Reader Top 30 Primer

2014 Reader Top 30

One of the unique things about this blog has been the reader Top 30 where each of you gets to take part in the ranking process.  In the past we have had problems with voting integrity and we are working on fixing those holes.

The rankings themselves will start on Monday January 6 with the #1 prospect in the system.  Until then, here are two polls to test out the new voting system (it may appear to let you vote multiple times but it should only count your vote once)

Should We Rank MAG


Hardest Prospect to Rank

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About Matt Winkelman

Matt is originally from Mt. Holly, NJ, but after a 4 year side track to Cleveland for college he now resides in Madison, WI. His work has previously appeared on Phuture Phillies and The Good Phight. You can read his work at Phillies Minor Thoughts

32 thoughts on “Reader Top 30 Primer”

      1. he is 27 years old and got a lot of money. amaro says he has a shot at being # 3 starter. he better have a roster spot. lets stick to ranking the young and upcoming kids. why take a spot from a drew Anderson of the world.

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  2. I like the BA standard, which means we should rank MAG. We use their innings and roster rules, so it seems to make sense to me to use them for any player who fits the bill.

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  3. On MAG: it seems sooo difficult to rank him since he hasn’t thrown much (within our eyes) and the info on him seems so sparse. Is this franchise secreting him away somewhere in light of the questions about his arm-health?
    A great gift to the starting staff would be his turning out to be our #3 starter; others claim he’d b OK in the pen. What to think?

    Rating him now seems like a shot in the dark.

    Nevertheless, it is about time to visualize bats swinging and catchers giving out “pops” of balls received loudly. Six weeks until catchers/pitchers. Welcome to a season of mediocre baseball…

    But maybe the Pharm will show better for the sake of the future.

    Happy New Year…! Celebrate while hope still lingers…

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    1. The way I see it is we all rank Encarnacion, Pujols, Tocci, etc. in their first winters after signing based on little more than a youtube video of BP and a few fans who saw them at Fall Instructs. I’ll rank MAG using the same scouting reports and stories I use to rank the kids who have yet to play in the US, only difference is I’ll risk over-ranking MAG due to his proximity.

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  4. The picture on MAG is incomplete, but that’s also the case for the rest of our prospects. We’re just going on pieces of scouting reports for most guys and we probably have more info on him than we do on a lot of the guys in A-ball and below.

    Plus, it’s not like the system is flush with intriguing prospects. We should include him just to make this process less sad.

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  5. A lot of the top pitchers are hard to judge, because of questions about health. MAG unable to throw off the mound in FIL. Watson likely needing shoulder surgery. Morgan being shut down twice for shoulder soreness and ending 2013 shut down. Biddle ending the year throwing very poorly, possibly due to the pertussis and foot injury. Mecias shut down injured, Giles with injury issues, Buchanon with injury issues. I give them all downgrades, ranging from moderate for Biddle to severe for Watson. Gueller has yet to show much. Really tough on the pitching prospect front.

    Less questions on the hitters, although youth/potential vs lack of performance with the bat issues for most of the high-ceiling Latin American prospects, especially Tocci, Guilon, Tromp, Pujols.

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    1. Actually, Tromp hit well enough to be named an All-star in the New York Penn League. I thought Guillon hit better than we thought he could. Buchanan has an injury? He pitched pretty well last year. I see Biddle’s problems as injury- and illness- related. He should be fine this year.
      The Phillies have touted MAG as a starter. They seem to look at him not as a prospect. I don’t see the wisdom in ranking him when he is looked upon as a starter. I don’t see Ethan Martin as a prospect either. He should be in the bullpen this year. I’ll rank the younger players along with Altherr and Dugan, who have not made their Major League debuts.

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      1. Buchanan missed time in 2013 and his K rate and FB velocity didn’t seem fully back last year.

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  6. On the subject of International signees; Why are teams like the Cubs spending well over their limit, and the Phillies just stick to “the rules”. Aren’t the Phillies a BIG market team, with a HUGE TV contract coming in 2015?

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    1. The Phillies haven’t simply ‘stuck to the rules’, they’re close to $1 million underspent on their international bonus allocation from Selig. Unfortunately, they’ve likely spent their internal budget. As with the draft, the Phillies consistently seem to budget less than the baseball rules permit.

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      1. When I look at the numbers of Latin American stars coming up in other farm systems, I hope the Phillies get their act together and put some money in Sal Augustinelli’s path.

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    2. Cubs are penalized for 2014, from what I read, for going over bonus allocation. But their plan under Hoy and Epstein is in place. Get a large quantity of the young talent in 2013 and then have them develop together hoping some pan out.
      They may do this plan every other year for all I know to keep their pipeline intact..

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      1. It seems smart if you believe this year in particular has high end talent then you spend on it , pay the fine , they are billionaires so who cars , and skip a year of international talent , then in two years do the same exact thing, get the top two L.A. kids and some others in the top 10-15 skip a year pay fines do the same thing. It seems like it would work you get 2 top 10-15 and number 1 and 2 , instead of say what the phillies did and buy one top 15 kid and bunch of lottery tickets. but they did save money and if some odd reason some great kid pops up they could potentially buy him but that seems unlikely

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    3. Because the rules have teeth now. The Cubs are trying a risky strategy where they are forfeiting a year of international spending and hoping to trade pool money for assets. They essentially had to spend double on their talent this year to do so as well. If the Phillies had done this last year they would have forfeited the 7th highest international pool this year. Personally given their approach with the academies and scouts, I would rather they maintain their flexibility year to year rather than pushing all in.

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      1. But if Epstein/Hoy plan brings them a few World Series’ victories in the next 5/7 years to an organization and city ( not White Sox) starving for one World Series ring….then all the GMs will copy that formula for success.

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        1. No, then major league baseball will make it a true hard cap and make them find the new loop hole. It really is too early to see what will happen, but it does look like the Yankees are going all in on a bigger strategy than this for next year and that might force changes as well.

          In reality they are likely to create an international draft and make it more of a clusterf***

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          1. An int’l draft would probably kill the flow of talent much like it did when Puerto Rico was added to the draft. When baseball stops paying big $$, those kids down in Latin and Central America will go play football instead (the round ball kind, not the egg ball kind)…the current cap on such spending is probably already having that effect.

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      2. Consdiering the Yankees are going the Cubs/Rangers approach this year and the Rays will ikely return after having to sit out last year because they did it in 2012 I’m not sure the Phillies buck will have as much ‘bang’ as it did last year despite the higher pool.

        There may be other teams besides the Yankees jumping on that band-wagon after the Cubs/Rangers last year (and Rays in 2012) since this is pretty likely the final season before an International draft. The Yankees also have the dual-purpose of making up for losing a few Amateur draft picks because of signing FA’s.

        If Encarnacion was in this years class the competition and teams willing to go into the penalty may have gotten him double his signing bonus.

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  7. I think we should rank MAG. It’s not the like cases of Ichiro or even Tanaka where you are talking about an established pitcher with a record of success in a foreign professional league. He’s as much a wild card as any of our other prospects. He’s 27, which is old, but certainly an age at which he might conceivably have been in AAA if he were a prospect drafted out of high school or college. (He’s still a year younger than BJ Rosenberg, for instance.) Finally, the way Amaro is talking about him–which doesn’t at all sound like spin, given what we know about his progression–he’s quite likely going to start the season in the minors. To me, everything about the guy suggests risk, uncertainty, and upside potential–in other words, he’s a prospect.

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  8. then rank him 1st, so we can go on to the kids like Watson and drew Anderson. amaro thinks MAG can possible be the number 3 starter. So I guess that would qualify him as # 1 rank. Now you know why I voted not to rank him.

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  9. I say rank him because that’s what James would have done when he was still running the site. The standard has always been “Is he rookie eligible” and MAG definitely is. Thus, rank him as its the standard for prospect ranking anyway.

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  12. Leave MAG off the list. He signed a Major League deal and is 27 years old.
    Is he really comparable to a prospect? He may play in the minors but so might Ryan Madson. After injury is there really any way to compare Madson to his past self?

    Mostly I do not want to have to debate a major league player (even if he plays in the minors) in these rankings. I am not sure how the national writers will rank him but I do not see him as a ‘prospect’, he is a major league 40man asset and paid as such.
    .

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    1. But he’s not a major league player. I think he’ll make it to the bigs, maybe in 2014, but it is very possible that he never does. The big league status — that’s a contractual artifice. A fair number of past primo draftees throughout MLB have signed major league contracts out of the draft, started in the minors, and been ranked among the prospects. Someone suggested just ranking MAG as our top prospect. I can’t do that. I don’t think he is enough of a sure thing to be our top prospect. He’ll be in my top 5, but a guy with enough arm issues to have his bonus severely shaved and to not be able to throw from the mound during FIL is really not worthy of being our top prospect. For me, that spot belongs to Franco.

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      1. “. . . but a guy with enough arm issues to have his bonus severely shaved . . . ”

        Right. And it wasn’t as if the Phils maintained exclusive negotiating rights with MAG after the first contract offer was announced. They were able to sign him for much less without even a rumor of a comparable deal from another team. I think we should really curb our expectations for MAG in 2014. If we decide to rank him I doubt he breaks my Top 5 but our system is really weak after the Top 3 so it’s certainly not unreasonable to rank him that high.

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