) LA is complicated b/c of the Venezuela situation, Phillies are one of the few teams still active there, and to credit them, it seems to be as much about taking care of their own as striving for a competitive advantage (every dollar you can funnel to your people may be the difference between eating and starvation).

Players are starting to turn it around on the farm after a really shaky start up and down the organization.
Because so many players got off to slow starts, it makes you wonder if they've been making a lot of changes, and players are struggling to adjust.

[allentown]

I don't get the impression (perhaps I am very wrong here) that Almaraz has been doing a lot of LA talent evaluation. He's Sal's boss, but how much LA scouting/evaluation is he doing. He seems more focused upon the domestic draft and management. Square peg/round hole? Sal pulled Ruiz out of his hat and he and his staff have had several coups with low-bonus LA pitchers. As far as their evaluation of position players go -- the results say that they are below average.

[allentown]

The slow starts also make one wonder at the quality of off-season work. We know the Phillies totally lost track of LGJ in the off-season and he came to camp as the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

[bkeich]

That does bring up an interesting point, it is just odd to me that there is an “offseason” for prospects, especially 1st round picks.

The team should be involved in all of there training, at least aware and keeping track. Letting yourself go in the offseason and then trying to get back in shape may have made sense when that was the norm, but being a professional athlete is a 365 day / year job.

I do actually blame the team a little. Yes, I know there are restrictions on what they can do, but they need to be establishing the minimum acceptable is to be in shape and concentrating on Baseball in the offseason also.

[zambonir]

He really isn't Sal's boss, any more than he is Mike Ondo's boss. They are all directors who run their respective departments (amateur, international and pro) and report to an assistant GM and Klentak. I'm sure Almaraz is consulted about a player merely because he scouted Latin America for so long but he's not a decision-maker, and he doesn't get called in evaluate a AA prospect who's available in trade (that's Ondo's job). He's got enough to do with his own scouts and draft, presumably.

I really have no idea if scouting is scouting, or how much networking, and familiarity with what you are watching (to analyze skills in the context of where they are playing), makes a difference. But i'm sure Almaraz's skills transfer. The skill that might not is actually running a department.

In the past I've seen you (Atown) argue that the scouts are good at their jobs and the GMs tend to screw up the high picks, so not sure you can really say that two different GMs and scouting directors pulled the trigger on one area scout's bad judgement on two very different players, they and other higher-ups surely watched the player too (just as Gillick watched Moniak and Mackanin probably watched Stott).

being a professional athlete is a 365 day / year job.

Simple answer to that - pay them!

[gmwannabe]

i am sure, maybe not, but since Almaraz was so successful in the latin market, he still must have a number of contacts (buscones, trainers etc.). isn't he helping in getting the foot in the door early for these younger prospects. it seem like a lot of the teams get involved very early with the high ticket prospects. Can't he help sal? or maybe it is the money.
gm

[bkox]

Letting yourself go in the offseason and then trying to get back in shape may have made sense when that was the norm, but being a professional athlete is a 365 day / year job

But its hard to live on poverty wages. I mean a 1st or 2nd rounder should have money to get him through a couple years from his bonus. But how do you do it when you arent getting paid from Sept through late Feb?

Even during the season low minors guys talk about having to live on PB&J to get by.

[LoneStarPhan]

Some of us are old enough to remember when ML players took off season "regular" jobs to earn some money. Of course, that does not justify the ridiculously low pay to minor leaguers under the current set up. At least players in the majors for the full season should be able to survive the off season without selling cars, running a liquor store, digging graves, etc.

[zambonir]

But even $20 million NFL and NBA players are not controlled by their team in the off-season.

[bkox]

Did they unjuice the ball in AA, A+, A and short season A? Of those 11 leagues only one, The Northwest League in short season A, has a higher OPS over 2018.

The Eastern League as a whole is down 38 points in OPS. Last year the Eastern League was 253/327/389/716 this year 237/313/365/678

Runs per game in the Eastern league has fallen from 4.42 to 3.97

Southern League OPS down 19 points
Texas League OPS down 9 points

California League OPS down 25 points
Carolina League OPS down 10 points
FSL OPS down 27 points

Midwest League OPS down 20 points
SAL OPS down 11 points.

NYPL OPS down 18 points

Seeing this drop in offense across all these leagues, should we be evaluating our hitters any differently? Is Moniak even better than what hes showing?

And to add to the whole different ball/juiced ball conspiracy..
International League OPS is UP 81 POINTS over last year
PCL OPS is up 62 points over last year.

How badly does this mess with pitchers who go from AA's .678 OPS league average to AAA's .790?