After ranking the farm #14 in baseball yesterday Keith Law rankeds Crawford the #1 prospect in the system and the #46 prospect in baseball. On Friday Keith will release his Top 10 Phillies prospects and I will have a full recap up at that time.
Full Top 100 – http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10166140/byron-buxton-tops-2014-ranking-top-100-prospects-mlb
Phuture Phillies 
Wow. Very Surprising about Crawford. Also the low ranking on Biddle is surprising too. Im guessing he likes high potential guys.
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Actually the Biddle write-up is cautiously optimistic. There are problems with Biddle (control being the leading one), but if you look at the illness as wrecking most of the year, it really isn’t that bad. He ends by calling Biddle a #3 starter which is really optimistic
The minors are very good right now
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ya thats the first time Ive heard Biddle refered to as a solid #3 in a division like the NL East
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It was good to hear, I think there was a lot overreaction to the second half after the illness and people were forgetting that before that the control was better the FB was 92-94, the curveball was biting, and changeup progressing. Not to say everyone else is wrong, but I think you have to account for him pitching through what would have shut down many pitchers
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He had Biddle in the 90’s last year IIRC. Even behind Morgan.
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Does Law see Franco as a 3rd Baseman or does he foresee him moving to 1st?
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he sees him moving to first and thinks the phillies think the same thing.
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Long term (or very short term) a first baseman. Does think the bat will play there, and could be an occasional all-star if he cleans things up.
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I don’t have ESPN Insider, so don’t have access to the full recap, but if that’s an accurate summary of his feeling about Franco it seems like an upgrade over what he was saying when he saw him in Reading, which was that he had major problems with his swing and makeup (that was a little subjective, it seemed) that made him a doubtful proposition.
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Still doesn’t like the swing, there is a really deep load that doesn’t let the power always play and can hurt his ability to make good contact.
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But an all star at 1b is huge offensive production, no splitting hairs about that.
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he refers to Franco being a poor 3b. His ranking has him low because hes going to move to 1b and it lowers his value.
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I personally think Keiths rankings differ from others because he values ceiling more than floor, strong OBP and positional value.
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I know it is just one person’s opinion, but slotting the Phillies at #14 sounds awesome. With our potential to really help the farm system in this next draft, you really can’t help but dream about what our system could look like in 2 years.
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When you read the scouting reports about the Phillies’ top prospects, there’s some reason for optimism because the prospects represent improvement over what the Phillies have now.
When you read the scouting reports about all the top prospects, however, it’s difficult to maintain any optimism about the Phillies’ future.
While Biddle may slot in as a nice No.3, there are quite a few near-ready pitching prospects that profile as No.1s or No.2s. Some of these guys could be as good as or better than Hamels. While not all of these pitching prospects will succeed, the same can be said about Biddle.
The picture drawn of Franco is that of a slow first baseman with 30+-HR power, a good BA, but not so good OBP, an occasional all-star. That’s a good player to have, but Franco lacks the star potential of several other prospects.
By all accounts, Crawford will become a very nice, intelligent, all-around major-league SS with modest power who looks like Rollins’ successor. Again, another good player to have, but his tools do not shout perennial all-star.
When you overlay these prospects onto the Phils’ major-league roster and do the same with the other teams, you don’t get the impression that the Phils will catch up with the top teams. They’re more likely to fall further behind.
The Phils have no shot at a quick turn-around. We are already at year 3 of the team’s ineptitude with no end in sight. It looks as though the five years of recent feast is about to be succeeded by even more years of famine.
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Thank you. That is a very clear and accurate explanation of the current problem with projecting how the current management plan can return the team to post-season any time soon.
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It looks as though the five recent years of feast are about to be succeeded by even more years of famine. (Terrible errors)
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I don’t know if it will be longer, the next two years look very grim, but they are going to clear some salary and open up some spots on the diamond in that time. I would say 2016-2017 is when they hit that combination of salary prospect arrival and depth to trade from point
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I think you’re underrating the potential of Crawford and Franco. Crawford’s realistic upside is probably a Jimmy Rollins type player, which is enormously valuable. From 2004-2008 (his peak) Rollins was the 10th in all of baseball in WAR. He added another five seasons where he was somewhere between average and above average. Franco absolutely has star potential. There’s a decent chance he spends at least the early part of his MLB career at 3B and he just split his age 20 season between A and AA and had as many extra base hits as strikeouts.
The most interesting part of following the system this year is how the rest of last year’s draft class performs. There are four or five guys besides Crawford who are highly thought of but didn’t really perform that well in a SSS last year. Hopefully at least one or two guys take a big step forward.
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Pat – I am taking a simple approach to evaluating the Phillies. First, I am just focusing on 13 players, the starting position players and the rotation. Second, I am looking at who on the current 25-man roster has future value. Third, I am just considering top prospects, i.e., those on the top 100 prospect lists. Fourth, I am comparing the Phillies with other teams.
For example, take the Pirates. The Pirates have a number of good, young players on the 25-man roster plus a slew of prospects in the Top 100. Looked at this way, at present, the Pirates have a much brighter future than the Phils. The same can be said of many other teams.
Of course, you can argue that most of the Phils’ talent is at the lower levels, and I am ignoring those prospects. Not so, since this is an on-going evaluation to be done at least twice a year. If the younger prospects are any good, eventually they most likely will show up on a Top 100 list.
My assessment that the Phillies’ future is bleak is made as of January 2014. At mid-season, I will re-assess; again in January 2015, etc. I will be dropping and adding players and prospects along the way.
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Derick – while I mostly agree with your bleak forecast, I think that the lack of talent on the major league roster is the big problem. The minor league talent is okay; it just isn’t good enough to make up for the lack of talent – especially young talent – at the major league level.
If one were to compare all major league teams, and ask “how much controlled talent is on the major league roster now & still will be there in 2016” is there a worse team in the major leagues right now? You have Revere, Brown, Hamels, Asche, a couple minor pieces and old guys who will be gone or ineffective by then.
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This is true and really just re-stating what Derek said in a slightly different slant. You are correct that the big problem is at the MLB level, with the huge need for talent replenishment. You are correct that the farm is ok but needs to be a lot better than ok to solve the problem. Looked at from a slightly different slant, I would point out that:
1. We’ve said ourselves that after this top 3, we see a big gap down to our #4 and beyond prospects in our own current ranking exercise
2. Keith Law has rated our prospects higher than anyone else to post so far giving us positions #46, 63, and 77.
3. Because there are 30 MLB organizations, a dead average organization will have the #15, #45, #75, #105 rated prospects.
4. This means that even our most favorable assessor ranks our top prospects as below average for MLB. Note, that since we see a big gap between our top 3 and the next guy on our lists, clearly we don’t have a prospect between say #100-115 in Law’s ranking
5. To catch up with the rest, you need to be above average on the farm
6. Even considering depth, the most favorable ranking gives us the #14 farm — about as dead average as it’s possible to be.
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But you don’t need highly ranked (on top 100 lists) prospects to have an above average farm. As others have noted, there is a lot of raw talent at the lower levels of the system that could develop nicely over the next couple of years. Look at the Phillies team that won the World Series — the heart of that team (Utley/Rollins/Howard) were not highly regarded prospects (with the exception of Utley).
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2008 WS Team Top BA Top 100 Ranking:
Howard – 27
Utley – 81
Rollins – 31
Burrell – 2
Werth – 48
Myers – 33
Hamels – 17
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Oops – I meant with the exception of Hamels.
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Good stats to counter “non-highly rated prospect” 2008 WS team. I would further his original point that most of the guys were not highly regarded at the lower levels. Burrell, Myers, and Hamels were highly regarded coming in, but the rest of the guys either didn’t put it together or weren’t noticed until they hit about AA. So if you want a glimmer of hope, it’s that some of the raw potential at the low level will rocket up the charts in the next year or two. I don’t think it’s likely, but that’s our best shot right now.
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Derek – I agree that our system isn’t great. I was just disagreeing specifically about Franco and Crawford.
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What were their rankings in A ball? IIRC, most of those high rankings were when they were already close to the majors. Maybe I’m wrong. I forgot about Burrell and (pre-injury) Werth.
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It varies, Hamels peaked early, dropped due to injury, and then accelerated to the majors before he could be ranked again. Utley would have been higher but missed cutoff for 2003 list by 4 ABs.
A lot of high draft picks and college guys here too, some were in the majors very quickly and others had high starting points.
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I don’t see what difference this makes. If you saying we have guys in the low minors, who were primo draft picks, had some tools, and had good scouting reports at the time of the draft, what does that really add? That is why guys are drafted in rounds one and two. Every team has first and second round draftees who satisfy this definition, in fact the average team has more of these than we do, since we’ve had a below number of primo draft picks in recent years, while other teams have had a lot of extra picks. Every one of those first and second rounders had a good reason to be drafted — tools, performance in high school and college, athleticism, whatever. We’ve had a lot of those guys who have totally bombed out: Golson, Hewitt, Hudson — all had tools, all were top picks, you could dream on each of them.
A lot of our toolsy guys/primo picks have done nothing as pros to confirm their pre-draft status that they truly are primo talents: Larry Greene, Gueller, Hernandez and Sandberg whom I both like a lot but have done squat thus far in their short careers, Collier. Thus far, these are guys with varying degrees of remaining promise, but there really is not there there yet. Every team has talenting, promising guys like this, who have yet to truly produce on the field. I think we do have perhaps more plausible prospects after the top dozen than the average team, but I also think the strength of a farm are in the stronger, more likely to succeed top prospects, where we are short.
On your argument of the 2008 team members coming out of nowhere — the only guy I can really credit in that regard is Ruiz.
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I’m just saying that I didn’t recall the heart of the Phillies world series team being highly regarded as prospects until they were close to major league ready. Maybe I’m mistaken about that. In that respect, a low ranked system now doesn’t mean the guys currently in our system can’t or won’t develop into the next winning Phillies team. We’re talking several years of development time, so it’s just too far away to predict with any certainty. That’s all.
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i think the 2014 draft will be huge. having two great drafts in a row could help expedite a return to contending. they need to get a real high-ceiling guy at no. 7, preferably someone who can make the majors relatively quickly.
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Yes, it certainly helps, but we are talking 4 or more years from now.
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true. i guess i meant replenishing the minors is the best way to rebuild for the long term.
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Unless of course you take a college pitcher at 7th, then you could be looking at an ETA of June 2016.
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True for the first pick, if collegiate, but the later picks likely take longer. Even first round college guys often take longer to make it to the pros, but the 7th guy taken really should not.
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I’m glad that someone aka Keith law is as high on Dugan as I am just wait and see the kid can hit and can play all of positions
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