Monthly Archives: November 2007

Savery ranked 16th among AFL prospects

Savery, Joe, Top Prospect Lists

Just saw this, had to get it up here. BA is doing a chat at 1PM if you have the means, check it out.

16. Joe Savery, lhp, Peoria Saguaros (Phillies)

Like a lot of Rice pitchers, Savery comes with some medical baggage. The 2007 first-rounder had minor surgery last year to shave down a bone growth in the back of his shoulder that was causing some fraying in his labrum. That didn’t affect his reputation too badly, as the Dodgers were ready to take him if the Phillies didn’t in the first round. In the AFL, Savery showed much better stuff than his pro debut. He clearly benefited from the short break between instructional league and the Fall League, finishing 1-1, 0.64 in 14 innings. Savery’s fastball velocity was 87-92, but still struggled to command it at times. His secondary pitches—a slurvy breaking ball and changeup—still need more polish, and his 5-11 strikeout-walk ratio is indicative of that.

Swamped

Other Stuff

I’m under the kosh here at work today. My goal is to put up my Top 30 prospect list on Monday. I’ve decided I’m not going to bother posting every team’s Top 30 here, enough people expressed they wouldn’t want to see that, so I can just give my Phillies list, my thoughts on each spot, and then maybe at some point I’ll compare our system to the other four teams in our division, and also do positional rankings. So, check back Monday for that.

Top 30 lists submitted by you

2008 Reader Top 30

Here is a graphic depicting the individual lists sent to me, compared with the Community List we cranked out. In the next few weeks I’m going to organize a new page at the top of the site to keep track of all of the Phillies prospect lists from this offseason, as well as our community list, and can compare as the season progresses. It should be interesting. I’m still working on my list, and hopefully I’ll have it done over the next few weeks, but time will be short over the holidays, so we’ll see. Anyway, here’s the graphic. If the image is too large or too small to properly see on your monitor, click here.

top30.jpg

Keith Law’s Top 60 amateurs for 2008

2008 Draft

Just a quick note, Keith gave his listing of the Top 6o players heading into the spring, and highlighted a number of guys to watch for who could be improving their stock. You can see the list here, though it’s Insider content, so you cheapskates (I kid, I kid) can only get the first few paragraphs. With the impending loss of Aaron Rowand, it could mean an additional 1st rounder, or more likely, a 2nd rounder plus a compensation round pick. This year’s draft, according to Keith, has more corner guys, both in the infield and outfield, and fewer up the middle players, while the collection of prep arms will pale in comparison to last year’s haul. How much money the Phillies are willing to spend on the draft will again be an issue. We’ll definitely have our first round pick (unless we sign a Type A free agent), then the comp pick for Rowand, plus an extra pick in either the 1st or 2nd round (possibly 3rd, if the signing team signs a player better than Rowand), plus the extra pick after the 3rd round because we didn’t sign Workman.

Last call for Top 30 lists

Other Stuff

If you haven’t sent in your top 30 list and you still want to participate, send the email to phuturephillies@hotmail dot com and send it soon, as I’m going to collect the few that were given and compile them later today or tomorrow and then post the results.

BA’s Phillies Top 10 List

Top Prospect Lists

Hot off the press

01. Carlos Carrasco
02. Adrian Cardenas
03. Joe Savery
04. Josh Outman
05. Kyle Drabek
06. Dominic Brown
07. Greg Golson
08. Lou Marson
09. Drew Carpenter
10. Jason Jaramillo

Link

No real shocks here. I had guessed that Carpenter, Marson and Jaramillo would be close, and with the Lidge deal moving two of our guys out of the top 10, Carpenter and Jaramillo were logical choices. The chat at BA is scheduled for 2PM, let’s see how many questions we can get answered. Chat update below

Continue reading BA’s Phillies Top 10 List →

2007 November Latin American Update

9. Winter Leagues

While some Phillies prospects are enjoying the sun of Arizona and Hawaii winter leagues, others are playing in their native country winter leagues this off-season. The big change in 2007 is the demise of the Puerto Rican league due to financial difficulties. This leaves 3 top quality leagues still playing in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela. There are also minor leagues in Nicaragua and Columbia among others, though the major action is in the first 3 leagues. This post will look at all the current Phillies playing in these leagues as long as a few familiar names from recent Phillies past. Continue reading 2007 November Latin American Update →

Costanzo interview

Other Stuff

Baseball America got Costanzo’s thoughts on the deal. Clearly he’s disappointed, but he seems motivated by it. Best of luck Mike.

BA’s Top 10 Phillies prospects (guess)

Other Stuff

Baseball America is trotting out their team Top 10’s and started this year with the NL East. Atlanta, New York and Washington have already been unveiled, which means Philadelphia and Florida will come next Monday and Wedenesday. So, get your guesses in now. I’ll give it a shot, based on how I think they think

01. Carrasco
02. Cardenas
03. Savery
04. Brown
05. Outman
06. Drabek
07. Donald
08. Sampson
09. Galvis
10. Mattair

wildcards are d’Arnaud and Marson.

Some odds and ends

Other Stuff

Darren Byrd won the vote yesterday for the 31st spot on the list, and with everyone else moving up 1 spot, he becomes the 30th prospect on the list. I wanted to again thank everyone who came here every day and voted during the process. I hope you guys stick around and become more active in the comments section of new posts, because discussion and discourse is what this site is all about. If you still want to share your personal top 30, just send an email to phuturephillies at hotmail dot com and give me your list in order. I’ll collect all of the lists and post the results sometime in the next week or two.

I also wanted to give a little update on my personal prospect rankings. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time working on a system to evaluate prospects, both as a tool for comparison and a way to come up with rudimentary predictions for future success/failure. The actual design of the formula wasn’t too tough, but importing the data for 700 players takes a lot of time, and I’m really only about 50% done at this point. I want to make sure that it’s complete and ready to go before I start discussing my findings, so my own personal Top 30 is going to be delayed for a little while.

In conjunction with the above paragraph, I have a question. Would it be interesting for you guys to see my lists of Top 30 prospects for every other team in baseball after I give my Phillies list, as well as positional rankings and overall team rankings? I ask because I’ve debated starting another blog devoted to all of the minors, but at the same time I realize there isn’t a whole lot of Phillies news in the offseason, and I could probably just discuss the lists here. If you guys have no interest in reading about that stuff, then I might have to go about setting up another blog for that purpose. Just wanted some feedback on that.

Next week, I wanted to start working on guesses as to where prospects will start 2008, starting with 3A and working our way down. So, start thinking about that and we’ll get started on Monday or Tuesday.