In an article Friday (which is an insider/pay article), ESPN writer and former Blue Jays special assistant Keith Law ranked the Phillies farm system 29th out of 30 in baseball. He used the following criteria

• Players who have lost their rookie eligibility don’t count for this exercise.

• Both ability and performance count when looking at individual players, and both ceiling and depth count when looking at systems.

• I’m a strong believer in the “time value of prospects” — the idea that a prospect’s value increases significantly as he gets closer to the big leagues. So an organization like Washington, with most of its best prospects in short-season ball in 2006, scores poorly here, because those prospects are four or five years away from the majors, and the attrition rate on those kids is going to be high.

One other thing to bear in mind is how volatile these rankings are. Matt Garza finished the last season at 50 innings, so he’s a rookie in 2007 by the slimmest of margins; without him, the Twins would rank a few notches lower. By the middle of ’07, a number of these teams will have moved around as players have “graduated” from their farm systems to the big leagues.

The third point is the key point when looking at the Phillies system. We have maybe two legit prospects above High A, in James Happ and Michael Bourn. Our three best prospects, Carlos Carrasco, Kyle Drabek and Adrian Cardenas, are all at High A or lower. Also, the great strength of our system, pitching, was concentrated mainly at Low A this season, with a few guys like Bisenius and Segovia making their way to AA. I follow the minors as a whole fairly closely, but maybe not enough to know the 30 best prospects in every organization, and how they stack up to our top 30. But by Law’s criteria, it’s not surprising to see us ranked that low. He doesn’t just throw it together, he explained his criteria for analysis, and it makes sense. His capsule on the Phillies reads

29. Philadelphia: Thin system which got thinner by the sudden rise of Cole Hamels. The closest solid-average prospect to the majors here is Carlos Carrasco, who spent the year in low-A.

Again, makes sense. Carrasco, if his rise in 2006 is for real (and I think it is), should be a Top 30 in baseball prospect after 2007, and if Drabek and Cardenas perform in full season ball like many expect from top draft picks, our system will jump well up the charts next year. Also consider another year under the belt for Outman, and if he continues to improve at the rate he did in August, he’ll be considered an above average prospect, we could be looking at 4 potential Top 100 guys. Even if Bourn loses his eligibility, which he probably will, our system still looks strong.

I won’t analyze every team in the rankings, but just looking at the 9 ahead of us, Pittsburgh, Oakland, Florida, Washington, Toronto, Seattle, Texas, San Fran and St Louis, I like our depth, especially in pitching, over all of those organizations with the exception of Florida, who have five potential quality big league pitchers in the Low A/High A teams. Pittsburgh has Brad Lincoln and not much else, Oakland doesn’t have a real impact guy other than Daric Barton, and he doesn’t really have a position. Florida I mentioned, Washington has three impact guys in Willems, Marrero, and Ballester, but the former two are in the same position as Cardenas and Drabek, and Ballester has plenty of question marks. Toronto’s best prospect will be ineligible next year (Adam Lind) and they lack little else. Seattle has a few intriguing guys in Morrow, Tillman and Jones, but Jones will lose eligibility as well. Texas had three of the most talked about young pitchers, in Danks, Diamond and Volquez, but they traded Danks, Diamond looks like a bullpen arm, and Volquez was awful in his short big league stint last year. San Fran has the worst system in baseball, in my opinion, and in all likelihood, Lincecum, their best prospect, will lose eligibility this season, as well their second best prospect, Johnathon Sanchez. That leaves only St Louis, and they only really have one bona-fide star in their system, Colby Rasmus, and a few promising guys like John Jay from the 2006 draft.

So really, we could have easily been a few spots higher, and if things progress as they did in 2006, we will be higher in 2007. Our system has two main weaknesses, one being glaring, and that is the lack of position prospects. Michael Bourn would probably be in the 13-16 range in most good farm systems, but he’s a top 5 guy in our system. Outside of him, we can hope and pray Costanzo has really figured it out, and that Cardenas is on the fast track. The Phillies made a slew of good picks in Utley, Howard, Rollins and Burrell, now we need to hope the next crop is somewhere in Batavia or Lakewood. Our second weakness is a lack of an impact prospect at the higher levels. I love James Happ, but I don’t consider him an impact prospect, did Segovia or Bourn. A lot of teams ahead of us have a real good prospect waiting at AA or AAA to get his shot, and that increases their value as a system. We’ll have to evaluate ourselves in that area, and all areas, at this time next season, and I’m sure we’ll be higher in the rankings.