As someone who loves to rank things, whether it be Phillies prospects, Seinfeld episodes, or fantasy football players, one of the things that I find most useful is rankings using tiers. Saying object X is ranked 1 and object Y is ranked 5 doesn’t tell you much unless you know the gap in quality between #1 and #5. For instance, if #1 is a Jaguar and #5 is a BMW, that’s different than #1 being a Ferrari and #5 being a Honda Civic. Or in baseball terms, if Domonic Brown is our #1 position player prospect, Michael Taylor is #2, and Jiwan James is #5, its important to understand the dropoff in prospect value from 1 to 2, and then 2 to 5, for instance. Lots of prospects have similar upsides, similar profiles, and similar projection, so just knowing they rank, say, 10 and 15, doesn’t tell you much unless you know just how similar the expectations are. So I’ve decided to try and create a little system to group prospects. Check below for more..
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Scouting video/report on Anthony Gose
Mike over at ScoutingTheSally has a video up of Anthony Gose, and he said he’s going to write up a full report on him in the near future. Thought folks might find it interesting if they’ve never see him in the batter’s box. Enjoy.
Update: Mike’s full scouting report is now up. Check it out
Looking ahead to the Rule 5 draft
The Rule 5 draft will take place next month at the winter meetings, and its almost that time to look at who needs to be protected, who might be available, and everything else involved. The Phillies, by virtue of another excellent regular season, will be picking at the back end of the first round unless they pull off a trade and move up. Check below the fold for more…
SONAR Scores – The pitchers
By now I’m going to assume that you’ve seen my introductory piece on this new statistic I’ve created, which I’ve dubbed the SONAR Score. Because I don’t have to do a huge setup here explaining the premise of the entire project, I’m going to address a few quick points before getting to the pitching scores, then just dig right in. I won’t comment on everyone, obviously, because there are over 80 players on the sheet. Not all of these guys are legit prospects, obviously, but they are all scored on the same scale, all of the adjustments are applied, so including them does no harm. I also left Jason Knapp and Carlos Carrasco on the list as a point of reference, I’m well aware that they are no longer in the Phillies system. So, with that intro, lets get down to it.
Phillies Top 10 at BA
Just remembered that the list will be posted tomorrow. The list itself will be free content, but the scouting reports will not be, so please don’t post them here. I was going to roll out the SONAR scores for pitchers today, but I haven’t had a chance to finish writing it up, and we’ll have other stuff to discuss with the Top 10 list, so I’ll hold off till Tuesday or Wednesday. I have no inside knowledge of the list, obviously, but I’m going to take a guess, based on BA’s tendencies.
01. Kyle Drabek
02. Domonic Brown
03. Michael Taylor
04. Anthony Gose
05. Travis D’Arnaud
06. Trevor May
07. Sebastian Valle
08. Yohan Flande
09. Kyrell Hudson
10. Brody Colvin
Im pretty sure the top 10 of my top 30 won’t look like this, but this is my expectation, or something close. We’ll see.
Check below the fold for the actual list
Introducing the SONAR Score
While all of the focus over the last month or so has been on the Phillies quest to repeat as World Series champions, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time refining and working on a system that I’ve been building for 2 years now to analyze the performance of minor league players. The system has gone through a bunch of changes, there are aspects of it that I’m still not 100% happy with, but right now, its at a place that I like, and the last changes made to it will come over time, as I figure out better ways to improve it. And like all cool systems, it needed a name, so I give you the SONAR Score system, a system that tries to dig beneath the surface (Sonar, get it) to analyze minor leaguers. So, check below the fold for more.
Domonic Brown to play in the Rising Stars game
If you get MLB Network, make sure to tune in on Saturday at 8 for the Rising Stars game, basically a best of the best from the guys in the Arizona Fall League. According to BA, Brown will be playing.
Stephen Strasburg will also be on display, as well as a few other notable NL East prospects in Drew Storen (WAS), Matt Dominguez (FLA), Mike Minor (ATL), and Ike Davis (NYM)
Hopefully Brown hits a HR or 4.
Draft Report Card notes from BA
The full draft report card is subscriber only info, which you can see here if you’re a subscriber. Some of the highlights;
* Hyatt’s slider is excellent and he’ll be on the fast track if he’s kept in the bullpen
* Singleton has great all around offensive profile, Phillies liked him back in 2008 and have followed him for a while
* Altherr has big upside but is really raw and has very little baseball experience
* Dugan has average to plus power from both sides of the plate
There ya go.
Arizona Fall League is under way
Edgar Garcia picked up the win in the first game of the Scorpions season, allowing 1 ER in 2 innings in relief. Michael Schwimer pitched the 9th allowing 1 ER on 2 hits and a walk and also recording a strikeout. Domonic Brown was 1 for 5 with a HR. There will be a steady stream of games, and MLB is using the Pitch F/X in 2 of stadiums (3 teams total), so we should get velocity readings as the season rolls on. Stay tuned.
Three Phillies in the Eastern League Top 20
A central theme is developing here; top prospect list, three Phillies will be named. This time its the Eastern League, and the Phillies are represented by Kyle Drabek (3rd overall, 2nd pitcher), Domonic Brown (6th, top OF), and Michael Taylor (9th, 2nd highest OF). So, the second best pitching prospect and the top two OF prospects. Not a bad haul. For those of you who ask for snippets from the scouting reports. Drabek = 3 above average pitches, needs to work on command. Brown = great all around profile, only question is eventual power production, and needs to work on route running, his arm is good. Taylor = good all around athlete, might be limited to LF, needs to continue to rake.
Phuture Phillies 