Cameron Rupp went 3-3 with a double, his second multi-hit game in the last three. I imagine a solid last ten days or so would be welcome for him at the end of this total bummer of a season. Brian Pointer was 2-4 with a double and Gabriel Lino was 2-4 with his fourth home run for CLR, (5th on the year across two levels). Edubray Ramos with a good outing – three Ks and one hit over two scoreless. He’s struck out 14 and walked just one in 14.2 IP for WIL.
Winding down here, folks. Not much left for these guys to do except stay healthy, and for the GCL squad, push for the playoffs. Many guys will be hitting instructs, and we could get some info on our 2014 July 2 international guys. Of course we’ll get a list of AFL players from the US born/Canadian ranks sometime shortly after the season, where hopefully we get a lot of scouting on the real prospects in that group, and a lot of the upper level foreign born players will play in their home countries’ pro leagues this winter, where we likely won’t get any scouting at all.
Here’s the affiliate Scoreboard from MiLB. http://www.milb.com/scoreboard/index.jsp?sid=milb&org=143&ymd=20140821
Phuture Phillies 
I have a question do you think that leandro castro deserves a callup? If so how will they make room for him?
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Man, your last paragraph left me a little misty eyed. Can’t believe the season is almost over, once again. It’s actually be a pretty good one, I think, especially in comparison to last year, when it seemed like basically every week brought another devastating pitching injury. Crawford has been so consistently excellent that I have kind of started taking him for granted. Cord Sandberg showed signs of breaking out for a couple of weeks there, and then came back to earth. Nola has been pretty much as advertised. Mecias is back on the mound. Dylan Cozens has showed signs of putting it together. Pujols is flashing impressive power. Quinn has slotted back into his natural position nicely and is running rampant on the basepaths. Kenny Giles went from the mid-teens on our preseason Top 30 to one of the most exciting relievers in baseball.
On the downside: the two top prospects in the system, Franco and Biddle, have both struggled mightily at times. Seems like it’s just natural developmental stuff with Franco, but I think there’s going to be a legitimate debate this offseason about whether Biddle is is going to make it at all. That’s a major loss, since the consensus had him pegged at a #4 at worse. Aaron Altherr, a breakout candidate, was injured to start the year and looks likely to repeat AA next year. Ethan Martin and MAG both took big steps backward, though I suppose it’s fair to ask whether MAG was ever really worthy of his high ranking to begin with.
Overall, though, I feel like the system has a lot of exciting high-ceiling guys that are starting to come along. I’m looking forward to watching the major league team around 2017.
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I think that after he got healthy, MAG has had a very good year. I think of him as a Plus for the system and still have not ruled out starting. But, at least he is back on track. His being injured to start the year was a downer, but hopeful now. Also hopeful again for Martin, at least as a RP
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While Altherr’s avg looks low he did have a decent year of production, specially if you look at his Babip that points to some bad luck this year. He will be playing in winter ball in Venezuela and compete for a big league job in spring. I doubt he will repeat AA.
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I mostly agree with your evaluation of his season, but he is not going to be “compet[ing] for a big league job in the spring.” If he does, that would be a BAD sign, as it would mean that the Phillies see him only as a bench guy.
IMO he’ll be in AAA next year.
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You’re probably right: Tocci will go to Clearwater, Quinn will go to Reading, so Altherr will need to move up. On the other hand, they always seem to have a couple of AAAA-type center fielders in camp during spring training, and they seem to like to keep one of them at LHV as a backup plan in case Revere gets injured. There’s also the question of what happens to Zach Collier, not that that is of major importance to anyone besides maybe Zach Collier.
And Altherr hasn’t quite done enough to make the move to AAA a no brainer. It’d be easy enough to juggle him and Quinn CF at AA early in the year considering there’s no one else in the present Clearwater outfield to speak of.
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I agree about MAG. I didn’t know what we had in the Spring. All of a sudden in the minors he looks good and is hitting 96. Amaro already said they still view him as a starter. I think he’ll at least get 1 more crack in Spring Training at it. At the very least he looks like he can be a good bullpen piece.
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Well, I’m happy it seems possible that he could contribute to the big league team in some way in the future, but I think the #4 preseason ranking was a product of sketchy scouting and wishful thinking. If he’s a middle reliever with possible back-end of the rotation upside but durability/injury questions, that’s a guy who ranks somewhere around 10-15 to me. I guess he’ll still have rookie eligibility this offseason so we’ll get a chance to argue it out.
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It’s tough for me to be too optimistic. How many possible future major league rotation starters and possible position players do we have? Nola, maybe imhof, and then who? Franco, Quinn, and Dugan are maybes after Crawford. The CWater guys are all just maybes. It’s easy to forget that other teams actually have guys that hit over 300 in the minors each year. It’s time to trade Hamels to get a future #3 hitter because we don’t have one in our org.
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Every prospect is a maybe. I don’t think too many teams have significantly more “safe” seeming guys than the Phillies do.
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Phillies’ minor league player of the year; J.P.Crawford, honorable mention Willians Astudillo. Pitcher of the year; Ranger Suarez, honorable mention Brandon Liebrandt.
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Sincere apologies folks as I am sure I missed this on the site somewhere (I looked – I swear!) but any word what’s up with Encarnacion? Noticed his absence from the last few GCL games. May just be the point they call it a year for a just turned 17 year old?
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Ah no, the minor league pitcher of the year will be Giles. Has to be. He was brilliant in the minors, brilliant in the majors. As much as I like Ranger Suarez’s name, the truth is that we know almost nothing about him. It will be Giles and deservedly so.
By the way, count me as one who feels Biddle will never make it with the Phillies. I believe the mental aspect of pitching in the area he grew up and for a team he rooted for has just proven too much. He doesn’t even seem to like the game anymore and for all of you who played a sport, you know that once you no longer enjoyed the sport you A] were generally not very successful anymore or B] found reasons not to play anymore.
I think for Biddle, we saw A happen and it dwarfed into B. So sad. I suspect the Phils will eventually move him somewhere else, and probably in the next couple of years when his value is still relatively high because of his age.
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Biddle was injured last year. Messed up his arm, but pitched through. Mechanics, stuff, and belief in himself cratered. I don’t know this for a fact, but have heard as such.
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My first thought was Giles but he pitched less than half a season in the minors. Have they ever given it to a relief pitcher? Once one looks through the numbers, you realize how poor our pitching was this season.
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