The Phillies added the “real” prospects with this callup, bringing back Andy Tracy, Mike Cervanek, and Les Walrond. The most interesting aspect of the callups is the lack of Carrasco and Jason Jaramillo. Carrasco, who made his debut in 2004, needs to be protected on the 40 man after this season, so it was a matter of not starting his service time clock. Jaramillo is already on the 40 man roster. Gillick had this to say

In Marson, Phillies fans may well be getting a look at the catcher of the future — and that future could be next season. He hit .314 at Reading, was the starting catcher for the U.S. Team in the Futures Game in July and caught for the U.S. Olympic team in Beijing, China. Marson hit .308 in the Olympics as the U.S. earned a bronze medal.

“He might get some action, he might not,” Gillick said. “We don’t have any hesitancy of putting him into a game. He’s a good receiver, he makes good contact. I’d say he’s pretty close.

“We still like Jason (Jaramillo, the Phillies’ Triple-A catcher). He’s got a chance to catch in the big leagues. But Lou has forged ahead a little bit right now. We’re more confident at this point with Lou.”

This is interesting to me. Jaramillo is older and was already on the 40 man roster before they added Marson. Does this mean that Jaramillo gets traded this winter? Hard to see the Phillies moving Ruiz.

Per the Phillies official site.

Right-hander Adam Eaton and left-hander J.A. Happ were recalled from triple-A Lehigh Valley and outfielder Greg Golson and catcher Lou Marson had their contracts purchased from double-A Reading.

Somewhat surprising that they brought up Marson and not Jaramillo. Gordon and Rosario were moved to the 60 day DL to make room.

Much rejoicing!

More on the team here. (thanks to “Rickey Branch” for the link)

per Ken Rosenthal. Should be a marginal prospect. Stairs has been on the decline after a hot start, and he’s like 50 years old, but he’s better than Taguchi, the guy he should be replacing. We’ll see. More info in this space when its available.

Update: Its the model dictator

There ya go.

First baseman Andy Tracy’s stay with the Phillies was short-lived.

The Phillies designated him for assignment today and purchased the contract of pitcher Andrew Carpenter from Double A Reading.

Carpenter is being called up largely because the length of last night’s game leaves the bullpen thin. It seems unlikely that Clay Condrey would be available and the Phillies used everyone else. Tonight’s starter, Kyle Kendrick, ended up warming up in the 13th inning and threw about 40 pitches in the bullpen.

Carpenter is 6-8, with a 5.67 ERA in 16 games for Reading.

As we get close to September 1st, the issue of callups becomes a popular topic, as seen in the Lou Marson article. The rules governing the management of the 25 and 40 man rosters are somewhat confusing. I plan on putting something like this on the wiki site for future reference, but I haven’t had a whole lot of time to devote to that project of late, so I figured I’d just do a writeup here, try and cover all the bases, and I’ll add it over there at a later date. If there is anything related to roster management I don’t cover, post in the comments and I’ll try and add it, and if there are any errors in my post, let me know. I feel like I have a good handle on this, but shocking as it may seem, I’m wrong from time to time.

Continue reading Callups, option years, service time, etc →

Sam Donnellon has a nice article with some quotes from Lou Marson. Lou talks about the excitement about a possible callup. Then of course we get the comments from the Phillies front office on the potential callup of Marson and Donald here.

Next up for Donald and Marson is more time in the Eastern League, then consideration for a September call-up to the Phillies, although neither is a good bet.

“They’re players we’ll talk about,” Arbuckle said. “I think it’s going to come down to need.”

Hey Mike. The big league club has gotten a combined .246/.325/.366 battling line from the C spot this year, I think there might be a need. And you know, Jason Donald’s bat might come in handy, considering the robust .214/.297/.291 line Eric Bruntlett has compiled.

But then again, what do I know?

Yesterday we tackled our 10 best pitching prospects, so today we’ll open the floor for the hitting side. If you posted your Top 10 hitters in another post (shame on you!) then repost it in the comments here. Again, consider the following 4 conditions;

1. Performance
2. Projection
3. Health
4. Proximity to the majors

Place as much emphasis on each individual aspect as you’d like, then rank them from 1 to 10. I don’t think we’ll have any eligibility issues on this one, so go for it.

I’m running kind of short on time today. I’m in the middle of working on something interesting to include in my draft recap type post, so today I’m going to just throw out a topic and allow everyone to weigh in and discuss. Today’s topic is simple; list (and rank if you can) the Phillies 10 best pitching prospects. Factor in the following criteria:

1. Performance
2. Projection
3. Health
4. Proximity to the majors

Take these into account in whatever order you feel is most important. You don’t have to take the time to rank them from best to least if you don’t want, but the more people who do, the more interesting the results will be. This also will serve as a tool for me as I want to see what the perception of our guys is. For now, JA Happ is eligible, as he won’t pass the innings mark to disqualify him from ROY voting, so we’ll use that criteria.