After Carlos Carrasco, who do you feel are our top 3 pitching prospects? Exclude Kendrick from your list, because barring an injury, he’ll lose his rookie eligibility this year. You can include Happ, because I’m less certain he’ll lose his status. Give your answer in the comments, you can leave it as anonymous if you want, and feel free to give your thoughts on why you chose who you did. I’ll give my answer on Thursday.
Category Archives: 01. Site Features
Mailbag
Got a few questions, so here are the answers, as best as I can do..
From Dan
With Adrian Cardenas as our top position prospect at a position where we already have a superstar in Chase Utley, where do you see Cardenas ending up position-wise, if he ever makes it to the big leagues? BaseballAmerica intimated that he could move to Right Field, do you agree?
I think they will keep him at 2B up through AA, at which point they will evaluate what is happening at the big league level. He might not have the arm strength to play 3B or RF, and he won’t have the range for CF, which means LF might be the final stopping point. For now, though, I think he’ll remain at 2B.
From Avery
Do you have any info on crosscutters pitcher drew naylor? Whats his stuff like? What are his pitches? Whats his makeup like? Also, why did he only start 2 of his 12 games last year. Basically what im asking
is: is he a legit prospect for the phils?
and similarly, from tua36564
Just wanted to know your thoughts on Drew Naylor a RHP at Williamsport. Pitched his third game today and has three wins. He also has let up only one ER in 22 innings pitched. He’s averaging almost a strikeout per inning and has walked only three while sporting a 1.14 Ground/Fly ratio. Is he the real deal, or will he come back down to Earth?
Drew Naylor seems to be springing to everyone’s mind with his quick start. Naylor, for those who don’t know, is one of our Australian signings, and made his US debut in 2006. Just turning 21, Naylor has a solid pitcher’s build, at 6’4, 210 lbs, but did not dominate in his first pro action, posting a 4.66 ERA in 36.2 IP, allowing 43 H, 9 BB and only 22 K. Lack of strikeouts is of course a red flag, as is the hittability, though his walk rate was solid. Well, Naylor has gotten off to a much better start this season;
22 IP, 0.41 ERA, 9 H, 3 BB, 21 K
Obviously that’s a huge improvement. The strikeouts are the most encouraging thing, and he’s been much less hittable. Is he a legit prospect? Yeah, because this is only his second season in pro ball, and he moved up a level, he’s not just repeating the GCL. What does he throw? I’ve never seen him pitch in person, and he was not on anyone’s radar, so there isn’t a lot of info there. I think I remember reading somewhere that he throws a typical fastball/changeup/slider combination. From the looks of his numbers, he must have sharpened his secondary pitches, because the strikeouts are way up and the walks are still way down. He’s definitely a guy to keep an eye on, but he needs to keep steadily moving if we’re to consider him a legit prospect.
Anderson Garcia gets the call
The latest minor leaguer to get the tap and head into the firestorm is Anderson Garcia, who will replace JA Happ on the 25 man roster. Garcia, acquired on waivers from Baltimore, via the Mets, will be making his Phillies debut sometime soon, and likely will be thrown into the fire that is the Phillies 2007 season. Garcia has had a nice run this year at Reading and Ottawa, and is striking out lots of guys. If he can limit the walks, he might be useful.
Geoff Geary has also been optioned to Ottawa. Let this be a reminder as to how important strikeouts are, especially to relievers. Geary does not have a putaway pitch. When balls are hit at someone, or he gets good defense behind him, he’s capable of being a useful reliever, as was evident last year. However, when those line drives fall in, and you’re still not striking anyone out, you get the 2007 version of Geoff Geary. As “unimportant” as strikeouts are for batters, they are vitally important for pitchers, especially relievers.
The Phillies are running out of minor leaguers to baptize by fire. Matt Maloney has to be next, and I’m sure they are toying with the idea of rushing Carrasco up. I pray to all things holy that it doesn’t happen, and Gillick doesn’t do something stupid, like trade the farm for a Jeff Weaver type. Ok, I removed my finger from the panic button…back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Friday morning thoughts
It’s a pretty gloomy Friday morning here, but morale is high after the Phillies top drawer win last night. I’ve kind of been slacking a bit here, but others have helped pick up the slack, and once things slow down at work, I’ll have more time to write. I’m planning a few player profiles and some other things as well, so that should be interesting. If you have any suggestions, please let me know and I’ll see what I can do. In fact, I’ll do a little mailbag type deal if you’d want to. Send me questions to the e-mail addy provided on the right, and put “Mailbag” in the title. I’ll answer as many as I can over the weekend and post them Monday. Now, on to the business…
Ottawa Lynx Report Week Twelve
We are twelve weeks into the 2007 season and the Ottawa Lynx, despite some promising signs last week, continued their slide deeper into last place in the Northern Division with another losing road trip. Ottawa are dangerously close to the point of no return. This team, who won the IL Northern Division title last season, can’t get a foot forward and put together a long winning streak which might, and I say might, get them back in contention for a playoff spot. This is the month to make up ground and by slipping further behind, the month of July might become critical for the Lynx. Instead of fighting for a playoff spot, Ottawa are struggling to merely hang on.
Phillies Media Guide Minor League Player Info
Slow day at work today. Google can be a wonderful thing. The Phillies media guide is apparently available for free on the MLB web site. Check out the link on this page for minor league players. Media Guide Link. The interesting prospect info is on the part 2 link. There are bios of all Phillies minor leaguers, including the Latin American signings. Most interesting thing learned? The Phillies are now active scouting in Mexico. Sebastien Valle, the Phillies 17-year-old catcher in the DSL this year was signed out of Mexico last October, several months after his 16th birthday.
Triple A-Last Stop Before The Show? (Part Two) The Pitchers
Pitching is the most sought after commodity in baseball and every team has learned that you can never have enough of it. Good pitching is hard to come by, especially in this day of small parks, tightly wound baseballs, more frequent arm injuries and hitters swinging for the fences. The recent first year player draft was certainly proof of that with young, strong arms being drafted often and in the first rounds. As arm injuries seem to be more and more frequent, pitch counts have grown to be considered paramount in trying to prevent arm, injury and shoulder mishaps. There is also the obvious learning curve for young pitchers moving up through the minor leagues and the progressively tougher competition.
Continue reading Triple A-Last Stop Before The Show? (Part Two) The Pitchers
Williamsport and GCL rosters updated
I updated the rosters for both short season teams today. You can find them by clicking the appropriate tag on the left side of the page. I still need to spend some time updating the rest of the rosters, but I had a request for the short season teams, so I did those. Not all of the starters might be right, I just did it quickly without looking at box scores to see how many games player X started at Y position. If there are mistakes, just leave a comment on the roster page and I’ll update it. In the next day or two, I’ll also be adding links to the legit prospects on the Prospect Tracker page at the top for our short season prospects, as well as updating all of the other roster pages. If there’s anything else that needs doing here, let me know.
Clearwater Threshers First-Half Wrap Up
The Clearwater Threshers earned their best first-half record in their short four-year history going 39-31. The team had six players selected to the FSL All-Star game: pitchers Carlos Carasco, Andrew Carpenter, Pat Overholt, OF/DH Jeremy Slayden, and catcher Lou Marson were elected by the managers in the league and Greg Golson was selected by the commisioners office to attend the game.
Durbin it is
The Phillies announced JD Durbin would get the call Friday against the Mets. Talk about being thrown into the fire. Durbin is out of options, so if he bombs out as a starter, they might try to stash him in the bullpen for a while, because if he’s sent down to AAA, he has to clear waivers again, and that seems unlikely. Good luck JD, you’re going to need it.
