Joe Savery who was DFA’d to make room for AJ Burnett, has been claimed by the Oakland Athletics.  On the surface Savery is a fringe bullpen arm with a minor league option left.  The Phillies are stacked with fringe bullpen arms making Savery redundant for the organization.   Continue reading Joe Savery Claimed by Oakland Athletics →

Pitchers and Catchers reported today, so lets look at who is in camp.  Some players are only for depth or experience and will end up in minor league camp shortly.  Others are in positional battles that will go down to the last day of camp.  We will have much more as camp gets fully underway, for now here are some guys who spent a lot of time in the minors in 2013 and are no locks to make the roster.

40 Man Roster:

RHP – Phillippe Aumont
RHP – Luis Garcia
RHP – Ethan Martin
RHP – Michael Stutes
RHP – B.J. Rosenberg
LHP – Joe Savery Continue reading Minor Leaguers in Spring Training →

Often when the discussion about major league roster construction comes up, it affects how a prospect will fit into an individual organization.  However, the overall construction of major league rosters dramatically affects how prospects are evaluated.  Before talking about it affects certain types of hitters and pitchers in the system, we need to look at how the current major league roster is assembled and why it is assembled that way. Continue reading Major League Roster Construction and the Minor Leagues: Primer →

After seeing my shadow, I am crawling out from the winter malaise to get back into the baseball mix.  Huge thank you’s to Matt and Brad who have held the site up over the last few months with hard work and well though out commentary. Continue reading Ground Hog Day →

Some news on the minor league side today.

Minor League Coaching Assignments – per Matt Gelb (Mickey Morandini to be a bench coach in AAA)

Phillies extended Major League Spring Training Invites to Jesse Biddle, Maikel Franco, Ken Giles, Mario Hollands, and Sebastian Valle.  All members of the 40 man roster are already invited which includes Kelly Dugan, Tommy Joseph, Ethan Martin, Cameron Rupp, Aaron Altherr, Tyson Gillies, Phillippe Aumont, Cesar Hernandez, and Zach Collier. Continue reading Minor League News and Notes (Coaching Assignments, Spring Training Invites, and more) →

I was going to consolidate all of Eric Longenhagen’s scouting reports that have appeared on Crashburn Alley, but Bill Baer has already done it, so go read them. Now.

Link

As many of you know Shane Watson has been battling shoulder soreness all year.  PhoulBallz Jay Floyd is now reporting that Watson’s latest setback and lack of progress will force him to have shoulder surgery (http://www.phoulballz.com/2013/12/watson-to-undergo-shoulder-surgery.html).  Watson recently had a set back, he had previously pitched in the Fall Instructional Leagues.

The surgery will be performed in January to correct inflammation in an enlarged capsule.  The recovery time expects to be about 3 months.  This means that he will get a late start to spring training, and it should set back his debut, but this should not set his season back too much.  This is not good news, but at very least it is not a torn capsule, a procedure which has a tendency to immediately end careers.

I don’t have time to write up a full mailbag so I thought I would do something in between, opening it up for people to ask questions and get some answers or insight.

Quick Guidelines:

• For each new Question start your own comment tree, do not reply to another question
• Feel free to chip in on other questions, be respectful to the person asking the question
• When replying make sure to reply to that comment and not start a new one
• Keep on topic to question or comment posed

I will be moderating this thread heavily to keep it clean and easy to follow, so anything off topic should go in the General Discussion thread or another appropriate thread.