Well, there's an opening for him now.
When's the last time a second-round pick entered higher than the first-rounder? Certainly Kingery must have pretty quickly, but not in the first list.
BA always has a highish floor for first-round picks in year after draft. For a middle-ranked system like the Phillies, #12 is quite low. That 2nd-rounder Burkholder is at #8 means they really like that pick.
I hope both of them play a few games where we get the results...but they probably will do most of their work in camp/FIL. Hope Steve will have reports!
21 years old with a FB that tops out at 100. Bulk inning reliever now that they may try to stretch out to see if his velo holds up. Working with 3 pitches right now.
Dominated low A to the tune of around 13.5Ks/9 (sound familiar?). Now in high A after an early season injury. Maybe we can change his name to George Klassen and everyone will stop worrying about our trade for Estevez.
Would we have felt better if it were Pan instead of Klassen in that trade? I think I would have since I'm such a Klassen fan, but I don't know about others. I haven't seen Pan reported as high as triple digits, though. I can't recall, does Pan have a high-effort delivery? Klassen throws 97 pretty effortlessly, at least to my eye.
Pan video. Balance is awful after his release in many pitches. One was 99.
Pan hit triple digits a few times last year early in the season. When the outings got longer than an inning or two he settled in a couple mph below that.
I think Klassen has a higher ceiling than Pan. A little more velocity and athleticism in general. His offspeed stuff generates swings and misses too. Of course with hard throwing pitchers it would be nice to have both of them (or a dozen of them) because half of them will have a serious injury in their development.
Klassen has already had TJ surgery in college. 6'2 170 at 21 coming out of college is less likely to significantly bulk up, and that's a light frame to throw in the upper 90s for extended innings, which is why I think he'll end up in the pen.
9 days later
BA Pre-season rank was 21 and mid-season rank was 14. So we moved up. Part of that is that they had no promotions to the majors. But a good chunk was the leap of Miller and Caba and sustained success of Crawford.
The ESPN pre-season rank was 23. I do think the lack of promotions is the biggest reason we moved up rather than individual prospects being rated more highly. And we just traded 2 or 3 of those prospects that had increased in value.
This year's draft probably had no real positive impact as we had one of the smaller pools out there.
The move up could also be because other teams traded away prospects and thinned their systems as well.
We've had a few players step up, Tait, a couple pitchers, etc.
This despite having a number of pitchers with TJ.
Abel stepping down has lost the system as much value as anyone stepping up. We just did not graduate anyone with value this year. That is the biggest change in the system. Miller being better than anticipated is the second biggest change. Tait is not enough to even offset Abel in the way these things are calculated.
