Post-season Prospect Lists

[Austinfan]

Didn't they make significant changes in the scouting organization this offseason?
Klentak said he was basically going to spend his first year here observing, well, he did, and then made changes.

[Austinfan]

As far as the prospects, the only one with data is Randolph, and he had a solid second half in the FSL at age 20.
Moniak's test is this season, he should be maturing physically and it's time to step up.
College players often struggle their draft year, adjusting to the pro game and fatigue.
They often make a big jump their first full minor league season, if not, then become concerned.

We'll have a much better read on all three by the end of the summer, they should show significant improvement this year or off to the Baboon Furnace with them!

[zambonir]

For sure, but you can't spin your wheels on amateur the way you could as a rebuilding major league team. It doesn't bother me (compared to Andy) if he actively chose to sit out some international stuff last year, but with the first overall pick there's no way he was just "observing."

But, it's irrelevant if Moniak is merely developing a little slowly. He could still be an all-star or at least an elite defender and the latter is why they took him I think, more so than his offensive ceiling. By the time we know someone (Klentak or Almaraz) will either look smart. Also possible they won't even be in the organization anymore.

[LoneStarPhan]

I guess we should rejoice that the farm system is strong without these 3 high pick outfielders as evidenced to the half dozen or so other prospects in various top one hundred lists. Imagine how it will look IF these prospects continue to develop as expected based on their placement on those lists AND Moniak, Haseley, and Randolph have break out seasons in age appropriate leagues this coming season.

I still have hopes and expectations that the first round pick in June will land a great prospect. Could they have more than 6 prospects in the top hundred at this time next year? I think it is quite possible that they have 8 or more, but of course, things could go bad as well. Regardless, the coming season should provide plenty of minor league news to keep us talking here.

[andyb]

I guess we should rejoice that the farm system is strong without these 3 high pick outfielders as evidenced to the half dozen or so other prospects in various top one hundred lists.

And it probably pains many on the board to realize that most of the reasons we are a top 3 system date to moves made by the evil, incompetent Ruben Amaro regime.

[allentown]

That's fitting. The past 'golden era' owed a ton to Wade and the players signed during his tenure as GM. He was lousy at deadline trades and it was Gillick who pushed the team over the top, but the talent which won for us was Wade's and Gillick made some horrendous trades/FA signings at the start of his regime. Monty was a big problem for Ruben.

[LoneStarPhan]

I guess we should rejoice that the farm system is strong without these 3 high pick outfielders as evidenced to the half dozen or so other prospects in various top one hundred lists.

And it probably pains many on the board to realize that most of the reasons we are a top 3 system date to moves made by the evil, incompetent Ruben Amaro regime.

I think many of us had a problem with Amaro staying with the aging core too long and trying to patch the ship by trading prospects leading to a weak farm system. Once he made the move to sell veterans and rebuild, he got the process going pretty well. I always felt that he might not have been the one setting the strategic direction for the club. I think he was doing what Montgomery and Giles wanted. It was hard for all of them to move past the WS championship winning team of 2008. I think had they won a second WS during the 2008-2011 period, we would think more highly of RAJ and his performance as GM. For me, one of the worst moves was the trade of Lee to Seattle, but I think that was a forced move that Amaro had to make. It seems he had to move Lee quickly once Haliday came on board and I believe he was not permitted to retain both for the upcoming season. Having to make the move and probably being expected to do it quickly caused him to make a deal that clearly did not return adequate value. I hold no ill will toward Amaro.

[andyb]

Matt Winkelman starting his top 50 with 41-50:

2018 Top 50 Phillies Prospects: 41-50

[andyb]

Keith Law ranks the Phillies system 5th (14th last year):

Keith Law's 2018 ranking of all 30 farm systems

No Phillies on his 101-110 rank article of near top 100 misses also.

And 31-40 from Matt Winkelman:

2018 Top 50 Phillies Prospects: 31-40

[allentown]

To me, 5th sounds right. It's also clear the Braves are stronger. Owners and management need a plan to catch up to Atlanta, although perhaps the commish's on-going penalization of Atlanta will do that for us.

[andyb]

Agree that it sounds about right to me. The big changes in our system have been the development of three prospects from good to great: Kingery, Sanchez, and Jhailyn Ortiz. None was top 100 material a year ago and now all of them are with Kingery and Sanchez being consensus top 50 guys. Adding those 3 (and still having Crawford eligible) means the system can lose a top 100 guy like Moniak and still improve.

We'll see if it is mainly Law, but I think a lot of prospect writers are warming to Ortiz as a real top prospect. What he has done at age 17 and 18 in short season ball has been very impressive and the big strikes against him have proven not to be big strikes. One strike was that he was not athletic enough for the outfield. That seems to be untrue and he looks at worst to be average defensively. And then he was going to strike out too much and have trouble with offspeed pitches. That sounds like the typical criticism of any young power prospect but Ortiz has had decent strike zone control for a power hitter at a really young age both years. His power will likely take a hit at Lakewood but his development there this year will be one of the huge stories to follow IMO.

[Squire]

MLB.com put out its Top 100 Prospect List last night with six Phillies on it though none particularly high:

Philles in the MLB Top 100:
25. Sixto Sanchez, RHP
35. Scott Kingery, 2B
37. J.P. Crawford, SS
86. Adonis Medina, RHP
88. Mickey Moniak, OF
95. Adam Haseley, OF

Edit: Recognizing that these things are a matter of preference and wildly inaccurate, isn't it a little disappointing that one half season after being drafted and given an above slot bonus, Haseley has been passed on this list by six (6) guys taken after him last June (Hiura, Adell, Baz, Bukauskas, Faedo, Ramos). I'm not saying he's a bust. I'm just saying industry views him a little less now.

[allentown]

seems very generous to Moniak. I haven't given up on Moniak, but I'd put Ortiz higher, along with Alfaro, Kilome, Romero, and Delossantos. Moniak can become a healthy most of what we like about Quinn, with not quite as much base stealing. I rank him above Quinn, but not by all that much. And yes, the industry isn't looking all that favorably upon our last 3 first rounders. Historically, the Phillies haven't been a team that does OFs all that well. Of our primo picks, there is Burrell in recent years.

[phillychuck]

Hoskins and Altherr are OF draftees from later rounds. I guess we don't do first-round OF all that well. We seem to be the best (historically) with first-round HS pitching. I have no clue if that's still an organizational strength since we really haven't tried it in a while.

[Austinfan]

Looking at past BA lists, once you get past the top 20 (mostly guys on the verge of the majors and thus easy to project), they don't have a great track record of projecting prospects.

Phillies seem to graduate ML players at a higher rate than past rankings would suggest, was Hoskins ever in the BA top 100? Altherr? Hernandez? Herrera?

[andyb]

Not sure there is really any evidence that BA is bad at rating prospects compared to anyone else. If 100% or even 50% certainty is what you are looking for then everybody is "bad" at rating prospects. There are huge uncertainties in outcomes in just about every sport. Look at the first round results in the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL drafts and I bet you would find more than half the picks rated as misses. Baseball has an even longer and harder development curve than other sports, so one would expect things to go wrong over 5+ years in a HS kid's development.

I am not sure one could say the Phillies graduate players at a higher rate than other organizations. Until the past few years we had an inferior system though much of that was because of low draft picks, some high profile misses, and inadequate investment in Latin America. Do we get lucky with lower picks like Hoskins or Altherr sometimes? Sure. But it is really hard to judge whether we do it more often than other organizations.

[julio]

Looking at past BA lists, once you get past the top 20 (mostly guys on the verge of the majors and thus easy to project), they don't have a great track record of projecting prospects.

Not sure there is really any evidence that BA is bad at rating prospects compared to anyone else.

I would just note that there isn't necessarily any disagreement between these two comments. Austinfan says, "BA doesn't have a great track record." Andyb says "They aren't worse than anybody else." My read: As andyb notes later ins his post, "There are huge uncertainties in outcomes..." E.g., nobody's all that good at it. smile:

[andyb]

It is kind of a broad statement that no prospect rankings have any credibility and that just is not correct. And then it transitions into a statement that the Phillies supposedly are better at developing second tier prospects than anyone else. Just about every organization has their Hoskins and Altherr type prospects. We would not have been a bad club the last 5 years if we really had a better track record of developing second tier prospects. Now this is not to say we are worse than others. We are a bad club in part because we had few high picks for a number of years, traded lots of prospects, and ignored international spending.

Broad assertions without any evidence are just not that helpful to the discussion. BA is probably pretty good at rating prospects for a media organization. It is just hard to figure out which 19 year-olds in A ball are going to be good players. Separating the ones who have a 50% chance of making it from the ones with a 30% chance is what these lists do.

[Squire]

Also....the list was done by mlb.com not BA

[Austinfan]

My point was simply that other than the "sure things" at the top of these lists, the rest of these lists are pretty bad indicators of the quality of a farm system other than gross comparisons (i.e. bad v mediocre v good).

Ryan Hoskins never made BA's top 100, and didn't make the Phillies top ten list (#6) until 2017.
Hernandez made a Phillies top ten list once, in 2014 (#8).

Generally, if you're not a highly touted high draft pick, or big money LA signing, you're not going to crack BA (or anyone else's) top 100 until you're in AA or AAA ball and have a breakout season there and attract national attention - and you'll probably be in the majors the next season. Some someone like Derrick Hall could put up .900+ OPS at Clearwater and be ignored, but if he puts up .950+ at Reading, suddenly he'll become a prospect.