Reader Top 30 #11 – Dylan Cozens

2014 Reader Top 30

We are out of the top ten and there are still a lot of interesting names out there.

  1. Maikel Franco
  2. Jesse Biddle
  3. J.P. Crawford
  4. Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez
  5. Carlos Tocci
  6. Roman Quinn
  7. Ethan Martin
  8. Aaron Altherr
  9. Kelly Dugan
  10. Cesar Hernandez
Unknown's avatar

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

33 thoughts on “Reader Top 30 #11 – Dylan Cozens”

  1. we can almost field a team.
    1B Kelly Dugan
    2B Cesar
    SS J.P.
    3B Maikel
    RF Altherr
    CF Tocci
    LF? Quinn
    C ?????
    SP Biddle
    SP MAG
    SP? Martin

    This team needs pitching. voted for Severino

    Like

    1. After Green makes it, you can put him 3rd base and move Dugan to RF and Altherr to LF. That would almost complete Erich’s lineup. Only missing a catcher with Knapp and Joseph not too far away !!!

      Like

  2. I’m more confident that Zach Green stays at 3B than I am that Cozens stays in RF. Green is my pick here largely because of positional value.

    I also started to think about Tommy Joseph. The Phils have already said that he’ll resume catching, but who knows if his concussions are behind him. He’s a tough one for me to rank.

    Like

    1. I’d be happy with Green, Cozens, Joseph in any particular order here. Still think we might be pleasantly surprised this season by Joseph if he can stay healthy and behind the plate.

      Like

      1. I have written off Joseph. I believe he will have to move off C and that means to 1B where his bat will not be enough to carry him
        Tough place for organization, since his value is all at C, but he will be a risk throughout the rest of his career which limits his value to any team.

        Like

  3. Voted for cozens here…I disagree with this year’s vote from 5-10 more than any other portion of any year’s vote since we started doing this. Can’t believe cozens and green are still on the board at this point.

    Like

  5. If you rate the minor league catchers against each other, using the top 30 process, How do you rate them? Rupp is going to be a major league backup. He has an outside chance of being a major league starter. Joseph has the concussion thing going on and has not hit well in the Phillies organization at any time. Valle dropped from the clouds but had a good stint in the winter leagues. Doesn’t mean too much playing in Mexico but we’ll see if it boosts his confidence. Knapp, IMHO, doesn’t look like he’ll be a catcher. More of a feeling than anything but how valuable is he in LF or at 1B? Grullon looks good so far but is a million miles away. Lino is doing very well for a 20 year old but he has a long road ahead of him. Logan Moore will never hit enough to go anywhere but his defensive skills could keep him around for a while. Did I miss anyone? How do you rate them first to worst?

    Like

    1. Jake Sweaney, Chace Numata and, I suppose if I’m being completist, Josh Ludy. Ludy I think is done with the Org. Numata is still pretty rough around the edges and is on the edges of the radar. Sweaney, though a Fourth Round pick, is light years away and I haven’t seen a ton of scouting reports on him, so it’s hard to say what he is. He is. That’s about what I know.

      Like

  6. I voted for Zach Green, but could have gone with 4 or 5 guys here. If Joseph is really healthy and can catch, he’ll almost certainly be in the top 10 in short order. Folks forget just how advanced he was and he’s still ahead of the curve IF he’s healthy and can catch. Glad he’s taken the time to heal, it’s essential. Some hockey players have done the long heal for a concussion and been fine, so I think it’s definitely possible. Good thing the collisions are no longer allowed.

    Like

  7. For me this comes down to Cozens vs. Green.

    I think it’s important to appreciate just how good BOTH of them were last year: Among 18-20 year olds in A-, they were T1st and 4th in wRC+. Their 149 and 146 wRC+ were nearly identical.

    But Green is a third baseman. The average MLB third baseman has a wRC+ of about 97, while the average rightfielder has a wRC+ of about 106.

    So Green’s performance was ~52% greater than the 3B baseline, and Cozen’s was ~40% above the RF baseline. Factor in questions about whether Cozens sticks in RF (probably a bigger concern at this point than Green sticking at 3B), and I went with Green.

    Like

  8. I’ll go w/ Cozens again for the 3rd straight time. Then I’ll be voting for Green. You can really flip a coin between the 2 in my opinion. I’m prob 1 of the few that think Cozens may stick in Right. Until the Phils change his position I will vote for him as a RF.

    Like

  9. I considered Rupp because he is close, But Joseph can be very good if stays healthy. I’m going with Joseph here.

    Like

  10. I love this exercise and really enjoy reading everyone’s analysis, but I’m not sure that ranking prospects is indicative of their value to the major league club. After all, the goal of player development is to produce players that contribute to a MLB team, not to have the most ranked players. Ranking players is a really a media toy (and an interesting one, no doubt).

    My suggestion would be to create four categories: appear in a ML game, accrue 100 games as a starter (or 25 GS for SP or 50 IP as a RP) per season, accrue 5 years of ML service time, and be named to start an All Star Game.

    Then each player on the list would come up for a vote. You get one vote per player for the category you project him.

    Whether Cesar Hernandez is 10 or 11 isn’t that meaningful. Whether he contributes to the big league club is.

    If the list is like past years’, there are people on the list who will never sniff the major leagues. And yet there are always the Antonio Bastardo’s, Happ’s and Kendrick’s that come out nowhere to contribute.

    I don’t think Aaron Altheer ever starts 100 games in a season at the major league level. But I could see where Cam Perkins accrues 5 years of service time because of his positional flexibility, low K rate and reasonable power. He could be Ty Wigginton.

    Just another way to look at it.

    Like

    1. I like that concept that would be a fun excercise. I do agree with you that our lists or any ranking for that matter in the end means nothing but it gets us through the winter.
      I diagree with you on Altherr I would put him in the will start a All Star Game category but thats just my opinion.

      Like

    2. The problem with this concept is that it only looks at a prospects major league value. The truth is prospects are currency, you can trade a prospect at any time for other value. Prospect lists look to communicate the value of prospects at this moment in time. You can look at it as a trade value list as if team needs did not matter

      Like

      1. But isn’t that the most significant factor? Major league value? Cody Overbeck has a value, but not a value to the ML club. He fills an important spot on the AAA team that allows other prospects to play their positions and for the team to be competitive, but that isn’t the goal of player development.

        Like

        1. Yes…but as I said it isn’t necessarily the prospect’s major league value. By your system Jason Knapp would have had no value, but the Phillies took his potential and cashed it in as the lead piece for Cliff Lee. That was Knapp’s value to the Phillies.

          Also your system is linear, value is not linear, in general the distribution of players is more Gaussian and so the distribution has the value of regulars is much more then bench players and stars even more so. But that is a larger piece

          Like

          1. While I concede “there is value in trading prospects, a la Knapp,” I tend to agree with the previous point more. Bird-in-hand means a lot to me when compiling these lists; therefore someone who will certainly contribute to the ML club should be rated more favorably than someone with a less-certain chance of ever making a contribution. I’d rather have 100% guarantee of a 2WAR than a 10% chance of 15WAR.

            Every year, I’m the homer who votes for Happ, Bastardo, de Fractus, etc. higher than most. And I stand by my style, since I vote for prospects who actually get to play in the show.

            Like

            1. The counter point I’ll make to your argument is that a team full of 2 war players probably isn’t winning the WS while a team with a couple 15 WAR players probably is. It’s also much easier to acquire 2 War players via trade or FA vs trying to bring in a star. That’s why I lean towards players with bigger upsides even if it comes with greater risk.

              This is especially true for a big market team like the Phillies who care paper over holes. If you look at the Phillies today, you can make the argument that their current problem is that they have a team full of average players. Having a bunch more in the minors doesn’t improve their situation.

              Like

    3. I think of the rankings as prospect expected value to the team (roughly speaking). So if prospect A is ranked higher than prospect B, that means I wouldn’t want the Phillies to trade prospect A for B (if B were on another team).

      Of course, this is value in a vacuum. It might be okay to trade A for B if B fills an organizational need. But in general you should avoid trading better prospects for worse prospects because in the long run you give up a lot of value this way.

      Like

    4. The player personnel types focus on players’ ceilings. They identify the highest ceiling players and then try to figure out how to get them to that level. They give no mind to guys that will never start in the majors, the 4A guys are pretty interchangeable. This is why guys like Hewitt, Collier, and Gillies will always get attention (they have tools) and why guys like Castro and Perkins won’t. They consider the likelihood % but that factors in later, even for guys whose likelihood isn’t that much. Its why the Phils are following Giles so closely. I assume the team’s prospect list would look different than ours.

      Like

  11. Cozens here, for reasons stated last time around: best raw power in the system, most likely, and unlike previous hulking specimens taken with high draft picks (Greene, Hewitt) he definitely shows signs of harnessing it in games. I like Z. Green too. In fact, as we predicted, lots and lots of guys to get excited about 10-20. That bodes well for next year’s list, barring a repeat of 2013’s so-sad-it’s-almost-comical parade of freak injuries.

    Like

    1. One other note on Cozens: a lot of people have been talking about the hit he takes if he has to move from RF to 1B. But here’s the good news: if you squint a bit, a couple of years into the future, there’s a chance that the immovable object now occupying 1B will be moving on. In 2016, when Howard is in the last year of his contract, Dylan Cozens should be mashing baseballs in AA. I, for one, am looking forward to taking my electric-powered hovercar over to Reading to watch the first baseman of the future.

      Like

  12. I know injuries happen and all but how much better would this system be if the big 3 were healthy last year. then the top 10 fills out A LOT better. Most of the valid complaints are about guys being 2-5 spots higher than people would like. Add in Joseph and Morgan and MAG at 7 is a nice piece.

    Like

    1. Also, the injured Quinn is a really big stretch where he ranked on this list, while a healthy Quinn would not be. A healthy Watson is a legit #10.

      Like

      1. Personally I tend to think a healthy Quinn should be around #10, not #6 like he is here. Given that he almost certainly will move to CF and given that his bat is very questionable right now, that’s probably about right. Given that his entire career is currently in question due to the Achilles rupture, putting him at #6 is just ridiculous.

        Yes, he was a top 100 prospect before 2013 but he had a terrible, terrible year even before the injury. Even his base stealing was merely decent, not great given his speed.

        Like

  14. For me, this is where the exercise becomes more about what we don’t know versus what we do. Could definitely see Green here, but for my money, his K rate is too big a red flag. I could also see Cozens, but his bat will have to carry him and it hasn’t really shown elite as of yet. Severino has numbers, but short right handers with average fastballs are not a good bet.

    So I’m going with Encarnacion, a true bonus baby who hasn’t had the opportunity to show why he won’t make it.

    Like

  15. Nor why he will. Like you, I’m waiting for more info on Encarnacion. So far the story is that he has a right-handed power bat but little else that would make him a “player.”

    Until more info is available, I’m going Green…who already shows right-handed power.

    Like

Comments are closed.