I’m pleased to announce two new members to the phuturephillies staff, Jeff who will be giving the Clearwater weekly report, and Gregg, who will be giving the Reading report. I still have an opening for someone interested in writing a once a week report on Lakewood, so if interested, or if you know someone interested, get in contact via email. I’d also like to ask for help of a different kind. I’m looking for a way to make tables to present statistics, and then save the table as an image so I can upload it and insert it into the middle of a post here. I don’t need anything elaborate, just a simple table that allows for columns and rows. If you know how to make something like this and would be willing to help, drop me an e-mail at phuturephillies at hotmail dot com. Finally, you may start to notice that posts are shorter with a “Click here to read more” link. I’m going this route because I want to make the first page easier to read. Thus, shorter posts with a link to read the rest of the writeup. This seems like a win-win type thing, but if it doesn’t go over well, we’ll revert back.

And just a brief thank you to those who keep coming back every day. This has been an enjoyable process, I have a lot of cool ideas for future development, and it should be fun. Thanks to those who just found the site, thanks to those who keep checking back, and please pass along the link to the site to anyone who you think may be interested.

I’ve had a number of people get in touch with me about helping with the Reading Phillies, and we’ve got our Ottawa connection taken care of, but I still would like two people, one to cover the Threshers and one to cover the Blue Claws. Basically, you’d be writing an entry once a week, either on a Thursday or Friday (or a Saturday, we can work that detail out), just basically talking about the state of the team, any news or tidbits you feel are worthy, and anything else you’d like to share. I can certainly write these, but I felt it would be a better feature if there were people who actively followed these affiliates and wanted to get their opinion/voice out there. If you have an interest, please send me an e-mail and we’ll work out the details. Thanks.

I’ve been slacking a bit, but I’ve been busy and haven’t had time to write as much as I’d like to, so I’m going to take suggestions for player profiles and then hopefully get cracking. So far, we’ve covered Michael Bourn, Edgar Garcia, Brett Harker, Dan Brauer, Andrew Carpenter, Fabio Castro, and Mike Costanzo. Who’s next?

First off, I know I’ve said it in the past, but I’ll say it again, thank you for stopping in every day and checking out my site, and thank you to those who have linked me from their sites and helped to spread the word. I’m really still surprised how well this has taken off, but it’s been a lot of fun, and should be even more fun once the season starts. I have a few more ideas in the pipeline, so stay tuned here for more updates and ideas.

However, I’d like to extend out a call for help here. As the season gets underway, there will be a lot of minor league action taking place nightly. I plan on writing up game summaries/previews every day, that won’t take long, but I would like to enlist the help of a few people to help write some stuff for each of the minor league affiliates. Ideally, you would be the type of person who goes to a bunch of games for one of the affiliates, you’d be able to write up interesting things you see, take some pictures, etc etc. I’d like to start out with it being a once a week type deal, where you could just write up a few paragraphs about the recent happenings on the team, any transactions or moves, players who are hitting their stride/players who are struggling, just stuff like that. If that’s something that interests you, please send me an e-mail at phuturephillies at hotmail dot com, replacing the “at” and the “dot” with their appropriate symbols. Andyb will continue to report on our teams in the DSL and VSL, but I could definitely use a Lakewood, Clearwater, Reading and Ottawa contributor, and because I live in Baltimore, my ability to get to games will be limited to those played at affiliates near me. Again, this will start out being really only a once a week type deal, and we’ll see where it goes from there. So if interested, drop me a line.

As always, if you have any suggestions, comments, questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

No new content today, fresh off a brilliant win by the Gunners, I’m buzzing and have quite a bit of stuff I’d like to get done today, but I’ll be back strong tomorrow. I wanted to just say thank you to those who continue to come back and read, those who email with questions and comments, and those who participate in the discussions here in the comments section. Less than a month ago, I had an idea for a blog, I didn’t know if I’d stick with it or if anyone would be interested, but now, 4 weeks and 10,000 hits later, I guess I’ve seen enough support to keep on keepin’ on. This has been good fun, and as we get closer to April, we’ll have even more to discuss.

You’ll notice a new page at the top called “questions/topics?” which has replaced the “opening statement” page. If you have ideas, or comments on the layout of the site, or anything else at all, share it there, or send an email, whichever you prefer. I’m constantly tinkering with the layout here, whether it be the fast navigation links on the left side, or possible additions to the right bar. Once the minor league season starts, the number of “feature pieces” will likely be reduced in favor of game recaps, game previews, prospect updates, etc etc, but I’ll still write some prose on certain topics. The roster pages for each level, which you can find on the left side of the main page, will be updated every few days (or when changes are made), and I’m also preparing a standings page of some sort.

Again, I want to thank you for the support and for continuing to come back. Tell your friends, if you think they’d care, and please keep checking back, especially once the season starts. I’ve got some other ideas, but most importantly, I want to continue writing about what people are interested in. Without interest from you, I’d have stopped after two entries. So again, thank you, and have a nice rest of your weekend.

– James.

I’ve created a new home for you to discuss/argue with your fellow minor league fans over the Phillies farm system.

Check it out here.

First off, thank you for stopping in. If this is your first visit, please read the following info then take a look around the site. My hope is that you’ll keep coming back and tell others who you think might be interested about the site.

About Me

My name is James, I’m an avid Phillies fan now living in Boston. I started this site in late December 2006 on a whim, and the site has grown slowly and steadily over the last 2 years. I’m not a scout, I don’t work for the Phillies, and I am in no way affiliated with the organization. What you’ll find on this site is simply an aggregation of information on the Phillies minor league system from top to bottom with my opinions and takes added in along the way. If you have any questions about the site, send me an email.

About the Site

This site is run through WordPress.com. I’ve made the decision to keep the site ad-free, I receive no revenue from running this site, and all expenses (domain registration, media storage) are paid for by me and me only. The site features writings by me, as well as various contributors and authors. All work done here is done on a volunteer basis.

I’ve also added a free message board, which you can find here.

Donations

If you would like to donate to the site, please click the “Make a Donation” link on the right side of the page. Money donated will go toward the general operation of the site, new content for the site, and anything else related to the site’s operation. Its not a tax deduction or a ponzi scheme, if you have a few bucks you want to kick in to the fund, I appreciate it, but its 100% optional and you are not obligated to do so. Any questions, you can email me.

Rules for Discussion

I’m not big on coming up with complex sets of rules, but I do have a few, and I’d ask that you please follow them.

1. No foul language. This one is self-explanatory. If you can’t say it on cable tv during the day, don’t type it here.
2. No spamming. If you have a web site that you think my readers would enjoy, please email me and we’ll talk about a link exchange. Posting your blog/site on my site over and over again won’t get you added.
3. Please be considerate of others. This one is really simple. Just treat others here as you’d like to be treated.
4. Please try to limit the discussion of the big league club. This has been discussed before, but the goal of this site is really to focus on the minor league aspect of the organization. If you’re looking for an outlet to discuss the big league club, I highly recommend The Good Phight and Beerleaguer.
5. You can’t edit your comments, so please take a moment to review what you’ve typed before you hit submit.
6. If you want to directly respond to something that someone typed, you can use this format in your comment;

(blockquote)enter text you want to quote here(/blockquote)

Replace the ( ) with a carrot bracket like this < on one side and the other carrot bracket to close it. I can’t type it out or it will be invisible on this page.

And the text will show up as quoted.

7. Do not post full articles from other sites here. I do not want to get in trouble for posting full copyrighted articles. If you find an article that you think is interesting, post a brief blurb and then give the link so others can check it out.
8. If you make a comment and it doesn’t show up, its probably because the post has been caught in the SPAM filter. WordPress has an automatic SPAM catcher, but it sometimes catches legit posts for no explainable reason. If you made a comment and it didn’t show up, send me an email and explain what you posted and then I’ll look for your comment in the queue.
9. Try your best to use a reasonable amount of punctuation and sentence structure. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing a good point go overlooked because the message was unreadable. Just take a few extra seconds and make sure your message will be clear and easy to understand.
10. Do not compare current prospects to Hall of Famers.

That’s really it. If you have any questions or concerns, please drop me an email.