Phillies Prospect Lists

bigegypt0417 2022-01-19 17:15:25 UTC #1201

I think that's the point i'm making....he did well at the level of play he was at in 2021...he was among the leaders in many categories.

He played at a level he was in no way ready for when you look at the results. Missing development time is significant.

andyb 2022-01-19 18:16:23 UTC #1202

Where would you rank him now in the Phillies organization? And is that ranking better than your ranking 2 years ago?

I'm not sure we are that far apart on him. Just interested in your take on where he is relative to everybody else.

andyb 2022-01-19 20:04:19 UTC #1203

Sixto Sanchez still a prospect at 64. Curtis Mead at 97.

Philsmania 2022-01-19 20:51:28 UTC #1204

A very interesing retrospective on the Cornelius Randolph pick which takes a look at the pick in the context of that draft and perspectives on it at the time. The only clear "should have drafted this guy instead" was Tyler Stephenson who the Reds picked right after him. Otherwise, there were no other impact players taken until Walker Buehler at #24. Easy to say now the Phillies should have drafted him with the #10 pick but also completely unrealistic in context as opposed to hindsight.

andyb 2022-01-19 21:13:29 UTC #1205

That first round is not quite as empty after the Phillies pick as the article suggests. They seem to be looking for significant major league careers as some kind of defining attribute knowing all these players might be 24 if they were HS draftees and they might have only had a year or two in the majors but look like they might have a career. Examples:

Tyler Stephenson - pick 11 - sure looks like he is a backup catcher at worst, possibly a starter going forward. Phillies were tied to him also at various points.
Josh Naylor - pick 12 - Power could easily come together for him. He is at least a major leaguer.
Kolby Allard - pick 14 - Was a bad starter for the Rangers last year. 24-year-old pitchers often improve though.
Trent Grisham - pick 15 - Another HS OF. 6.4 WAR so far. He is a starting ML outfielder even if below average.

All those are HS picks much better than Randolph selected within 5 picks of him. By the time they are 27 or 28 there is probably at least 1 of them with much more success than Randolph.

mdougherty12 2022-01-20 01:29:40 UTC #1206

This 2015 mock draft from Kiley McDaniel at Fangraphs suggests that the Phils did "kick the tires" on Buehler, among others, prior to the draft:

andyb 2022-01-20 02:29:12 UTC #1207

Buehler did drop that year because of bonus concerns. TJ surgery after he had been near the top of the class if I recall. He is the type of player that often gets steered to the wealthier franchises where the draftee thinks they can make up any lack of bonus by being with a big market franchise like the Dodgers.

Clearly he would have been the best choice in hindsight, though the Phillies might have been looking at an overslot bonus for a guy with injury questions. I don't fault them for skipping Buehler. I do fault them for not realizing that Randolph would be limited to LF right off the bat. That just seems a huge scouting error no matter who they ended up with. One can say there were not great choices available at the same time one says that the Phillies clearly misjudged what was available.

bigegypt0417 2022-01-20 14:36:32 UTC #1208

Honestly...I would put Garcia at 6 or 7...this will be a huge year for him and I'm anticipating we see more improvement...but my heart has been broken before and most assuredly will be again...sooner than later.

andyb 2022-01-20 14:54:40 UTC #1209

Baseball Prospectus top 101:

Abel 41
Painter 82
Stott 93

schillingfan 2022-01-20 23:44:13 UTC #1210

So with 30 teams, you’d think that sometimes we would have someone in the top 30. Right?

allentown 2022-01-21 00:05:36 UTC #1211

It just shows the weakness of the pharm. Average team should have 3-1/3 on the list, so a top third farm has 4 or more. What's worse, we have no players in top third of this 100, 1 in 2nd third, and 2 in bottom third.

And as discussed in another thread, we have zero international players on the list. So bad as this is, it does say we've done better in draft than in international. What's more, all three on our list here are last three years of draft, so draft performance is looking up a bit.

Since about a third of top prospects are typically international players, we'd look ok on this list if our international performance was just average, but it's not -- at least among the better prospects. In fairness, the Australian we traded was at the bottom of this list, so there is that.

zambonir 2022-01-21 00:24:10 UTC #1212

J.P., Nola and Sixto all must have taken a turn in the Top 30 right? Moniak only Top 100 I'm guessing.

Mead cracking this list not really a good thing! We always talk about trading away or acquiring "lottery tickets" but the Rays seem to know what's behind the scratch-off.

allentown 2022-01-21 01:02:35 UTC #1213

Nope. Moniak made #17 back in 2017
Sixto made the list 5 times, topping out as #6, last 3 times weren't with Phillies
Crawford made it 5d times, also topping out at #6
Nola made list once at #39, but he made it up to majors that year

zambonir 2022-01-21 03:31:19 UTC #1214

Yeah I knew Nola couldn't have been long. Not surprised about Moniak given he was 1-1, but if you'd told me he'd only gotten to 50 that would have made sense too.

andyb 2022-01-21 16:57:08 UTC #1215

Prospects Live list. Top 30 behind a paywall.
https://www.prospectslive.com/prospects-live/philadelphia-phillies-2022-top-30-prospects

andyb 2022-01-21 23:55:09 UTC #1216

Was the former set of hitting coaches hurting prospects? Hard to tell but an interesting theory:

allentown 2022-01-22 01:08:55 UTC #1217

Not conclusive, but certainly interesting food for thought. A really small sample size is being analyzed here and not all of those in the sample behaved the same way. This could well be true. It is in line with two things I have observed about the Phillies in recent years:
1. Rather than developing their own organizational philosophy for doing things, the Phillies have become ineffectual fad chasers, because their baseball people and the raw stats guys they brought in don't seem to understand the rationale behind some team's successful implementation of the fad to successfully adopt it. Then we change direction and move on to the next fad. The Phillies were doing extremely well in amateur signings/player development (at least at home-grown stars) in the lead-up to the 2008 team, then de-emphasized those areas in a win-now phase, and didn't pick them back up with their prior skill level, instead going scatter-shot.

As the Phillies have changed top personnel, a lot of time has been wasted in 'evaluation' of existing management, then making some changes, then in another, in response to failure and fad chasing. The result is that the scouting and development efforts across the organization just haven't been consistent, which is what this article is starting to address. The Phillies tried to replace one, or a few guys, hire replacements, seemingly without worrying whether or not the resulting organization was on the same page top to bottom, or whether different fiefdoms were doing their own contradictory things.

andyb 2022-01-31 17:44:17 UTC #1218

Keith Law Top 100. Stott at 66 and Abel at 91. Team reports next week.

And the Q and A afterwards. Some snarky follow-ups about Abel and Stott. As one of the rare rankings to put Stott ahead I do say there is some logic in that. Abel's control regressed a bit last year. Could have been the robo umps. Could have been the layoffs. But it did regress relative to the league and he did have some minor injury concerns. Couple that with Stott's solid year and the virtual certainty that he is a major league player this year and there is a good case to rank Stott ahead of Abel. Law also pointed out that he has Stott's defense at SS at 55. If that is true then I think I agree with the higher ranking. We probably won't know about the quality of his defense until we get a more complete set of advanced stats from major league play. And even then most stories will probably obsess on the number of errors he makes.

Austinfan 2022-01-31 18:00:06 UTC #1219

I think you're right in that there was no strong hand guiding the organization, making sure everyone was on the same page.
The focus on winning now seemed to have sapped attention on scouting and development, and they've been treated as more of an afterthought than the heart of an organization.

I don't think it was necessarily wrong to teach contact and hitting the opposite way, but it seems every fad is pursued without nuance, you should be tailoring your instruction to the players, rather than trying to push square pegs into round holes. If you have a kid with speed but limited power, then GB/line drives make more sense than launch angles - conversely a slow kid with power should be focused on launch angles than gaining .020 higher BA from hitting the opposite way.

I think this may stem from a misunderstanding of analytics, "all models are wrong, some models are useful" but it takes wisdom as well as statistical training to identify useful models. So analytics should be a starting point to asking questions, not a source of cookie cutter strategy.

Understanding when and why a certain approach can maximize the talent of certain players is the proper way to guide development. Instead of copying what other teams are doing, try to figure out WHY it seems to work, and what part is worth incorporating into your player development process.

flyers19rw 2022-02-01 00:34:06 UTC #1220

When was the last time that Law liked a Phillies’ prospect? I could care what he says about them.