We’ll finish it off today, with 20 prospects left. Starting from the ground up…

B

Jarrod Freeman, RHP – Freeman was and still is a promising arm, but it didn’t work out for him in Lakewood. He got battered around, allowing a .518 slugging % in 43.1 IP. He’s still plenty young, so hope is not lost.

Jesus Sanchez, C – Short season ball.

Alex Concepcion, RHP – Concecpcion was one of my picks to have a breakthrough year, and he’s shown some positives, including his 10.3 K/9. He’s given up a few walks (3.99/9) and has averaged a hit per inning. He’s also been a flyball pitcher, which could jump up and bite him at the next level.

Drew Carpenter, RHP – Carpenter has struggled more at High A than I thought he would, but that is to be expected for a guy who skipped Low A in his first season. 6.51 K/9 and 3.55 BB/9 is not what you want to see, especially because he doesn’t have dominant groundball tendencies.

Scott Mitchinson, RHP – Recovering from surgery, short season ball.

Brett Harker, RHP – Harker was rolling along, stringing together save after save, but he’s blown up over the last few weeks, seeing his ERA rise above 8. A definite setback.

Continue reading Midseason Review, Part 3 →

Jon Lieber hit the DL, and from the way it looks, he won’t be back for a while. I have to think Gillick is scrambling to try and trade for a starter at this point, but will probably have to use an internal option for at least a start or two as to not be held over the barrel. A few weeks ago, I lobbied for Kyle Kendrick to get a shot, and in two starts so far, he’s more than held his own. Kendrick was our best option at the time, but let’s see who the best option is now…or should I say, the least damaging option.

Continue reading Ok, so who’s next? →

My blog was selected at bloginterviewer.com and I was asked to fill out some simple questions. If you’re curious what I had to say, you can check it out here.

We’ll cover another batch of prospects today, looking at how they’ve fared in the first half of 2007. Again, a few reminders. The grades listed below were the grades assigned to the player prior to the start of this season, they aren’t midseason grades. I won’t assign a grade for 2007 until after the season, this is just kind of a one sentence overview of how each guy is playing this season so far. Any and all comments are welcome, as always.

Continue reading Midseason Review, Part 2 →

Thoughts? The old layout was really starting to bug me because the categories were all jumbled together and it was tougher to navigate. The main column here is a bit more narrow, but I think it’s more visually pleasing. I have some other options, if you think this one really bites the big one, let me know and I’ll try something new.

Link

Nice choices, I’d say they represent our best pitching prospect and position prospect. The game is Sunday, July 8th, and will be televised on ESPN 2 at 4 Eastern. Congrats to Carlos and Adrian.

We all know about Mike’s predominant first half v second half splits, but I think these splits tell an even bigger story;

2005 v LHP: .155/.269/.190
2006 v LHP: .191/.338/.300
2007 v LHP: .208/.266/.292

2005 v RHP: .306/.380/.550
2006 v RHP: .277/.371/.442
2007 v RHP: .270/.357/.546

2006, v LHP: 136 PA — 14.0% BB — 32.4% K
2007, v LHP: 79 PA — 6.3% BB — 34.2% K

2006, v RHP: 455 PA — 12.1% BB — 19.6% K
2007, v RHP: 199 PA — 11.1% BB — 31.2% K

He’s striking out a lot this year in general, but he’s still striking out more against LHP, and more importantly, isn’t drawing near enough walks off southpaws. We’ve already detailed his defense, so I think this makes him even more of a candidate for an outfield platoon. Couple him with a guy who can hit left handed pitching, and you might have a useful major leaguer.

Ok, so we’re putting the prospect cards on hold till the end of the year, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a quick look at how the prospects in our system are fairing so far. Just a few quick notes. I won’t be looking at any of our new draftees, and I also won’t look at the new arrivals from the DSL and VSL, because we just don’t have enough data on them. Also, guys who are playing at Williamsport and the GCL now will be excluded, because a handful of games doesn’t mean a whole lot. With those qualifiers aside, let’s get started.

Continue reading Midseason Review, Part 1 →

This year’s Williamsport and GCL rosters feature a number of players from last year’s Latin American rookie squads.  This post will go through the new players on each team and summarize what we know about them.  This is not meant to be a scouting report of these players, however, as we have very few eyewitness accounts of them playing.  Hopefully we can fill in the blanks with live reports as the season goes on.  These players are important to the Phillies future, however.  They also tend to be slightly better prospects on average than the draft prospects because the lesser prospects do not get promoted from their home country leagues.  These prospects would probably all have been selected in the top 10-15 rounds of the draft if they had been eligible.

Continue reading New Players from the 2006 VSL and DSL Teams →

Some random thoughts this morning

* Carlos Carrasco and Pat Overholt are now at Reading. To be honest, I’m kind of worried about both guys. Overholt seems to have gotten away from what was working early in the season, that is, being a dominant groundball pitcher. In the last 8 or so starts he’s had, he’s been okay in that department, but not dominant. He does not have plus plus stuff, so he has to keep the ball down if he’s going to be effective, and I just don’t know that he was ready for AA, but maybe he’ll prove me wrong in the second half. As for Carrasco, I’m both excited and concerned. The last time the Phillies moved him aggressively, it was a disaster. Over the last month, he’s been locked in and as good as any pitcher in the minors. If he goes to Reading and gets bombed, what does it do to his confidence? I like seeing prospects moved aggressively for the most part, but there are some cases where it might not be a good idea. Cross your fingers that Carrasco continues to roll along. This also likely speeds up his ETA in Philly, with sometime next year looking more like a possibility.

Continue reading Wednesday morning musings…. →