Don’t have time for an entry today, but Ed Wade must be smiling today, as another fruit of his labor claimed some heavy duty hardware, winning the NL MVP yesterday. Wade, for as much as we panned him as a GM, never traded away Ryan Howard, Chase Utley or Rollins, the three guys who are now the core of the team. Utley would have to be the odds on favorite to win the 2008 MVP, if you can even project things like that, as he’d have probably won in 2007 if not for the injury. Even if Wade did try and trade Howard for Ted Lilly or Zack Duke, at the end of the day he didn’t, and because of it, the Phillies are much better off. Lots of people really despise Eddie, but I find myself disliking him less and less, and at the end of the day, he does deserve a lot of credit for the current core of this team.

After the holiday here, we’ll start looking at projected rotations and lineups for the minor league affiliates, starting with Allentown.

I’m under the kosh here at work today. My goal is to put up my Top 30 prospect list on Monday. I’ve decided I’m not going to bother posting every team’s Top 30 here, enough people expressed they wouldn’t want to see that, so I can just give my Phillies list, my thoughts on each spot, and then maybe at some point I’ll compare our system to the other four teams in our division, and also do positional rankings. So, check back Monday for that.

If you haven’t sent in your top 30 list and you still want to participate, send the email to phuturephillies@hotmail dot com and send it soon, as I’m going to collect the few that were given and compile them later today or tomorrow and then post the results.

Baseball America got Costanzo’s thoughts on the deal. Clearly he’s disappointed, but he seems motivated by it. Best of luck Mike.

Baseball America is trotting out their team Top 10’s and started this year with the NL East. Atlanta, New York and Washington have already been unveiled, which means Philadelphia and Florida will come next Monday and Wedenesday. So, get your guesses in now. I’ll give it a shot, based on how I think they think

01. Carrasco
02. Cardenas
03. Savery
04. Brown
05. Outman
06. Drabek
07. Donald
08. Sampson
09. Galvis
10. Mattair

wildcards are d’Arnaud and Marson.

Darren Byrd won the vote yesterday for the 31st spot on the list, and with everyone else moving up 1 spot, he becomes the 30th prospect on the list. I wanted to again thank everyone who came here every day and voted during the process. I hope you guys stick around and become more active in the comments section of new posts, because discussion and discourse is what this site is all about. If you still want to share your personal top 30, just send an email to phuturephillies at hotmail dot com and give me your list in order. I’ll collect all of the lists and post the results sometime in the next week or two.

I also wanted to give a little update on my personal prospect rankings. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time working on a system to evaluate prospects, both as a tool for comparison and a way to come up with rudimentary predictions for future success/failure. The actual design of the formula wasn’t too tough, but importing the data for 700 players takes a lot of time, and I’m really only about 50% done at this point. I want to make sure that it’s complete and ready to go before I start discussing my findings, so my own personal Top 30 is going to be delayed for a little while.

In conjunction with the above paragraph, I have a question. Would it be interesting for you guys to see my lists of Top 30 prospects for every other team in baseball after I give my Phillies list, as well as positional rankings and overall team rankings? I ask because I’ve debated starting another blog devoted to all of the minors, but at the same time I realize there isn’t a whole lot of Phillies news in the offseason, and I could probably just discuss the lists here. If you guys have no interest in reading about that stuff, then I might have to go about setting up another blog for that purpose. Just wanted some feedback on that.

Next week, I wanted to start working on guesses as to where prospects will start 2008, starting with 3A and working our way down. So, start thinking about that and we’ll get started on Monday or Tuesday.

I know you’ll find this site when you search for “Mike Costanzo” and “Michael Bourn”, if you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments here. To see the bulk of what I’ve written on Costanzo, click here. I did interviews with Keith Law and Bryan Smith of BP who both commented on Costanzo as well. I haven’t written a whole lot about Bourn because he spent all of last year in Philadelphia. Basically, lots of speed, very good defender, good plate discipline for the most part, but virtually no power. Any other questions, post away. Thanks for stopping in.

EDIT: Way back in January, my prediction for Costanzo was

So then, 2007. Mike will open the season, his age 23 season, as the starting 3B at Reading. At 23, he needs to be in AA, and he needs to put up a season in the .820-.860 OPS range to remain a prospect worth watching. It’s certainly not unrealistic to expect a .280/.370/.470 season from him at Reading. Parkwise, Reading plays fairly well for hitters

His actual line was .269/.368/.486……not bad.

Wow. The Phillies traded Michael Bourn, Geoff Geary and Mike Costanzo for Brad Lidge and Eric Bruntlett. Gotta say, I didn’t see that coming. Bourn is the classic case of “can he play every day”, Geary is a fungible middle reliever, and we’ve debated the merits of Costanzo for a while now. I’m not a big believer in Costanzo being an above average regular at the major league level, Bourn I’m a bit more optimistic on. This is clearly a pretty big gamble, but it will allow us to move Myers back to the rotation. Bruntlett is basically a throw in, a slightly more offensively inclined Abe Nunez who can play all of the INF positions.

Again, wow.

We kind of touched on what to expect from Jaramillo going forward in the Reader Top 30 threads, where he took the 13th spot. Some felt he didn’t merit a ranking that high, which is understandable considering his less than amazing 2007 numbers. Baseball America’s Team USA breakdown

Bryan Anderson (Cardinals) and Jason Jaramillo (Phillies) split time behind the plate in the Arizona Fall League. Although Anderson is the more promising prospect, there is not much difference between the two in current ability. Anderson, who hit .298/.350/.388 for Double-A Springfield as a 20-year-old, is an offensive-minded catcher with good contact-hitting skills. Jaramillo, 25, hit .271/.350/.361 for Triple-A Ottawa right and shows more patience at the plate than Anderson does right now. Jaramillo also did a bit better than Anderson at throwing out base-stealers in 2007. Having the lefthanded-hitting Anderson and the righthanded-hitting Jaramillo should make for a nice platoon for manager Davey Johnson.

“Anderson is the better hitter of the two, but Jaramillo gives you more consistency behind the plate with above-average arm strength and accuracy with his throws,” a scout from a National League club said. “There isn’t much of a drop-off with either one behind the plate, but Jaramillo is the better defender. Anderson gives you more punch, but it’s not like Jaramillo is a bad hitter. This is a guy who had a really nice year in Triple-A (in 2007).”

Whether he’s just being nice for the sake of it, it’s nice to see something positive here, and it’s again highlighting his performance defensively, which is a plus. Anderson, for what it’s worth, was ranked as the Cardinals’ 6th best prospect entering 2007, and one of the better catching prospects in the minors.

Just saw the list at Baseball America, no real surprises, but felt I’d pass it along. I think they might try and bring back guys like Burnham and Brito, but we’ll see.

Righthanders: Ryan Cameron, Matt Childers, Julio de la Cruz, Landon Jacobsen, Gary Knotts, Tim McClaskey, Bubba Nelson, Chris Rojas, Brian Sanches, Heath Totten, Charles Weatherby, Jason Wylie
Lefthanders: Eude Brito, Allen Davis, Chris Key, Luis Villarreal, Cory Willey
Catchers: Jason Hill, Dusty Wathan
First basemen: Gary Burnham, John Urick
Second basemen: Carlos Leon, Peeter Ramos
Third basemen: Joey Hammond, Brennan King
Shortstops: Gookie Dawkins, Danny Sandoval
Outfielders: Shaun Boyd, Nic Jackson, Greg Jacobs, Matt Padgett, Jim Rushford, Pedro Swann