In recent years AAA has been a league light on prospects, but in 2013 it had some real star power roll through it in Wil Myers, Xander Bogaerts, Gerrit Cole, Chris Archer, Nick Castellanos, and Danny Salazar. Even so the back end of the list tends to be littered with fringe prospects. Another thing to keep in mind, that while these are mostly pure prospects lists only scouting from their time in the IL was used, and the amount of time spent in the league can skew the rankings a little bit. This years list went 16 strong to Trevor Bauer with the last four Darin Ruf, Carlos Sanchez, Kevin Pillar, and Joey Terdoslavich profiling more as second division regulars or bench players.
Cody Asche receives high praise for his hit tool and fast assent through the minors. Scouts worry about the defense which is average with a solid arm, good hands, and improved footwork. He is an average runner at this time but he has good instincts. He really struggled against same side pitching in AAA and it is a concern moving forward. Overall scouts like the makeup and work ethic and he could play a bit above the tool profile.
Darin Ruf didn’t show too much of his plus power in AAA this year, though he certainly showed off after making the majors. Ruf has real issues against breaking balls and any pitches on the outer half of the plate. In the field his slow first step, poor speed, and poor release of throws makes him a liability in the OF. The power is real but he will need to make serious improvements to have a continued major league future.
Link to the main article http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/2013-international-league-top-20-prospects-with-scouting-reports/
SteveB (Philly): Did Cesar Hernandez get any consideration? He played fairly well when he got his September call-up. Thanks for the chats - as always!
John Manuel: You’re welcome. I really like Cesar Hernandez and was stunned the Phillies used him in CF after his callup. I guess with Utley still healthy, Hernandez had to go somewhere. I like Hernandez more than Sanchez personally, I believe more in his bat, but Sanchez does have the added value of playing SS. Hernandez is who he is offensively; he makes contact, draws a few walks, brings an above-average batting average but doesn’t offer a lot of power. He’s a classic two-hole hitter, but it seems like that classic role has rightfully fallen out of favor. I think he’s a very useful utility guy on a championship roster and potentially a first-division regular at 2B with the right mix of players around him. Right now for Philly, the utility role fits better, as long as Utley still closely resembles Utley. I don’t think he’s better than Ben Revere in CF either but it’s probably closer than you’d think.
Phuture Phillies 
“Cody Asche receives high praise for his hit tool and fast assent through the minors. Scouts worry about the defense which is average with a solid arm, good hands, and improved footwork. He is an average runner at this time but he has good instincts. He really struggled against same side pitching in AAA and it is a concern moving forward. Overall scouts like the makeup and work ethic and he could play a bit above the tool profile.”
Very, very apt and accurate description of Asche, his profile, his issues and how he might progress. Asche still needs to work on the defense, but it appears that the raw tools might be there for him to profile between below average and above average. It’s a big deal – it could be the difference between him being a 2.5 WAR player and 3.5 WAR player.
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Interestingly, BA has an All-Star (not top prospect, necessarily) for each of the 6 levels in minor league baseball, spanning multiple leagues in all cases. Very few Phillies make any of the lists, but with Asche, Franco, and Greene the Phillies have 3 of the 6 top 3B. That is a ton of strength at one position. They won’t all stay at 3B in all likelihood, unless traded, but that is still something we haven’t seen in quite a while. BA finessed the Franco/Sano issue by listing Franco at AA and Sano at A+. I think Franco did legit outplay Sano in AA, with the reverse in A+.
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Ha, I remember not too long ago when one of our major laments was that the system hadn’t produced a decent 3B since Scott Rolen. So I guess we won’t have the likes of Nunez and Feliz to kick around for a while. Now if we could just take care of right field, catcher, a couple starting pitching slots, the 7th and 8th inning, and (down the road a bit) shortstop and second base, I think we’d have the makings of a real nice young team in Philadelphia.
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Okay, please tell me this statement was made in jest.
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Catch, what was wrong with ACA’s post that you responded that way?
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I’m assuming he said that because ACA said they need like 10 players and then they’d have a nice team. Well most teams would have a nice team if they had those 10 players.
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He didn’t say a nice team. He said a nice young team. As in, building the next core and the post-season team around that core. I don’t think his is in error on the number of pieces we need. Who do we have that we can really count on as part of our next post-season teams? I don’t see us in post-season next year. Let’s say we turn around fairly fast and are re-geared to consistently contend for half a decade again with our new core. Let’s say that happens as quickly as 2015/2016. It will take $$, a plan, and ruthlessly sticking to that plan to make that happen that fast. I think Rollins, Utley, Howard, Ruiz, Papelbon, Lee will all be gone from the scene or well below average players by then. Who do we have now who can be a part of that new team? Hamels will be the old vet. Brown should be a part of it. Perhaps Revere can be as well and Asche. Franco better be, and Biddle. Later Crawford. Also Quinn and Cozens/Zach Green? Health and a return to top performance by Giles and Watson? A Maybe Hernandez or Galvis step forward. Maybe a return to health and stepping forward by Joseph, Pettibone and Morgan. Success for Martin out of the back of the pen? There are a lot of needs and a lot of question marks. The Phillies are an expensive aging and fading team as we look at them today and there isn’t a ton of obvious star-quality help on the farm. This is going to take a great plan, brilliant execution, $$, and more than a little luck to make it happen in the next 2-3 years.
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I see a lot of Giles in Rosenthal.
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Sorry catch/others, it seems like my attempt at irony failed to come across.
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Wow, we only have to find half a team! Just kidding, but the Phils have a long way to go. The major problem I see is the lack of real difference makes. The Phils have several decent pieces coming up, but no one, save for maybe Franco, who you can say is a real super impact player. I think you need 2 or 3 of them to really contend. I do not count anyone below A+ as they are still too far away to form an accurate opinion.
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FWIW, Zach Greene started at 1B in the final split-squad FIL games this morning. Until today, only Art Charles and Trey Williams had played 1B.
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Asche being at 9 in a stacked AAA is actually really damn impressive.
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ruf doesn’t belong in the outfield. he should be back at 1b – platooning w/ howard against lefty pitchers, or on another team.
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Ruben mentioned that this morning on WIP when Al Morganti asked him if he had the fortitude to platoon the $25M Howard and Ruf. He mentioned thats a possibility if Howard struggles against lefties.
Now I ask….when did Howard not struggle against lefties!….
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not only is platooning Howard the right thing to do for Phillies it probably extends his career also.
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Someone was talking about the Cardinals and their draft philosophy in one of the other article comments and I’ve always felt Asche seems like a Cardinals type of player.
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Well it was his childhood team when growing up, does that matter?
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The Cardinals have–most recently–concentrated on drafting college players. Should they find good ones as they have the draftees are much closer to the bigs by about 2 years. That is a strategy the Phils should adopt for their next draft starting with pick #7, who IMO should be the best COLLEGE pitcher then available.
Supposedly, the ’14 prospects seem to be chock full of better prospects. Emulating the Cards success ongoing would be the correct plan and could yield the same kind of positive results.
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the Cards don’t usually have draft picks as high as #7. The phillies should take best player available regardless if he is from Collage or HS.
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Drafting a HS player means we wait for 4-5 years for him to arrive in MLB. You may believe the pharm is full of good prospects ready to graduate to the bigs, including almost ready good starting pitchers, then drafting HS kids for delivery in 4-5 years is just fine. If you believe that, then draft according to the cliche.
teams most always pay attention to their needs (i.e., why draft a 3rd baseman who may be the next “best player available” when your team has plenty of good ones at that position in the big team’s roster and in their minor lg prospects?).
We have a prime example of drafting for need in our own drafts of late. See the several 3rd base prospects concentrated on a few years ago when that glaring need was to fill that position ASAP on the Phillies. You cannot tell me that then at each choice the available (next best) pick would be each of those potential 3rd basemen we drafted.
The big club’s need was exercised in those early 3rd base prospects by drafting them…for NEED!
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Teams draft for need if they have similar grades on players at different positions. There’s nothing wrong with trying to get some players in your system that have skills you’re currently lacking. But if you’re picking as high as #7, you can’t reach for a guy based on need. Take BPA and if there’s a logjam in the future, trade somebody.
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Michael Conforto.
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To do well drafting college guys, I think you need to be an organization which values stats as much as scouting. The Phillies likely focus as much as they do on HS talent because that is the exclusive province of the eyes-on scout and stats are fairly meaningless. Not to say that scouts can’t find good college kids, but if their organization doesn’t appreciate stats, then they are at a disadvantage compared to more well-rounded organizations. Put another way, you can draft a HS kid based largely on outstanding raw skills, but undeveloped raw skills in a guy who has spent 3 – 4 years in a college baseball program just isn’t enough. There is a reason why those raw skills are still not showing to advantage on game day. Also, since the competition, at least in the major programs, is consistently better than for HS kids, the best way to find out if the kid has the hit tool or the power tool is to find out if he actually hits for power and has a high obp and good BB/K ratio.
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Good post. It makes a lot of sense on the surface, and I’d completely agree except the Phillies seem to do a half decent job of developing college guys, both historically (Utley, Howard, etc) and recently w/ Ruf, Asche, and the relief pitching prospects.
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Well, yes and no. You have to assume that the team picks the guy they like most first, since that keeps the competition from getting him and allows a bigger bonus to sign him. The Phillies have done very well on Howard, Ruf, and Asche, but none of these guys were primo picks. In fact, when we took Asche as a college 3B, we drafted another college 3B, Martinez, ahead of him. Asche had the better stats with the new bats, so I guess Martinez was valued on scouting considerations. Utley was a very primo draft pick, at I think #15 in the draft, and the Phillies seem to have done an excellent job of scouting him, being pretty much unique among organizations in believing that he could stay at 2B, where his bat was expected to play extremely well. He is definitely a big win for our scouts. I’ve toyed for some time with the notion that the success of guys like Howard, Ruf, Asche, Brown are a testament to our individual scouts, who find guys that they push to sign, but can’t sell the guys running the draft to value highly enough to spend a primo draft pick upon. You can look at a number of our recent drafts, going back to say the 2008 draft, and find flops in the primo positions, with big hits later in the draft. That says that somebody, perhaps Wolever for recent guys, is in love with the totally unproven, totally raw toolsy guys like Hudson, LGJ, Golson, Hewitt, Collier and over-rules the more knowledgeable scouts, who don’t get to have their guys approved until the big cheese’s hobby horse of the year has been safely corralled. We just have too much success in later rounds, compared to the primo picks for it to be random noise.
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College players taken in the first two rounds since Chase Utley(2000 1st round 15th OV)
Pitchers
Perci Garner, P (2010 2nd round, 77th overall)
Joe Savery, P (2007 1st round, 19th overall)
Andrew Carpenter, P (2006 2nd round, 65th overall)
Batters
Andrew Knapp, C (2013 2nd round, 53rd overall)
Harold Martinez, 3B (2011 2nd round, 90th overall)
Mike Costanzo, 3B (2005 2nd round, 65th overall)
Jason Jaramillo, C (2004 2nd round, 62nd overall)
Pretty horrible list of college guys taken in the first 2 rounds. SSS, but generally you got your ‘premium’ college talent early in the draft and as it went on the college guys drafted had holes/question marks. The Phillies did hit on some of those types, but they missed on almost every single one of these selections(obviously jury is out on Knapp who was a pick this year).
Phils have had more success with HS players(and also drafted a lot more) in the top 2 rounds, but have a much better hit %. Of course this year the Phils will have maybe the 3rd/4th/5th/6th/7th/etc… talented player in NCAA baseball available when they pick 7th as opposed to those previous college selections where they’re drafting the 10th/20th/30th/40th/etc… best NCAA player available.
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That’s a truly pathetic list. I hope Knapp works out.
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Your list illustrates Allentown’s hypothesis – the big cheeses blow the first few slots and the success we do have w/ college guys is in the sub premium rounds where scouting comes into play – things like seeing that a guys stuff will play up in short stints, or that a swing will translate to wood bats, or that a slight adjustment somewhere will unlock something no one else saw.
I wholeheartedly believe any strength we have lies in our scouting….anyone know if Ruben started the process of creating his stats department yet?
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Yes Ruben has started with the metric process…he just recently googled ‘sabrmetric’.
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Geez you know the Phils were the talk of the scouting and development community when they were winning. It’s always the club that’s winning that is doing everything right. Not crying its just the way of the world
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I am rooting for Ruf but his number against Lefty pitching this year was Howard like. So I do not know if he will be a capable platoon at 1st/LF/RF and he did only hit 230 the last 2 months. What Amaro said today on WIP …(as much as he has F..ked up the team I give him credit for calling in) …regarding a possible Howard platoon was so nice to hear. That may really open the door for Franco next year as he sounded excited about him. Franco a little 3rd and some 1st. Could it happen. Chime in
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I think it can but not out of spring training. Franco is going to need to dominate at LV and force the brass to call him up in June but I find it just as likely that he stays with LV the entire season with a call-up only in September
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I am not so sure. Beating up on fringe pitchers at LV really doesn’t prove much. He has already proven he can hit against premier prospects at AA and it was sustained so expect a move by Phillies to add upside youth for ’14.
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There are plenty of prospects who hit well in AA but struggle to adjust against the “fringe pitchers” in AAA. It would be a new challenge for him and I don’t doubt that he would benefit from it.
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Franco is a very young guy with a fairly high ceiling. It would be a disservice to him and to the Phillies intermediate and longer term success to bring him up to the big leagues to be merely a platoon player. I think when he comes up that he should and will play virtually every game. I also think it would be a mistake to ask Franco to adjust to the bigs while trying to play two quite different positions. Moving between 1B and 3B is not like shifting back and forth between RF and LF and we know from Brown that even the RF/LF shifting around can cause problems. Ruf did not do well against LHP in the bigs this year, but he did do better in AAA and has done better against lefties in the past. His SLG against lefties this year was worse than against righties at both levels. Not at all sure if that should be expected to continue.
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Look at the NY Giants this year and the same thing happened to them as the Phillies. It is a case of core players who are declining in performance or injuries keeping them from being 100%.
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NY Giants? Football or do you not realize they moved?
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Football — they’re 0 – 6 after a good multi-year run. I think we can assume that philabaltfan knows that the baseball Giants are in SF.
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Thanks Allentown1 for clearing that up. I thought I would not have to clarify something that obvious but I guess I should have.
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Murray….you mean Horace Stoneham moved the NY Giants!…where have I been?
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They had nice things to say about Hernandez in the chat.
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Nic, Jan or Cesar?
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Cesar
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Anyone hear why Cameron Perkins replaced Kelly Dugan on the Peoria Javelinas roster in the AFL???
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Listed as turf toe. Don’t know if that’s ‘turf toe’ or he actually sustained that injury.
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Hearing good things about Asche is great. I am thrilled that his work ethic is giving scouts reason to ‘bump’ his ranking past his profile. The ‘average’ profile still bothers me but he could become a team leader by example in a hurry.
How Ruf got that ranking based on his AAA season makes no sense to me. Still a small chance that Ruf can maintain the HR/BB profile in the majors which could fill a huge hole in the lineup.
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Asche was also helped by the fact that Chase Utley took him under his wing this year and his locker is next to Utley’s. The Phillies will find a spot for Asche somewhere in the lineup.
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As to how Ruf made the list, it’s not an All Star stats based list, it’s more a scouting/ceiling list and Ruf has shown his ceiling is higher than this year’s AAA performance demonstrated. It is similar to early draft picks making the GCL list while hitting .175.
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