Baseball America always gives a scouting report online of a team’s 31st prospect, ie, the guy who just failed to make their annual prospect handbook. Ballestas, a RHP, is the Phillies choice this season

Freddy Ballestas, rhp, Phillies

Born: Oct. 4, 1986. B-T: R-R. Ht: 6-3. Wt: 180. Signed: Venezuela, 2004. Signed by: Sal Agostinelli.

A product of the Phillies’ Venezuelan academy, Ballestas has spent his first three pro seasons in his home country, posting the best numbers of his career in 2007. After working on his mechanics to have better overall balance over the rubber last offseason, he was the top pitcher in the Rookie-level Venezuelan Summer League. He led the VSL in ERA (1.26) and strikeouts (98 in 100 innings) while ranking second in wins (9-3). Ballestas’ top pitch is a 90-93 mph fastball that touches 94 and has plus late life. He improved the command of his heater last year, missing more bats as a result. He also has a slurvy breaking ball and good feel for a changeup. Though he wasn’t viewed as much more than a middle reliever when he signed, Ballestas could become more than that if he can hone his secondary pitches. Philadelphia will bring him to the United States in 2008 and he could land an assignment to low Class A if he performs well in spring training.

Sounds promising, especially if he’s bumped to Lakewood to start.

I hate to post this, because it seems like we’ve debated this to death, but I guess it’s worth a look. From a Jim Callis chat at BA yesterday

Mike (Lancaster, PA): Can Cardenas play third?

Jim Callis: Yeah, he should be able to.

Hmm. Most people generally think Cardenas doesn’t have the arm for 3B. It’s not a secret that the best athletes on high school teams normally play shortstop. Lots of guys get drafted as shortstops (like Cardenas) and then get moved off the position immediately in pro ball. The Reds drafted Todd Frazier as a shortstop out of Rutgers and immediately moved him to 3B. It’s a common practice. But the guys who get moved to 3B normally go there because they have strong arms. If they can’t make it at 3B because of poor hands or reactions, they usually end up in RF, again because of their arm. If the arm isn’t good enough, they go to LF, for obvious reasons. All the talk about Cardenas has been that he might end up in LF, which seems to indicate that the Phillies don’t think much of his arm. Or could it be that they thought 2B would be easier for him to adjust to while he was also adjusting to pro pitching for the first time? He held his own at Lakewood as a 19 year old, and will move to Clearwater at age 20. Did anyone see him at Instructs taking balls at 3B? Will the Phillies gamble and try him there at Clearwater? We have no other legit 3B prospects in High A that would be blocking him.

Jim Callis is far from the trumping voice on Phillies prospects, but this could be an interesting plotline to watch.

A rare Saturday post, but this is something I’ve been thinking about recently, and I’ve crystallized a few of the ideas I had, so I figured I’d get it out there now, and hopefully we can develop it and discuss it over the next few weeks, and then put something in place before Spring Training starts. If you’ve been here a while, I think you realize that the comments, contributors, and everyone who stops in here is what makes this place tick. I try to provide my opinion, I try to guide the discussion, but from posting articles to providing first hand knowledge, you the readers are really what drives this sight. Without your interest, feedback and discussion, this blog wouldn’t be where it is today, and it wouldn’t encourage me to keep this place as up to date as I do.

So, I figured it was only natural that we devote a section of this site to you. My goal is to have people actively involved with the content of this site, based on first hand experiences. I have a Clearwater correspondent, our Reading correspondent from last year, Gregg, will be working on Allentown this year, I think I have someone for Lakewood, andyb is going to keep writing on the DSL and VSL prospects, but I’ll need a Reading person. This year I’d like to expand things, I want people who go to games to contribute their first hand takes on players, send me pictures from the games, amateur video if you have the knowhow to transfer the video to the internet, and everything in between. We can look at statistics and get a good idea, but if you know what you are looking for in a player, seeing him first hand is invaluable, and it really gives you a better idea of what to expect out of a guy. It’s what people at Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, Perfect Game and every other site rely on. I live in Maryland, I’m not close to any of the Phillies affiliates, so it’s tough for me to get to a lot of games every year, but I know there are lots of people here who go to games regularly, and you guys are an invaluable asset here. I will go over some things in particular to look for when watching a player, in terms of being able to provide usable feedback here. I’m not a pro scout, but I’ve read enough to kind of understand what scouts look at when watching a player. I’m not asking you to carry a radar gun or stopwatch with you to games, there are even simpler things to look for, all of which I’ll go over later.

Where to go from here. I need someone who wants to write the weekly report for Reading. If you’re interested, you can check out the work that Gregg did last year, using this post of his as an example. These reports focus on the general progress of the team and then focus specifically on the legit prospects as well. In addition, I’m going to set up a page for each affiliate where people can submit game reviews, thoughts on particular prospects, and anything else like that. In addition, I’ll create an account on either flickr or photobucket where we can upload and share pictures, and if we get video submitted, I’ll add the video to each player’s profile page as I create them. I have a number of other ideas right now that are also in the pipeline, but I figured I’d throw this out there while it was at the forefront of my cluttered brain.

per rotoworld.

Smith isn’t really a prospect at this point, and he’s going to miss most of 2008 recovering from TJ anyway. But now any hopes of saving face on the Abreu dump rests squarely on the shoulders of Carlos Monasterios and Jesus Sanchez. When they represent our opening day battery in 2012, we’ll be having the last laugh!

Also wanted to add this tidbit, found in the Red Sox prospect chat today at BA

Q: samuel from haverhill, MA asks:
I saw lincoln Holdzkom pitch a lot in pawtucket and was very impressed. Will he be a loss to the red sox and what are his chances of making the phillies bull pen.
A:

Jim Callis: Classic million-dollar arm and 10-cent head. It all comes down to Holdzkom figuring out his command and taking baseball seriously, and he never has done either. He cost the Red Sox nothing and I don’t think they’re too worried about losing him. Sure, he could make the Phillies as a Rule 5 guy, but I think he’s more a tease than anything.

I figured for my first post of the new year, I’d open it up to some discussion. I’m going to continue to work on more player profiles, and because this is the slowest time of the baseball season, we’ll probably have more of these open ended discussions over the next few weeks, at least until we get closer to spring training. I have some other things in the pipeline, but I don’t want to jinx it so I’ll keep it quiet for now. So today’s question. Which prospects do you think will end up in Philly at some point this year, and what kind of impact do you see them making?

This is just something that I thought would be interesting to pass along, in case you hadn’t come across it before. Baseball Think Factory calculates park factors for all of the minor league levels except rookie ball, both for 2007 and then a 3 year number as well, which is more accurate because of a larger sample. Park factors in general aren’t 100% reliable because of a number of factors, but they can give you a general idea in terms of which parks are very hitter friendly and which parks favor pitchers. The info can be found here.

Continue reading Weighted park factors →

Gonna spend some time over this long weekend working on some new player profile pages, which you can access on the left side under the player’s name. So far, we have

Carlos Carrasco
Adrian Cardenas
Drew Carpenter
Josh Outman
Dominic Brown

I’ll take requests. I’m working on more video clips, and right now I have scouting videos for about 25 other guys.

I hope everyone had a splendid holiday. I wanted to go back to the Baseball HQ Top 15 prospects, because the author of the list offered to answer some questions for us based on the list. So if you have specific questions and you didn’t post them in the original post, you can post them here, I’ll take a few and send them his way. I’m also going to try and work on some more player profile pages over the next couple days as well. I have a few other ideas in the pipeline, so stay tuned.

I’ve been under the weather lately, so the content may have been lacking, but it’s really going to be lacking over the next week or so. I have a hectic 6 or 7 days coming up, including traveling back to PA for four days, so I probably won’t update the blog again until next Wednesday or so unless something major happens, then I’ll check in briefly. I have a few Q/A’s planned, plus some more analysis pieces, and some other goodies. If you’re new to the site, there’s a year’s worth of content at your finger tips, and if you’ve been here for a while, just wanted to say thanks again for continuing to come back. I started this blog on a whim, and today I’m happy to announce we’ve reached a milestone….

500,000 hits and 5,455 comments left in a one year time span.

I’ve got a number of ideas for 2008 to make the site even better, and I hope that you guys keep checking in and keeping adding to the discussions. Thanks again for the support, and Happy Holidays.