I remember when Drabek was drafted, lots of people weren’t happy, thinking the Phillies had wasted a draft pick on a kid with a lot of baggage who was never going to pan out. After his rough debut in the GCL, those people started to trumpet their message even louder. But now it appears that they might have been wrong, as Drabek is 1.5 years removed from being drafted, is 7 months into the post-Tommy John surgery part of his baseball career, and he seems to be saying all the right things.

As the Phillies were going through an early spring workout, Kyle Drabek cut between two practice fields on his way to a minor-league clubhouse.

“I’d like to be out there with everyone, but spring training is a lot of hard work,” the 20-year-old pitching prospect joked.

Seven months into his recovery from Tommy John surgery, the Phils’ 2006 No. 1 draft pick knows he has plenty of rehab work ahead of him.

This time a year ago, Drabek was in spring training with the Phillies less a year out of high school. This year, he received no big-league spring invitation, just a locker at the minor-league complex.

The Texas native has been in Clearwater since October working with Phillies trainers and now is throwing at 90 feet.

He has no idea when he’ll get back on the mound and predicts he’ll miss the entire 2008 season and not pitch again until next fall in the Florida Instructional League.

“My arm feels good,” said Drabek, who has lost five pounds and some of his baby fat while rehabbing.

This coming after the report from Kevin Goldstein in his Phillies Top 11 that Drabek has had zero problems in the last year in terms of attitude or off the field trouble. The arm is special, we’ve all known that, it was just a matter of him wanting to mature and become a pitcher, not just a kid with an attitude that throws hard. Sure, this is just a minor detail with two throwaway quotes, but to me, based on everything that’s been written about Drabek over the last year, it’s just one more step closer to him realizing his talent and making the Phillies gamble on him look pretty smart.

As promised, here’s a look at players we either didn’t sign that we drafted or players who were drafted as a result of us giving up our draft pick to that team to sign one of their free agents. Of course, this is an exercise in hindsight, but also an important one when understanding the draft. If you find one that I missed, drop it in the comments and I’ll add it to the list. Just a note, I’m not going to bother writing up every guy we didn’t sign, only the ones of note. I’m going to start in 2001, so let’s get this show on the road.

Continue reading Draft picks that might have been →

I’m back. I’m still not healthy, but I’ll take one for the team anyway. I’m going to basically compare the 5 NL East teams today, focusing on their farm systems, their recent draft strategies, and what it all means going forward. I’m going to look at two main areas; current prospect depth/composition and recent drafts. My goal is to be as objective as possible here, it won’t do anyone any favors if I’m harsh on other systems and complimentary to the Phillies, but if you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you know that’s generally not how I operate anyway. So, let’s get right to it.

Continue reading Comparison of NL East sytems →

And unfortunately, more cowbell is not the cure. I’ll get back on track tomorrow. But for now, I’d ask that you ponder more possible questions for Kevin Goldstein, which can be posted in the BP Top 11 prospects post from yesterday, or I guess just post them here. And here’s a bonus discussion question for the day. Of Travis Blackley, Lincoln Holdzkom, or Joe Bisenius, which is more likely to make the 25 man roster out of spring training? The rumors on a Kris Benson signing are getting stronger, and he’d compete with Adam Eaton and presumably Blackley for a rotation spot. The Rule 5 guys have an edge up, obviously, because they can’t be optioned down. But with a strong spring, will Bisenius make the roster? Have your say.

Ah yes, my personal Top 100. As well as being an avid follower of the Phillies minor leaguers, I’ve always closely followed the systems of other teams. I find player development really interesting, as well as the draft process, and when you start following these guys in high school and college, it’s always natural to continue to follow them when they enter pro ball, even if it’s not for your favorite team. A few caveats, before I get to my list. I shouldn’t really have to outline this, but there will invariably be someone who flies off, if they happen to find my blog and they read about me ranking prospects in a certain order. I’m not a scout, I don’t profess to be a scout, and while I know a few people, my network pales in comparison to those at BP, BA, ESPN, and every other prospect authority in the business. My knowledge comes from reading what others have to say, discerning useful info from those reports, watching these prospects when I can, and looking at basic peripheral numbers. Every prospect list out there is going to contain guys that fall flat on their face, as well as guys placed higher than the “consensus opinion”, and some of those guys will go on to be stars. I generally don’t worry about where the group think position is on a player. There are some guys who are generally loved that I’m not as high on (Homer Bailey), and some guys that aren’t loved that aren’t love as much (Omar Poveda) that I really like. These lists are just guesses as to who will and who won’t make it at the next level, and above everything else, I think it’s a lot of fun. So now that I got the disclaimers out of the way…

Continue reading My Top 100 prospects →

I’m sure most of you have heard the word “PECOTA” at some point when reading about baseball analysis and statistics. Basically, PECOTA was developed/created by Nate Silver at Baseball Prospectus. It’s basically a really complex algorithm that analyzes players in a number of advanced metrics, and the power of the system is basically that it takes just about anyone that has ever played the game and puts their data along side the players it is comparing them to, and then tries to figure out which direction the current player’s career will go, based on what has happened to similar players in the past. The system is incredibly complex, and if you haven’t ever read up on it, I’d suggest reading the wikipedia entry here before you dig into this post. While PECOTA is useful for projecting major league statistics for the upcoming season, it’s also useful to get a snapshot of which prospects the system seems to like, and which prospects the system isn’t as high on.

Continue reading PECOTA and Phillies prospects →

I cranked out the Jason Donald profile page, as well as the Lou Marson profile page. Both are light on pictures, again if you have any pictures you’ve taken, or you are able to track down any photos I may not have posted, please just post links to them in the comments section under each player’s profile. I’m always looking for more video clips as well, and I haven’t found one for Marson just yet, but I’m still working on it. After taking the feedback into consideration today, I made a few more decisions, and I have a tentative agenda for next week.

Monday: PECOTA and our prospects
Tuesday: My Top 100 prospects
Wednesday: NL East farm system comparison
Thursday: Draft picks that might have been
Friday: undecided

I’d like to ramp up my efforts to complete more profile pages in the next few days, and hopefully have a page for every legit prospect by the time the minor league season starts. The 2008 predictions thing was a good idea, I thought, but as mentioned in the comments from yesterday, it just doesn’t seem like people care enough to participate, so maybe I’ll just figure out all of my projections for the rest of our prospects and post them all at once sometime before the season starts. I also got in touch with Kevin Goldstein at BP, his Phillies Top 10 hits the web on Monday, and he agreed to do another Q/A, so that will be interesting.

It seems interest in the blog is starting to wane. What would you like to see here that currently isn’t featured that would make this place more interesting to you? Or are you just feeling the “it’s almost spring training but not quite” blues right now?

I was able to track down some info on the two guys we signed. Thanks to e-mailer Dave V, who speaks Czech, I was able to find out that infielder Jakub Sládek is a pretty solid athlete, and won “sportsman of the year” as a junior, and also spent time playing for a German team called Regensburg. His Czech team has a rudimentary website, with a link for English translation here….make sure you click the little British flag at the top for English. I was able to find limited stats. In 16 plate appearances, his line was .727/.813/1.091. So it appears he’s the Czech Barry Bonds. But seriously, it appears he is a good athlete, and he’s spent time training with quality teams. He’s only 17 (or 18), so he probably will stay in Europe for another year and finish his schooling before coming to the GCL. Here is an article on Van Steensel, posted here by andyb. He seems to have pitched well in Australia, and the article mentions a mid 80’s fastball, with the Phillies thinking his velocity will spike up as he fills out. He’ll remain in Australia for 2008 and then come to the GCL in 2009.

Thanks again to those who e-mailed and posted info here.