This year’s Williamsport and GCL rosters feature a number of players from last year’s Latin American rookie squads.  This post will go through the new players on each team and summarize what we know about them.  This is not meant to be a scouting report of these players, however, as we have very few eyewitness accounts of them playing.  Hopefully we can fill in the blanks with live reports as the season goes on.  These players are important to the Phillies future, however.  They also tend to be slightly better prospects on average than the draft prospects because the lesser prospects do not get promoted from their home country leagues.  These prospects would probably all have been selected in the top 10-15 rounds of the draft if they had been eligible.

Continue reading New Players from the 2006 VSL and DSL Teams →

Some random thoughts this morning

* Carlos Carrasco and Pat Overholt are now at Reading. To be honest, I’m kind of worried about both guys. Overholt seems to have gotten away from what was working early in the season, that is, being a dominant groundball pitcher. In the last 8 or so starts he’s had, he’s been okay in that department, but not dominant. He does not have plus plus stuff, so he has to keep the ball down if he’s going to be effective, and I just don’t know that he was ready for AA, but maybe he’ll prove me wrong in the second half. As for Carrasco, I’m both excited and concerned. The last time the Phillies moved him aggressively, it was a disaster. Over the last month, he’s been locked in and as good as any pitcher in the minors. If he goes to Reading and gets bombed, what does it do to his confidence? I like seeing prospects moved aggressively for the most part, but there are some cases where it might not be a good idea. Cross your fingers that Carrasco continues to roll along. This also likely speeds up his ETA in Philly, with sometime next year looking more like a possibility.

Continue reading Wednesday morning musings…. →