So far we have
01. Carlos Carrasco
02. Adrian Cardenas
03. Joe Savery
Is today Outman’s day? Costanzo has been making a push. A darkhorse? We’ll see. Have your say in the comments.
Eligibility reminder
For the purpose of this poll, consider “eligibility” to be less than 50 AB/25 games for a position player, and less than 25 IP/20 games as a pitcher.
The first two days went as most probably assumed they would, but now things will get interesting. Be sure to get your vote in. So far we have
01. Carlos Carrasco
02. Adrian Cardenas
So, you can vote for anyone else, just not those two. Today is #3, tomorrow is #4, and then we resume again on Monday. Vote now.
Baseball America is in the process of naming their top 20 prospects for each league, and two Phillies represent the New York Penn League list, the first Phillies to show up this year after getting shut out on the GCL list.
#2, Joe Savery
Savery had a decorated collegiate career at Rice, winning Baseball America’s Freshman of the Year award in 2005 and first-team All-America honors as a two-way star this spring. The Phillies might never have gotten the chance to draft him at No. 19 had he not been slowed by offseason surgery to shave down a bone growth in his shoulder, and they monitored his workload carefully this summer.
Savery looked good in limited action, running his fastball up to 92 mph and showing an above-average downer curveball and solid changeup. He’s very polished, with command of all his offerings and a smooth, repeatable delivery.
#15, Dominic Brown
An exceptional athlete, Brown was recruited by Miami as a wide receiver but he chose instead to sign as a 20th-round pick in 2006. The ball jumps off his bat, though his swing can get long and has some holes that can be exploited. His wiry-strong build evokes Darryl Strawberry, and he can hit the ball a long way when he connects.
A long strider with above-average speed, Brown plays a shallow center field. He occasionally takes some bad routes, but he’s athletic enough to compensate and has a strong arm.
“He’s got a ton of tools,” Hudson Valley manager Matt Quatraro said. “His body, if it fills out, he could be a monster. His swing’s long at times, but when he gets on top of the ball, he’s got some juice.”
Drew Naylor was also given honorable mention. You can check it out here.
The votes are in, and the top prospect in our system, according to you, is Carlos Carrasco, garnering 26 votes. Today we move on to #2. Now that Carrasco has been selected, you obviously can’t vote for him, but you can vote for any other prospect. The eligibility requires, as posted yesterday, are
For the purpose of this poll, consider “eligibility” to be less than 50 AB/25 games for a position player, and less than 25 IP/20 games as a pitcher.
So, have your say.
As you may have seen me mention before, I’ve developed a system to rate the performance of our prospects. The system is fairly complex, and I still need to input a lot of data before it’s ready to use. What I wanted to do, while I devote a lot of my time to that project, is run a daily poll here to try and come up with the readers’ top 30. What we’ll do is, every day we’ll vote on the next spot in the readers top 30. So, today you’ll be voting for the best prospect in our system. Use whatever criteria you’d like to use in coming up with your choice, but only post one name per day. Every day as we progress, I’ll post the winner, and obviously after a player wins a spot, he can’t be voted for again. So today, we’re voting for #1, tomorrow we’ll vote #2, etc etc. Just post your vote in the comments section and I’ll tally them up before I post the next day’s spot.
Ok, so we start at the top. Cast your vote for the #1 prospect in the system. You can explain your choice if you’d like, but you don’t have to.
EDIT -> For the purpose of this poll, consider “eligibility” to be less than 50 AB/25 games for a position player, and less than 25 IP/20 games as a pitcher.
Happy Monday to you. If you’ve been following along for a while now, you know that I’m generally critical of the current front office. But even I didn’t think they were capable of screwing up the Paul Owens Award, given to the Phillies minor league hitter and pitcher for the year. But, they did screw it up, again. As announced here (scroll down), the 2007 winners were Mike Zagurski and Quintin Berry. I’d LOVE someone to explain these choices. Berry had a nice season, he elevated his prospect status, but come on. Jason Donald put up better numbers at a higher level at the same age. Mike Costanzo had a huge second half at a higher level. Adrian Cardenas had a better season at the same level at a much younger age. And while Berry seems like a mistake, the Zagurski decision is indefensible, just like it was indefensible to give the award to Robinson Tejeda in the season where he spent a lot of time in the majors. Zagurski put up great numbers in the minors, but spent a good bit of time with the big league club, and he finished the season on the DL. Andrew Carpenter’s season wasn’t better? Josh Outman’s season wasn’t more impressive?
A true head scratcher, but that’s becoming common place for this organization.
Are you surprised? I’m not. Generally speaking, the short season leagues, ie rookie ball and short season ball, are generally filled with guys who were drafted in the first 20 picks, as well as guys repeating the level putting up monster numbers. The only guy who had a shot for the Phillies was d’Arnaud, not shocked to see him not make it. That begs the question, which Phillies deserve to make the NYPL list? Savery? Naylor? Make your predictions below.
….please cross your fingers. This can only be considered good news for every level of our organization.
Brad Harman, a personal favorite of mine, had a scorching second half of the season. In his age 21 season, playing at High A Clearwater, Harman finished the season posting OPS numbers of 1.033 and .998 in July and August. Knowing that, and looking at all of his numbers, where do you think he will rank in the Phillies Top 30 prospect list this offseason?
I thought this would be an interesting comparison. Happ and Outman are arguably the Phillies two best LHP prospects, assuming that Antonio Bastardo still has a ways to go. Outside of the hand they throw with, the two pitchers are very different. Happ is 4 inches taller than Outman (6’5 to 6’1), and if you believe the media guides, has 25 pounds on him. Despite the height difference, Outman actually throws harder than Happ, with a 91-93 fastball, compared to Happ’s 89-92. Happ’s second best offering is his changeup, while Outman’s is a slider, and Happ’s breaking ball is more of an over the top 12-6, as opposed to Outman’s sharp slider. Happ is a year older than Outman, and has also pitched at higher levels to date. Here are their numbers at the respective levels.
Phuture Phillies 