Kevin Goldstein’s Phillies Top 15

Top Prospect Lists

Friend of the website Kevin Goldstein has his Phillies Top 15 prospects list up today, which you can check out here. Like everyone else, he’s bullish on Domonic Brown, and unsurprisingly, he likes Phillippe Aumont quite a bit. He’s not as high on some of our other prospects, dropping lots of 3 star ratings on guys who I might value a bit more, but his assessments seem quite fair. I’m going to attempt to work in another Q/A with him about his list, as its always a popular feature, but with his increased workload at Baseball Prospectus in 2010, I can’t make any promises. If you have any questions you’d specifically like to ask him, post them here and I’ll see if I can incorporate some of them if he’s able to do a quick Q/A.

37 thoughts on “Kevin Goldstein’s Phillies Top 15”

  1. I’m mainly interested in his take on our young OF who are not on his list, and haven’t had all that great onfield performance yet. How much hope does he hold out for the collection of Collier, Hewitt, Dugan, Hudson, Altherr, Castro. It seems a lot of the value of the Phillies farm depends upon one or two of these guys making it. Is it reasonable for us to hope for a major league starter and a major league 4th/5th OF to grow from this collection over the next five years. Who stands out as the best prospect of these six.

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  2. Sorry, I see Castro is indeed on his list. Let me modify the above to exclude Castro, and to also ask how much lower ranked the other 5 are compared to Castro.

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  3. A few more questions.
    1. Does he think Singleton can play the OF, or is he limited to 1B.
    2. How realistic to expect a Rosenberg or Schwimer to help the big league club by 2011.
    3. What is a realistic 2010 and career expectation for our older starting pitchers Carpenter and Savery.

    That’s it for me.

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  4. PP, thanks for trying to get KG. I hope he has the time! Questions: Can you go through Trevor May’s repertoire and which pitches are plus or project as plus? What would you say is the likelihood of him improving his control? Are there any better-known pitchers you would compare him to?

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  5. I’d like to ask his opinion of a guy like DeFratus, he seems like, to me, the kind of player scouts find underwhelming, but the kind of guy that has the chance to be a really good player. His HR rate is amazing, as is his K/BB rate.

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  6. i like KG. i think that he is very balanced. i can’t disagree with his analysis at this point. our 3 stars all have talent, but haven’t demonstrated enough productivity yet to match their upside. i think that his ranking is pretty accurate as well. but i remain amazed that scouts are so high on Jiwan James. i am excited to see him play finally. because he hasn’t done jack yet.

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  7. PPFan: I too was shocked by the high rating of Jiwan James. Hope he tears it up this year. He has tools…but so do about 20 other guys in the Phils system…meanwhile, little to no middle IF or 3B to care about other than Galvis.

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  8. I think KG has great insight and his past chats on this forum have been very interesting and entlightening. I never get to see our prospects until they reach AA, so I like reading a lot of well thought-out views.
    I too will be interested in his take on Jiwan James. He’s lost some time and the potential outstrips the performance, but he did quite respectably in his first year as a hitter.

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  9. Sickles also had good things to say about Jiwan James. Maybe he is a good prospect, despite the negative “toolsy” moniker being attached to him.
    He did have positive hitting stats in the NYPenn after sitting out for 2 years. Also, still age appropriate for league.

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  10. Taylor and Drabek were both 5 star rated, D’Arnaud was 3 star rated…Knapp was 4 star, Carrasco and Marson 3 star, and Donald was 2 star (mlb utility rated)

    Aumont 4 star, gillies 3 star, and JC was a 2 star.

    Just an observation

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  11. KG is my favorite ‘prospector’ by far, partially because I just love BP that much!

    Questions:
    1. Any thoughts on Dugan’s potential?
    2. Does JC Ramirez have the talent to be a middle of the rotation starter? Is he a good year away from getting another ‘star’?

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  13. Agree with the comment on James above. It will be good to see what he can do over an entire season, but to this point, can’t see him in a top 15 discussion. In my opinion he isn’t even in the top 25.

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  18. I guess I do have one more question, to help me calibrate his list and his thinking on the strength of our system. He has Galvis at #14. Does that mean he thinks just the defensive ability places him that high in ours system, which seems a knock on the folks below him. Or does he expect Galvis to become a decent guy with the bat? How much bat does he need to develop along with that glove to be a starting SS for the major league Phillies. I’m convince Galvis will never have much power, and he isn’t a speedster, so what is the minimum obp we need to see from him this year to label him a future major league starter?

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  19. Assuming we made neither the Halladay nor Lee deals, Drabek would have been #2, Taylor #3, and D’Arnaud either #4 or #5, depending on whether KG liked he or fellow 3-star prospect Trevor May better. Probably #5, based on D’Arnaud’s struggles at Lakewood this year and his positive comments about May.

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  20. ****Assuming we made neither the Halladay nor Lee deals, Drabek would have been #2, Taylor #3, and D’Arnaud either #4 or #5, depending on whether KG liked he or fellow 3-star prospect Trevor May better. Probably #5, based on D’Arnaud’s struggles at Lakewood this year and his positive comments about May.****

    And we’d likely have one of the top 2 or 3 farm systems in baseball if that was the case. How many teams could say they have 3 “5 star” prospects and a good handful of 4 and 3 star guys like that?

    Oh well, I’ll take Roy.

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  21. Anonymous’ Phillies top 15 prospects

    01. Domonic Brown *****
    02. Phillipe Aumont ****
    03. Tyson Gillies ***
    04. Domingo Santana ***
    05. Trevor May ***
    06. Sebastian Valle ***
    07. JC Ramirez ***
    08. Anthony Gose ***
    09. Jared Cosart ***
    10. Brodie Colvin ***
    11. Jon Singleton ***
    12. Antonio Bastardo ***
    13. Jiwan James ***
    14. Scott Mathieson **
    15. Leandro Castro **
    Interenting: J Villar, F Cespedes, K Dugan, C Shreve.

    The rest… eh

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  22. tomphilly – you’re missing a name to balance out that equation.

    2 5 stars and a 3 star prospect for 5 years worth of Halladay is a great deal if he is as durable as past performances predict.

    I was simply stating I would rather have Knapp over Aumont, Marson(sharing time with ruiz) and Donald(utility infielder) on our major league bench instead of Gillies in the minors, and Carrasco instead of Ramirez.

    The intelligent course of action, in my opinion, would have been dealing directly with Toronto when JP Riccardi tried making a similar deal last July, even if it included Gose as well. Our major league squad/bench would be stronger and younger…and our minor league teams would have two better prospects on the mound.

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  24. Aumont > Knapp (More pitches, higher level)
    Ramirez Marson (Speed to go with OBP skills)
    Fransisco >> Donald (MLB OF vs maybe utility IF)
    = Net gain

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  25. Singleton projects as a big boy in much the same mold as Howard from the right side I don’t see them putting him in the OF anytime soon. That could change should they find a way to sign Howard to an extension but even then at pace Singleton is probably 4 years away unless he tears it up.

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  26. atown – Don’t sweat over Galvis. Jimmy will still be here for his 3,000th hit in 2020 on the road to his HOF induction. Hopefully with more World Series titles though.

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  28. Aumont > Knapp (More pitches, higher level)
    Ramirez Marson (Speed to go with OBP skills)
    Fransisco >> Donald (MLB OF vs maybe utility IF)
    = Net gain

    I disagree. What do/did we need more, catching and infield depth or another body in the outfield when we could plug a need in a moments notice from the scrap heap glut of major league outfielders??? I would take Knapp/Carrasco over Aumont/Ramirez and Marson/Donald over Francisco/Gillies. Our depth in the outfield as well as a market full of MLB quality players looking for a job at that position do not make them necessities. I think we sacrificed better potential pitchers and more valuable positions on the diamond.
    I love the Halladay trade, just wish it was the only trade made in hindsight…I think we weakened our future, but only time will tell.

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  30. We were destined for the playoffs before the Lee trade, and his addition put Happ(who had better numbers) in the bullpen. I won’t say Lee didn’t help us get to the World Series, but he didn’t win it for us and we cannot say we couldn’t have reached it without him.

    That being said, I still prefer the younger prospects we got in return for Lee(+Francisco) to the advanced ones we traded.

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  31. I don’t think there’s any doubt we got more for Lee then we paid – but that might be a question to ask KG.

    Yes, if no trades were made this would be one of the best systems in baseball but the window of opportunity for the established stars makes leveraging some of the prospects into instant contributers a sensible decision. There are two uses for prospects, trading and playing, and having one of the best systems in baseball paid it’s dividends (Lee and Halladay).

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  32. Hey guys, I’m really looking for some help here… it seems that after reviewing projection systems like Petcoa and Chone, they don’t seem to predict the extremes very well… For example, over the last 3 years, there has been an average of 6.33 teams with 90 or more wins, yet those two prediction tools average 3 teams per year over 90 wins.

    I presume the reason for this is their attempt to normalize their numbers, but unfortunately that leads to unrealistic data in its own right.

    When I first started looking at this I thought they were low balling the phillies as they did so in each of the last 3 years, then I noticed that they low ball everyone (except the yankees) on the high end, and high balling everyone on the low end.

    Does anyone have any idea why they wouldn’t adjust their data to be more consistent?

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  33. Replace consistent with realistic. Basically, if historically their are 6 teams above 90 wins, and 6 teams below 70, then they should reflect that in their results.

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  34. Supra98x, the problem is which teams or players do you adjust? There are extreme performers because given a large group of players, some are bound to outperform their peers by sheer chance. Which players do so is almost impossible to predict.

    For teams, I don’t think the number of wins predicted is as important as their order of finish. Rosters are too fluid to predict win/loss records this early. A lot of W/L’s are based on players who will not be a factor.

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  35. tomphilly, the phillies did sacrifice premium positions in the initial deal to get Lee. But Marson and Donald are not premium players. Marson is a back-up catcher and Donald is a utility IF.
    You also ignore that CF is a premium position. Ben Fransisco is a legitamate MLB OF (plays CF) with 20/20 talent. Tyson Gillies is a better prospect than Lou Marson. Even if you adjust his numbers for league, he has numbers that rival Jacoby Ellsbury when he was in the minors(at a younger age yet). If Gillies can maintain a .380 OBP at Reading, he is the next Phillies starting CF. He is not an extra un-needed piece. Gose has not shown he can hit.

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  36. It is one thing to grade prospects. On the other hand the bullpen is weak. I am not a fan of the FAs they brought in.
    Keeping Lee would of limited the need for outside bullpen help
    and would of allowed Rosenberg and/or Schwim a shot(or others). By July they will be up anyway because the pen is a mess. HOLY JOSE

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  37. Supra98x,
    I think what you find with the ratings of systems like Pecota, Chone, etc. is that they are predicting what would be a “normal” expectation for each player. But every year some players have career seasons and some have sub-par ones. Other things like injuries also have an effect on how a player/team does from year to year.

    Add in situations like the Phillies last season who were in a playoff run and went out and got a player like Lee suddenly that team goes from an 85-88 win team to a 90+ win team.

    Sometimes the real world gets in the way of the statistical predictions.

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