No real news to report today, things are shaping up, and the only real developments I can forsee between now and Monday would be a trade of Wes Helms, but it looks like there is zero interest around baseball. Maybe the Phillies can move him for a reliever out of options and take a flier on a guy, who knows. But, this weekend I plan to put in a bunch of work on the site to get things ready. I won’t be around Monday, so we’ll resume normal service on Tuesday and start getting prepared for the minor league season.

Today’s open ended question; which Phillies prospect will get the most AB’s for the big league club this season? Your choices are limited, but we did one for pitchers, so we’ll do one for hitters as well.

The news just keeps getting better. Looks like Big Z might be going under the knife. At least his hamstring should be healed in 12 months when he starts pitching again.

Today was the day for big cuts in the minors.  Here is a list of the Phillies’ transactions based on the latest minor league roster, and a summary of the changes from the week 3 roster including the cuts made today.

Continue reading Black Monday in the Minors →

I’m up against it today, so I’ll keep it short. We’re getting closer and closer to the time where the games start to count, and because of that, I need to kick it into high gear on the player profiles, hopefully this weekend. Again, if you see that a prospect doesn’t have his name on the left side of the page under “players”, then let me know so I can add him. If anything else happens, I’ll pop in for a quick take, if not, I’ll be back Monday. Have a Good Friday.

I’ve been trying to crank out these profiles, but always seem to get distracted. I did a few recently where I didn’t have as much info as I’d like, but I still want every legit prospect to have a profile page. Here are the newest entries

Antonio Bastardo, Darren Byrd, Alex Concepcion, Heitor Correa, Andrew Cruse (with video)

As always, if you have any articles, pictures or info on these or any other prospects, please share it so I can add it to their respective pages. You can find the profiles on the left side of the site under the “Players” heading, and each player has or will have his own profile. If you look to the left and see a legit prospect who doesn’t have his own player heading yet, please let me know, as I don’t want to overlook anyone. Thanks.

This site has been functional since the end of December, 2006. I really assumed I’d have to make this post a lot sooner, but everyone has behaved far better than I could have imagined. So, this is a friendly reminder. I can see your IP address. Using different logins from the same IP address to post ridiculous/childish comments isn’t going to work. If you do it, I’ll just mark your comment as spam and delete it. It’s as simple as that. My goal here is to make this site as informative and readable as possible. That’s why I don’t make even a penny off of the site by littering it with ads and links, and thats why I’ve turned down offers to sell the domain and its contents to another site. I enjoy writing here, I enjoy the discussions, and I think this site has come a long way in 16 months. But I’m still protective of the content and standards, and that applies to the comments as well. So, for 99.9% of you, thanks for being civil. The .1% will be weeded out.

I’ve gotten a handful of e-mails in the last few days, plus comments in various posts, about Greg Golson, and asking how I felt now that he’s played well, and how I’m probably bummed because I’m “anti-Greg Golson”. I’m not anti any of our prospects. In fact, I probably support all of our prospects more than anyone outside of their respective families and friends, and Golson is no different. When you follow the minor leagues closely and you invest time in learning this stuff, you grow attached to these guys. And much like the girl/guy you chase in high school and can’t ever seem to get, you start protecting yourself from getting hurt. Golson has not lived up to expectations yet, and he has a few very clear flaws in his game. Even so, I never stop hoping he’s going to flip the switch and suddenly put it together. He’s Phillies property, and I’ve spent 4+ years hoping he’d make passing on Phil Hughes look smart. I hope he does. But I’ve tempered my expectations, and I still have my doubts that he can recognize/hit a curveball. Do I want him to? Of course. Will I be extremely excited if he turns into the next Eric Davis? Absolutely. I’m far from anti-Greg Golson. I’ve just toned down my expectations to about as low as they can go. Whatever he becomes, as long as it happens in the major leagues at some point, will be a bonus. He’s had a bright spring, lets hope it carries over.