I wasn’t happy with the board I created last year, but I found a new free site, the setup is much better (I think) and hopefully it will prove much more useful during the season. This board, unlike the last one, is much more customizable, as it utilizes the phpbb software. I am, however, unskilled when it comes to updating/editing the appearance of the board. So, if you have experience working with phpbb and know how to alter the code to change the colors/board header and you’d like to help, please send an e-mail to phuturephillies at gmail dot com. I’m also looking for someone to offer their services to design a banner/header image for the site, so if you have those graphics related skills, also do send me an email, Id greatly appreciate it.

For now, you can check out the board here and sign up. Its just a skeleton setup with basic rules, but you’re free to join, play around and discuss. As I figure out the ins and outs and hopefully work with someone I can improve the aesthetics and features of the place. My hope is that it provides useful during the season and gives another outlet for the good discussions that generally spill across multiple articles here. I know its common sense (and I noted it in the rules there), but please only sign up with your name from here, it will create far less confusion and its just common sense. Thanks.

I’m slowly adding some of the things I’ve been meaning to add for months now, and if you look at the top of the site along the page links, you’ll now find a glossary and guide to service time at the right. If there’s anything you want to see added/explained, post it in the comments on that page.

I added a twitter feed (I guess everyone is doing it) to the right side, and further down I’ve created a flickr account to post pictures. If you have any pictures of Phillies prospects you’d like to submit, you can email them to me at phuturephillies at gmail dot com. Thanks in advance.

If you check the top of the blog, you’ll see a page/tab called “Prospect Tracker”. It’s simply a page with links to the 2007 statistics of all the Phillies prospects, linked at minorleaguesplits.com If you’re curious how a player is doing and don’t feel like searching and clicking through various pages, just click on his name and his splits will open in a new window. Minorleaguesplits is the best minor league stats site out there, and offers much more than the standard 3 slash stats, including balls in play data and month to month splits. Check it out.

Consider this your one stop guide to getting all of the information you need to keep up to date on the Phillies minor league system.

1. RSS news

What is RSS? For those who aren’t familiar with this not new, but very helpful tool, check out this guide on RSS readers, which details what they are and why they are important. My recommendation is

Google Reader

But there are tons of readers out there, you can find the one that suits you best.

For those of you with an iPhone, if you choose to go with Google Reader I highly recommend the “Feeds” iPhone app, which allows you to access your Reader account on your phone. The layout is very clean and easy to figure out.

Once you have a Reader, you need to subscribe to feeds. Here is my list of recommended feeds geared toward the minor leagues

Phuture Phillies feed (duh!)

Lakewood BlueClaws news
Clearwater Threshers news
Reading Phillies news
Lehigh Valley IronPigs news

minorleaguesplits Phillies daily recap

Scouting the Sally (covers SAL league prospects)

2. Daily Scoreboards

South Atlantic League Daily Scoreboard
Florida State League Daily Scoreboard
Eastern League Daily Scoreboard
International League Daily Scoreboard

3. Listening to minor league games

You can find links to the radio affiliates here

Lakewood – Shoresportsnetwork.com
Clearwater – Does not have a dedicated station. You can sometimes find audio from the Threshers’ opponents, so a quick google search would possibly yield results there.
Reading – ESPN 1240
Lehigh Valley – Official Website plus ESPN 1320

Another incredibly useful application if you have an iPhone is Wunder Radio. At $6.99 its a tad pricey, but its well worth it. You can stream thousands of radio stations from across the world, and it now has a feature to play in the background so you can browse the web in Safari while listening.

In the Search box, type in “WOBM 1160” for the Lakewood feed. If you type in “WNPV 1440” you should get the IronPigs feed. I’m still working on finding a working stream for Reading.

4. Other resources

Firstinning.com has a feature called the player tracker, which allows you to bookmark players and view their stats up a daily basis. Sign up for a free account, log in, and then search for a player’s name. When you get to that player’s page, click the link at the top that says “Add player X to your player tracker now”. This feature allows you to add a collection of players you want to follow without having to browse through the stats of guys you’re not interested in. First inning also offers a daily report of Phillies prospects which you can see here.