The Phillies made their first round of Spring Training cuts today with the following players re-assigned to minor league camp: Pitchers: Adam Morgan, JC Ramirez, Kyle Simon, Joe Savery; Infielders: Michael Martinez and Cody Asche, Catcher: Tommy Joseph and Outfielder: Joe Mather. Joining that group on Monday at the minor league complex will be Pitchers Jonathan Pettibone and Ethan Martin, along with outfielder Zach Collier.  None of these moves were unexpected, although I am slightly surprised Savery’s demotion came so early.

Of the above group, the most impressive in limited action this Spring were Morgan, Joseph, and Asche.

So, a full two weeks of Spring Training games have been played and to start the chatter, here is where I believe things would stand if the season started tomorrow:

Catchers(2): Kratz, Quintero. Ruiz serving his suspension

Infield(6): Howard, Utley, Rollins, Young, Frandsen, Galvis

Outfield: Brown, Revere, Mayberry, Nix, Young.  If Young is not ready for the start of the season, I see Pete Orr making the team, as he can play both the INF and OF and can run.  Ruf simply is too much of a defensive liability at this stage to make the team. He needs to play 50-60 consecutive games in LF in Lehigh Valley. Continue reading Two Weeks In… →

There has been a lot of talk about the talent in the Phillies system and how it stacks up against other teams.  So I decided to take a look at two things, where does the talent come from, and what kind of talent is it.  For this exercise I purely used my Baseball America Prospect Handbook to have the same set of evaluators on each team.  For teams, I have used a sample size of 10, the five teams in the NL East and BA’s Top 5 farm systems.  I have adjusted for trades so these lists are slightly different than how they appear in the handbook.  I looked at the data to see if there were any trends that showed how to build a good farm system that the Phillies might be missing on. Continue reading How we stack up: The Construction of a Farm System →