Phillies Prospect Lists

Austinfan 2022-02-03 02:07:02 UTC #1241

No, what it means is the variance is far greater when your best talent is A ball and below.
When you have a lot of guys a year or two away, there's more certainty that most will make it.

schillingfan 2022-02-03 02:46:16 UTC #1242

That kind of misses the point that having your best talent in A ball and below, speaks volumes about the past poor performance of your team.

allentown 2022-02-03 03:50:46 UTC #1243

What does this even mean and how does it relate to the ranking of the Phillies system?
For this to in any way change the conclusion that we have a bottom third system, the Phillies would have to have better prospects in A-ball and below than the average team. I see no evidence of this. What evidence do you have?

Austinfan 2022-02-03 14:11:00 UTC #1244

My point is prospects at that low a level are so uncertain no one really knows who has a good group or not.
Abel and Painter might blow out their arms or fill out the next couple years and be dominant.
Rojas might explode onto the scene or turn out he can't hit breaking stuff.

Once they get to AA, the odds they're for real jump by an order of magnitude.

andyb 2022-02-03 15:14:41 UTC #1245

Of course low level prospects are more uncertain, especially if they are younger. You are just pointing to uncertainty though to say the system is better than its rating at #23 which was the whole point of this discussion. There is just no evidence of that. We have had international allocation amounts the last few years that have been among the lowest in baseball. Outside of our last two number one picks, who really looks like a breakout talent in low A that is appreciably better than what other organizations can point to.

Systems are rated on what we know. And what we know now is that the Phillies are really thin at the top with what I would argue are only 5 prospects that should be in a typical system top 10. I hope the younger talents emerge. I am just not going to say those talents will emerge though until we see it.

Is there some magic development formula that the Phillies have hidden the past couple of years that you are seeing? I hope the new regime figures it out. I just don't know that they have.

Austinfan 2022-02-03 23:31:10 UTC #1246

No, my point is when your system is heavily weighted toward the lower levels, the variance is much greater, so the Phillies could be #10 or #32.

zambonir 2022-02-03 23:42:40 UTC #1247

But still, no, because if your system is weighted towards higher levels you just have a better system. In 2021. The 2022 or 2023 rankings might be different, but that doesn't matter now.

andyb 2022-02-03 23:50:43 UTC #1248

You are still assuming the lower parts of the system (the non top 100 prospects) are better on average than other organizations. Hard to believe with their recent player development record and lower than average pool internationally.

This is more hope than evidence.

zambonir 2022-02-04 00:02:50 UTC #1249

Or their draft position.

Austinfan 2022-02-04 14:29:50 UTC #1250

No. What I'm saying is outcomes will vary more from rankings the more you're system is weighted toward the lower levels.
Rankings have no value other than a suggestion of how good a system might be (come back in three years!), but the more your talent is weighted toward lower levels, the more results will probably diverge from your ranking, in either direction.

allentown 2022-02-04 14:58:26 UTC #1251

That may be true, but you were falsely using it as an argument that the Phillies farm is better than the ratings indicate. On the other hand, what we actually know about the players in our lower minors suggests that isn't the case. Yhoswar was distinctly unimpressive and he's the $ majority of one international class.

"The more your talent is weighted toward lower levels, the more results will probably diverge from your ranking, in either direction." The fallacy with that is that apart from Abel and Painter, there is precious little evidence that our talent is weighted to the lower levels, i.e. that we have an unusual amount of talent there, which others lack.

This is the sort of assumption which justifies a status quo approach, especially internationally, in an organization which is failing there.

andyb 2022-02-04 16:18:47 UTC #1252

But you are also assuming our lower level prospects are better than average.

And just throwing away rankings because they are not perfect is also not a well thought out position. The purpose of rankings are to compare different players and different organizations. People complained about BA ranking us high for a couple of years, though the system produced Hoskins, Crawford, Alfaro, Sanchez and a few others those years. So the ranking was off a bit, but also not totally wrong.

Once again your belief that rankings don't matter has been pretty consistent. Not just this year. I think for the last 5 years you have been saying our system is stronger than the rankings because we had so many Latin American prospects. Well the low level pipeline after Sixto Sanchez and Adonis Medina is pretty dry with Rojas the only notable prospect and O'Hoppe is the same type of draft surprise. Those things happen. They just are not happening more for the Phillies than other organizations.

Austinfan 2022-02-05 03:36:40 UTC #1253

I'm not assuming anything except that most of our prospects are lower levels, since most of our players in AA and AAA are no longer considered serious prospects. Stott, O'Hoppe and who else? At least AAA has a bunch of guys who once were top prospects, Reading is going to be a wasteland this summer.

andyb 2022-02-05 14:36:19 UTC #1254

So if you are not assuming anything, you really have no clue that our lower level prospects are better than those of other organizations beyond the obvious (Abel and Painter) top choices. I guess you are agreeing that the system currently is below average.

Austinfan 2022-02-05 17:03:16 UTC #1255

Right now it's below average.
Come October, we'll see.

If they are actually making progress with player development, the system should outperform expectations the next few years (eventually expectations will factor in better player development, but there is a perception lag).

allentown 2022-02-05 17:09:59 UTC #1256

There isn't currently a perception lag. At present, the results point to inferior player development. There are pluses, such as O'Hoppe, but far more underperforming 'prospects' and too many minor leaguers and guys on the NE Extension shuttle complaining of confusing/contradictory coaching (I think year-to-year within the system, as well as level-to-level in any year)

zambonir 2022-02-05 17:46:14 UTC #1257

Well sure it's easy to outperform low expectations!

The new player development department has existed for all of four months, and only made minor changes across the system (same hitting and pitching coordinators). Hopefully it will turn out that those guys - and Brian Barber - are good at their jobs in ways that can't be obvious yet but there is also no reason for the perception to be good. Especially in terms of development, as Mattingly and Fuld don't even have a track record in that area. It has to be better than the last regime, is all.

andyb 2022-02-05 19:01:11 UTC #1258

This whole discussion is silly then (sorry board) because you agree with us.

Nobody disputes there is more variability in low level prospects. We all hope our low level prospects develop. We just don't expect it because of their recent track record.

Austinfan 2022-02-05 20:18:17 UTC #1259

My point with development is if they really do improve the process, outsiders will have a lag of a couple years before they recognize that it's working. Right now, the Philly prospects in general have higher value when drafted or signed than three or four years down the road, relative to other organizations. Hopefully, in the future, this will be reversed, with the Phillies not just scouting better, but actually getting some prospects to hit their ceilings instead of falling through their floors.

Of course, they're starting from the bottom.

O'Hoppe and Suarez and Sanchez are probably the three biggest "overachievers" of the past five years or so, while we know they have numerous "underachievers" relative to draft position and signing bonuses.

allentown 2022-02-05 20:24:13 UTC #1260

This gets at a lot of the problem. I think to succeed this is what an organization needs:
1. There needs to be a well-founded organizational philosophy in place for an extended period of time, with MINOR tweaks as required [frankly, as the commissioner can't decide what he wants and changes the strike zone, the baseball itself at least periodic tweaks in philosophy will be needed]. By philosophy in this sense, I mean: what does a Phillies MLB middle IF look like? A corner IF/OF? A catcher? A CF? A RH/LH starter? A RHRP?LHRP?
1a. What skill levels/physical characteristics does a HS/international signee need, such that there is a good shot of developing him into a semblance of this ideal? What about a college signee?
1b. What development and physical training approach can get such a player to the desired endpoint?
1c'. For #1a/1b there are two groups: the few guys we are willing to pay big signing bonuses; the mass of player who are longer shots, but whom we think there is a chance of developing
2. EVERYBODY in the chain (scouts, coaches and managers at all levels incl. MLB, upper management) has to be on the same page -- buy in and enthusiastically implement. Those who can't, must be replaced.
3. The development program must account for individual differences of prospects.
4. The baseball development process is long compared to other sports, making it even dumber to draft for need or give a big international bonus based on current MLB need. Take BPA, which it seems we often don't do with our #1 pick or highest international bonus.

I think the Phillies haven't been successful because they have changed philosophy too rapidly as they chased fads and relied on an incompetent analytical department as well as overall frustration. I think in upper management changes, they have shot themselves in the foot by not cleaning house of those staffers not willing to hew to the chosen philosophy.

Whenever you change philosophy, which the Phillies have done repeatedly, you have a mismatch between the system you have and the system you want to have. You can educate and demand buy-in to the new philosophy from all current employees and replace the refuseniks as quickly as possible, but.... in any event you have 4-6 years of minor league prospects in the system who were chosen under the old scouting philosophy (a prime example is our 1.1 draftee Moniak, who drew gushing raves from Gillick for his nice, level swing in which the bat stayed in the zone a relatively long time, subsequently confronting the new philosophy of loft to increase HRs. This presents the quandary of trying to plug a very expensive square peg into your now preferred round hole, or developing Moniak to be the best round peg he possibly can be. This goes a bit beyond simply adapting your development program to fit the particular talent strengths and weaknesses of a given player, since under the new philosophy this isn't a guy you would have taken 1.1 -- well maybe it's just an extreme example of that).

Now we seem to be chasing some combination of the Tampa Bay/Dodgers/Yankees/Padres magic. We need a good blended philosophy that takes the best from all of this. The upper level baseball-side staff seems to be finally all in place. Now we need a quick buy-in/weed-out among all those below these guys in the organization. I wonder where Sal and his guys fit in with this. Are they nostalgia retentions?