For those of you who aren’t already familiar with me from my work last year, my name is Jeff, and I provide the weekly updates on the happenings within the Threshers organiztion for James here at Phuture Phillies. I also run a Threshers site with daily game recaps and player profiles along with player of the game awards, and end-of-the-season awards. Check out the site here. I’ve talked with a few of the players from last year’s FSL Champion Threshers team and set up some upcoming interviews with Andrew Carpenter, Jason Donald, and Lou Marson. Like most of you I am a fan of the game and not a professional journalist, so I’d like to get your input on these upcoming talks to make sure that what I ask and write about are of the most interest to those of you who frequent this site. I want to throw out this opportunity to you all to allow me to be the surrogate for the questions that you would ask if you had the opportunity to talk with these players.

You can use the comments section here or drop me an email and get your input into the upcoming articles.

I hope to have the interviews up within the next week, so let me know soon if you’d like some input.

I wanted to just give a brief update and explain whats going to happen over the next month or so. I’m pretty much going to just be doing a post every day recapping the events of the spring training game the day before, highlighting the performances of the prospects involved. If any other news comes up, then we’ll get that in of course, but I’m going to spend the bulk of my time between now and opening day working on player profiles, trying to get as many of them as I can completed. I’m also going to be getting in touch with my correspondents for Lakewood, Clearwater, Reading and Allentown and giving them some details on future plans.

So heres what I need from YOU, the loyal reader. If you come across any biographical tidbits/articles/pictures/videos of our prospects online, and I don’t already have the info posted on that player’s profile, please post it. If I’ve already created a player’s profile page, you can post a link there or you can post it on the new “Info Dump” page at the top of the blog. You can also get there by clicking here.

Thanks again for all of the contributions from all of you, thanks for continuing to come back, and I’m really looking forward to this season, both for the big league club and all of its affiliates.

Hi Folks:

Here is an article on one low level prospect that went to school in Jersey, near Lakewood… will be big news if he gets to play there.

From the Asbusry Park Press:

Slate looking to make his mark with Phillies

By TONY GRAHAM
STAFF WRITER

The ball smacked into the catcher’s mitt. Throwing the ball was Philadelphia Phillies pitching prospect Kyle Slate. Slate devastated Shore Conference hitters last spring with his split-finger fastball. That pitch helped him to go 11-1 with an 0.38 ERA at CBA.

Continue reading Kyle Slate, local kid →

Happy Monday. I’m short on time today, but I was thinking about this earlier, and I figured it would be interesting to get opinions on this topic. What order do you see the Phillies pitching prospects in with regards to being called up to the majors in 2008? Obviously you need to take into account which guys are on the 40 man roster already, and then who is the most polished/ready for the occasion. You can break it down by starters and relievers as well, since that will likely be the biggest factor after the 40 man roster. I’ll be interested to see the order you guys place them in, as I have an idea myself, but mine is probably going to be different than yours.

I remember when Drabek was drafted, lots of people weren’t happy, thinking the Phillies had wasted a draft pick on a kid with a lot of baggage who was never going to pan out. After his rough debut in the GCL, those people started to trumpet their message even louder. But now it appears that they might have been wrong, as Drabek is 1.5 years removed from being drafted, is 7 months into the post-Tommy John surgery part of his baseball career, and he seems to be saying all the right things.

As the Phillies were going through an early spring workout, Kyle Drabek cut between two practice fields on his way to a minor-league clubhouse.

“I’d like to be out there with everyone, but spring training is a lot of hard work,” the 20-year-old pitching prospect joked.

Seven months into his recovery from Tommy John surgery, the Phils’ 2006 No. 1 draft pick knows he has plenty of rehab work ahead of him.

This time a year ago, Drabek was in spring training with the Phillies less a year out of high school. This year, he received no big-league spring invitation, just a locker at the minor-league complex.

The Texas native has been in Clearwater since October working with Phillies trainers and now is throwing at 90 feet.

He has no idea when he’ll get back on the mound and predicts he’ll miss the entire 2008 season and not pitch again until next fall in the Florida Instructional League.

“My arm feels good,” said Drabek, who has lost five pounds and some of his baby fat while rehabbing.

This coming after the report from Kevin Goldstein in his Phillies Top 11 that Drabek has had zero problems in the last year in terms of attitude or off the field trouble. The arm is special, we’ve all known that, it was just a matter of him wanting to mature and become a pitcher, not just a kid with an attitude that throws hard. Sure, this is just a minor detail with two throwaway quotes, but to me, based on everything that’s been written about Drabek over the last year, it’s just one more step closer to him realizing his talent and making the Phillies gamble on him look pretty smart.

As promised, here’s a look at players we either didn’t sign that we drafted or players who were drafted as a result of us giving up our draft pick to that team to sign one of their free agents. Of course, this is an exercise in hindsight, but also an important one when understanding the draft. If you find one that I missed, drop it in the comments and I’ll add it to the list. Just a note, I’m not going to bother writing up every guy we didn’t sign, only the ones of note. I’m going to start in 2001, so let’s get this show on the road.

Continue reading Draft picks that might have been →

I’m back. I’m still not healthy, but I’ll take one for the team anyway. I’m going to basically compare the 5 NL East teams today, focusing on their farm systems, their recent draft strategies, and what it all means going forward. I’m going to look at two main areas; current prospect depth/composition and recent drafts. My goal is to be as objective as possible here, it won’t do anyone any favors if I’m harsh on other systems and complimentary to the Phillies, but if you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you know that’s generally not how I operate anyway. So, let’s get right to it.

Continue reading Comparison of NL East sytems →

And unfortunately, more cowbell is not the cure. I’ll get back on track tomorrow. But for now, I’d ask that you ponder more possible questions for Kevin Goldstein, which can be posted in the BP Top 11 prospects post from yesterday, or I guess just post them here. And here’s a bonus discussion question for the day. Of Travis Blackley, Lincoln Holdzkom, or Joe Bisenius, which is more likely to make the 25 man roster out of spring training? The rumors on a Kris Benson signing are getting stronger, and he’d compete with Adam Eaton and presumably Blackley for a rotation spot. The Rule 5 guys have an edge up, obviously, because they can’t be optioned down. But with a strong spring, will Bisenius make the roster? Have your say.

Ah yes, my personal Top 100. As well as being an avid follower of the Phillies minor leaguers, I’ve always closely followed the systems of other teams. I find player development really interesting, as well as the draft process, and when you start following these guys in high school and college, it’s always natural to continue to follow them when they enter pro ball, even if it’s not for your favorite team. A few caveats, before I get to my list. I shouldn’t really have to outline this, but there will invariably be someone who flies off, if they happen to find my blog and they read about me ranking prospects in a certain order. I’m not a scout, I don’t profess to be a scout, and while I know a few people, my network pales in comparison to those at BP, BA, ESPN, and every other prospect authority in the business. My knowledge comes from reading what others have to say, discerning useful info from those reports, watching these prospects when I can, and looking at basic peripheral numbers. Every prospect list out there is going to contain guys that fall flat on their face, as well as guys placed higher than the “consensus opinion”, and some of those guys will go on to be stars. I generally don’t worry about where the group think position is on a player. There are some guys who are generally loved that I’m not as high on (Homer Bailey), and some guys that aren’t loved that aren’t love as much (Omar Poveda) that I really like. These lists are just guesses as to who will and who won’t make it at the next level, and above everything else, I think it’s a lot of fun. So now that I got the disclaimers out of the way…

Continue reading My Top 100 prospects →

I’m sure most of you have heard the word “PECOTA” at some point when reading about baseball analysis and statistics. Basically, PECOTA was developed/created by Nate Silver at Baseball Prospectus. It’s basically a really complex algorithm that analyzes players in a number of advanced metrics, and the power of the system is basically that it takes just about anyone that has ever played the game and puts their data along side the players it is comparing them to, and then tries to figure out which direction the current player’s career will go, based on what has happened to similar players in the past. The system is incredibly complex, and if you haven’t ever read up on it, I’d suggest reading the wikipedia entry here before you dig into this post. While PECOTA is useful for projecting major league statistics for the upcoming season, it’s also useful to get a snapshot of which prospects the system seems to like, and which prospects the system isn’t as high on.

Continue reading PECOTA and Phillies prospects →