A bunch of random things on my mind this morning, let’s get to it.

* The Lakewood rotation is in shambles. This article a few days ago mentions that Kyle Drabek is on the DL (why?) and Jarrod Freeman was sent back to extended spring training….presumably because he was having trouble getting guys out. Ben Pfinsgraff, a personal favorite of mine, is back in action after some time on the DL, and could move back into the rotation for the time being. He’s been lights out as a reliever, and I wonder if he will be fast tracked once the new crop of guys from the draft make their way to Lakewood in July.

Continue reading Monday morning notes →

This will be fairly self explanatory. Yesterday I attempted to outline the best and worst case scenarios for the Phillies picks, now I’ll take a shot at laying out the entire first round. My guesses are, well, just that, guesses. With so much talent in this draft, one guy sliding or jumping could change the entire composition of the first round. I’ll give small blurbs with each pick as to why I see it going down in that fashion. Only one person sent me their own guess at the first 30, I’ll post that after I give my rundown, then we’ll see who gets closer.

Continue reading MLB 1st round mock draft →

Ok, so we’ve done a lot of discussing, we’ve looked at a lot of different guys, and now it’s time to figure out who the Phillies should take, who they are likely to take, what the best case scenario would be, and on the flipside, what the worst case scenario could be. The draft is very volatile, meaning that one guy going higher or lower than expected could cause a ripple effect and influence many other picks. For that reason, I’m only going to guess the #19 and #37 picks, because, well, at #84, there’s really no telling who may have slipped because of signability. So, I’ll give you my “best case” for both picks, listing 3 players who would be ideal at that spot, in my order of preference, and then I’ll give the “worst case”, 3 guys I really don’t want to see, then I’ll sum it up with my exact guess on the pick. Tomorrow I’ll roll out my complete mock draft of the first round, we’ll see how close I can get. If you’d like to take a guess yourself, check back to last week, I made a mock draft post with the draft order, just copy that into an e-mail, fill it out, and send it to me, I’ll post your results along with mine. On to the picks

Continue reading Final analysis of Phillies’ first two draft picks →

If you’ve been following along for the last few weeks, I’ve begun to dissect the 2007 draft and started to ponder who the Phillies may end up with. While my belief is that you take the best available player all the time, our system is so devoid of position prospects, you almost hope that the best available guy is a position player, simply because of our lacking, but at the same time, pitching is still at a premium all around baseball, and this draft class is stocked with pitchers, especially prep pitchers. In previous entries I pondered the first round and the compensation round, hoping we’d be able to land guys like Devin Mesoraco and Nevin Griffith, and now we’ll look at who might be there in the 2nd round.

Continue reading Looking at the 2nd round of the draft →

An idea I tossed around in the latest draft post, I plan on taking a stab at all 30 picks in the first round, probably next week. If you really follow this stuff and want to take a crack as well, I’d love to have your response and we can see who comes the closest. I’ll make the deadline for submission next Thursday, May 31st, and you can send your entries to phuturephillies at hotmail dot com, replacing the “at” and “dot com” with their appropriate symbols. At the bottom of this post, I’ll type out the exact draft order, so all you have to do is copy/paste and then fill in your picks. I’ll post all of the results once I receive them, if you don’t want your name posted with your picks, just give me an alternate display name to use.

Continue reading Mock Draft Sign-ups →

After I wrote last Friday’s article about the draft, Jim Callis at Baseball America posted his first mock draft, trying to predict where everyone would go in the first round. Here are his picks from 13-23

13. CLE – Blake Beaven, RHP
14. ATL – Jason Heyward, OF
15. CIN – Kevin Ahrens, SS/3B
16. TOR – Matt Dominguez, 3B
17. TEX – Julio Borbon, OF
18. STL – Matt Wieters, C
19. PHI – Devin Mesoraco, C
20. LAD – Josh Smoker, LHP
21. TOR – Pete Kozma, SS
22. SFG – Casey Weathers, RHP
23. SDP – James Simmons, RHP

Continue reading More draft stuff to ponder →

We’ve started to look at the 2007 draft here, and at about a month away, things will begin to take shape over the next few weeks, with players raising and lowering their respective stock and settling in somewhere on the overall board. Baseball America has updated their draft tracker, and a few guys in our general area have changed spots. Lets see who has moved up and down, who might be within reach, and who has probably moved out of reach.

Continue reading Thinking about the 2007 Draft, Part 2 →

Our good friend JE over at philliesdraft.com has started to do his homework on the upcoming 2007 draft, and he’s prepared his first rough mock draft, looking at who might be available for the Phillies in the first few rounds, as well as taking a look at the organization’s drafting philosophy in past drafts and how we can use that info to predict what will happen this June. This is the first in what I hope will be a number of contributions from Jeff, and next time, I’ll try and get him to write up the report here with his own unique login. For now, check out what he’s got, it’s a great read. I’ll catalog this posting in the “2007 Draft” tag group to the left, and all subsequent posts dealing with the draft will go there as well.

Continue reading 2007 Draft Notebook, 5/4 →