Hi all,

While there is some down time in the prospect world I will be doing some improvements to the site.  Some of them are in the testing phase such as the Twitter feeds of writers and reorganization of the pages at top under player profiles.  As for the profiles, I am working on good ways of linking them out to news posts, and I have further 18 that are in draft form and will be up over the coming weeks.  Additionally all the existing profiles will get a quick update.

If there are any improvements to your reading experience that you would like to see, just post them here and I will take them under advisement based on what I have time for and what the WordPress site will allow me to do.

If you feel that any players are missing from the profiles let me know, they may be in the works or they may have just fallen through the cracks.

Thank you to everyone who stops by, whether they post or not.

Matt

First reported here by Murray but we now have confirmation from Jim Salisbury http://www.csnphilly.com/baseball-philadelphia-phillies/good-news-bad-news-2-phillies-prospects?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Quinn ruptured is achilles doing sprints near his Florida home. He has already had surgery to repair it, the Phillies are also looking into having him get surgery on his wrist which has been healing slowly since it was broken by a pitch in June. It took Ryan Howard 10 months to return to the field so Quinn could see action towards the end of next year, but odds are he will be highly limited and without the aid of his speed for much longer. This is a severe blow to the Phillies farm system as a whole.

In better news Tommy Joseph is headed to the Dominican to play winter ball. He will be behind the plate for Estrellas de Oriente.

One of the most interesting and potentially rewarding part of the offseason is finding former prospects and guys with tools in minor league free agency.  Most of these guys will switch orgs to man AA and AAA teams with the hope that they might get a cup of coffee in the majors.

The Phillies have already locked up their biggest names that could have been available in Jim Murphy, Leandro Castro, and Jiwan James.  All will be back in the org next year and will all make at least a visit to big league camp.  There are some names of interest left, but there is no one who would be a huge loss if they left the org.  The full list from Baseball America http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/minor-league-free-agents-2013/.

Philadelphia Phillies
RHP: Gabriel Arias (Hi A), Justin Friend (AAA), Mike MacDougal (AAA), Juan Sosa (AA)
LHP: Bobby Bramhall (AA), Tom Cochran (AAA), Mauricio Robles (AAA), Greg Smith (AAA)
C: John Suomi (AAA), Shawn Williams* (AA)
2B: Matt Tolbert (AA)
3B: Josh Fields (AAA)
SS: Miguel Abreu (AAA), Andres Blanco* (AAA)
OF: Derrick Mitchell (AAA)

First go read the free version here http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/2014-philadelphia-phillies-top-10-prospects/, and then if you give BA money go read the scouting reports here http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/2014-philadelphia-phillies-top-10-prospects-with-scouting-reports/, and if you give them money read the chat transcript here http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/2014-philadelphia-phillies-top-10-prospects-chat-with-josh-norris/.

For those lazy the Top 10 are:

1. Maikel Franco
2. Jesse Biddle
3. JP Crawford
4. Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez
5. Roman Quinn
6. Carlos Tocci
7. Ethan Martin
8. Cesar Hernandez
9. Aaron Altherr
10. Severino Gonzalez

Rather than give a word for word recap of all of these reports I am going to give my reactions and quick thoughts. Continue reading Baseball America Top 10 Phillies Prospects →

In move different from previous seasons, the Phillies have sent four of their low minors hitters to their Dominican Academy this winter to get extra work in.  The four players are Lakewood Third Baseman Mitch Walding whose season ended prematurely with a broken rib, Lakewood Left Fielder Larry Greene, Williamsport Second Baseman Andrew Pullin, GCL Outfielder Cord Sandberg, and GCL Third Baseman Jan Hernandez.  They will not be playing in organized games in the DWL but they will be work with coaches to get some extra reps in.  All five players had underwhelming years and have plenty of things to work on this offseason.  Overall this is a positive step in working to try and make up for lost time or accelerate development.

A breaking ball is defined as a pitch that creates movement with sharp spin induced from the wrist. But all of the similarities end there. Almost all breaking balls fall into the slider or curveball, but there is a lot of slurviness in between and each pitcher defines their pitches differently.  There are different components to a breaking ball and they parallel those of the fastball. There is velocity or hardness, deception, command, movement, and breaking out from movement, shape.  Many of the components of a breaking ball are inherent to a pitcher based on their arm, wrist, and delivery.

Velocity in relation to a breaking ball is not a cut and dry with big velocity equaling success. The most obvious implication of velocity is that the faster the pitch the less time the batter has to adjust to the pitch.  The trade off to velocity is that it can often come with less movement.  This is due to the physics of a thrown baseball, in order to get sharp movement on a hard breaking ball, the pitcher must impart more rotation on to the pitch.

Continue reading Top Tools: Breaking Ball →

First you should read it here (it is behind the pay wall) http://www.baseballamerica.com/draft/2013-draft-report-card-philadelphia-phillies/.  There is a lot jammed into it making it difficult to paraphrase.

Here is the Quick Take:

The Phillies signed an exciting class of hitters, though Knapp had to have Tommy John surgery this fall, which may slow his progress. Their pitching class offers less upside after Keys and Viza.

Bonus Spending: $5.57 million

 

 

 

Continue reading Baseball America’s Draft Report Card →

We now transition from hitting to pitching where we can scout individual tools more easily but the complete package is often more difficult to put together. So we start with the most basic of pitches, the fastball. I break the fastball down into 4 components; velocity, command, movement, and deception of which each pitcher and pitch will combine to form a unique offering.  If a player cannot get their fastball in for strikes he is going to struggle to reach the majors, and if he cannot get weak contact or swings and misses in the strikezone, he is going to have a severely limited ceiling.  By mastering other parts of his fastball a player can marginalize weaknesses and amplify strengths. Continue reading Top Tools: Fastball →

Franco with another high placement on a list.  This time coming in behind Xander Bogaerts, Miguel Sano, and Noah Syndergaard.  He did place a head of two guys who are better prospects who were hurt by limited time in the league in Gregory Polanco and Anthony Rendon, but they are/were among the very elite prospects in the game.  He also placed ahead of 2010 #2 overall pick Jamison Tallion who has scouts split around whether he is a top of the rotation or mid rotation starter. Continue reading Maikel Franco #4 and Jesse Biddle #11 on BA’s Eastern League Top 20 →

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. Continue reading Cody Asche #9 and Darin Ruf #17 on BA’s IL Top 20 →