More on the team here. (thanks to “Rickey Branch” for the link)
Phillies trade Fabio Castro for Matt Stairs
per Ken Rosenthal. Should be a marginal prospect. Stairs has been on the decline after a hot start, and he’s like 50 years old, but he’s better than Taguchi, the guy he should be replacing. We’ll see. More info in this space when its available.
Update: Its the model dictator
Iron Pigs Report
Just a horrible week for the ‘Pigs as they went 1-7, and now stand at 54-86, in last place of the Northern Division of the International League, 33 games behind division leading Scranton. Look for an in depth review of the Lehigh Valley season, including a look at the performance of each player, including my opinion of where they go from here, during each of the next several editions of the Lehigh Valley report. Continue reading Iron Pigs Report
Reading Phillies Weekly Report (8/20 – 8/26)
Even though the Phils stretched their losing streak to 9 games this week, they also managed to win 3 of 7, making this week much better than last week. The season is winding down, which is a good thing for the ’08 Reading Phillies. They are still playing rather poorly, and they just lost another excellent performer in Carpenter to the big league team. For Reading, the season cannot end soon enough.
Lets start off with some good news. Antonio Bastardo continued his impressive comeback this week by pitching very well in 2 starts. His first start against Bowie lasted 4.2 innings, and he gave up just 2 hits, 2 walks, and 1 earned while striking out 2. While this start was excellent, his following start was even better. Bastardo lasted 4.1 innings, giving up 2 earned on 4 hits and 3 walks, but Bastardo struck out a very impressive 8 batters. Good stuff. Bastardo is in line for one more appearance on the season.
Continue reading Reading Phillies Weekly Report (8/20 – 8/26)
Andrew Carpenter called up
First baseman Andy Tracy’s stay with the Phillies was short-lived.
The Phillies designated him for assignment today and purchased the contract of pitcher Andrew Carpenter from Double A Reading.
Carpenter is being called up largely because the length of last night’s game leaves the bullpen thin. It seems unlikely that Clay Condrey would be available and the Phillies used everyone else. Tonight’s starter, Kyle Kendrick, ended up warming up in the 13th inning and threw about 40 pitches in the bullpen.
Carpenter is 6-8, with a 5.67 ERA in 16 games for Reading.
Prospect Matrix
As the season is coming to a close, I thought it would be entertaining to take a look back at predictions heading into the 2008 season. I compiled my Top 30, the consensus Top 30 done by you guys, the Top 30 from Baseball America, and Kevin Goldstein’s Top 11 plus honorable mentions (in yellow) to see who looks smart and who doesn’t look so smart. Or who got lucky. Note, I instructed everyone to ignore Mathieson and Zagurski in their rankings, I think maybe because of the amount of MLB time they had and that I didn’t consider them pure prospects or whatever. Well, that was probably dumb, but it looks like both guys have dropped off the radar, for similar/different reasons. Anyway, here is the chart.
If that image doesn’t properly fit your screen, click here.
Talk amongst yourselves. I gave you a topic.
Phillies sending 8 players to the AFL
Arizona Fall League. The Phillies will send eight players to the Arizona Fall League to play for the Mesa Solar Sox: righthanders Joe Bisenius, Andrew Carpenter and Pat Overholt; lefthander Sergio Escalona; catcher Lou Marson; infielder Jason Donald; and outfielders Quintin Berry and Jeremy Slayden.
No real surprises, with the possible exception of sending Berry instead of Taylor as the one below AA representative. This also tells me Slayden and Overholt will be protected on the 40 man roster, as you wouldn’t really want these guys in the limelight if you didn’t plan on protecting them.
Callups, option years, service time, etc
As we get close to September 1st, the issue of callups becomes a popular topic, as seen in the Lou Marson article. The rules governing the management of the 25 and 40 man rosters are somewhat confusing. I plan on putting something like this on the wiki site for future reference, but I haven’t had a whole lot of time to devote to that project of late, so I figured I’d just do a writeup here, try and cover all the bases, and I’ll add it over there at a later date. If there is anything related to roster management I don’t cover, post in the comments and I’ll try and add it, and if there are any errors in my post, let me know. I feel like I have a good handle on this, but shocking as it may seem, I’m wrong from time to time.
VSL Season Wrapup – Top Prospects
The VSL season ended up a couple of weeks ago. This post will summarize the season and provide a very speculative list of the top prospects. The 2008 VSL Phillies finished the season 32-33, in 4th place 12.5 games behind the Pirates. The Phillies took a small step back in Venezuela compared to the past couple of years as they did not add any high profile signings and did not feature a large number of younger players. The situation is a little better in the Dominican as the team’s two highest profile signings as well as several additional young players all made their debuts there.
Williamsport and GCL Weekly Report (8/18-8/24)
Williamsport
The Crosscutters finished the week 2-2 after having the first three days off for the All-Star Break. They remain one game over .500 at 31-30, which leaves them in a tie for third place in the NYP Pinckney division, 7.5 GB of Batavia.
Continue reading Williamsport and GCL Weekly Report (8/18-8/24)
