John Sickels Top 20 Phillies prospects

by Governator on Jan 15, 2010 10:55 PM EST

I don't recall this getting any juice on here when Sickels originally posted it, so I thought I'd throw it up now. Dom Brown is the choice at number 1 followed by Trevor May and Phillippe Aumont. Sickels ranks J.C. Ramirez fourth in the system and Tyson Gillies eighth. More after the jump.

This is his summary. It's pretty unsurprising (emphasis mine).

The Phillies are interesting to write about but hard to make a list for. They love collecting raw tools players and have a great football team at the lower levels of the farm system, but most of these guys have very limited baseball skills right now. Gose, Santana, Castro, and Singleton look the most polished, but that's only in comparison to Collier, Hewitt, Altherr, and Hudson, who don't have a clue what they are doing yet. The Phillies are betting that they can get these guys to develop along Domonic Brown lines, but the thing is that what Brown did over the last two years is special; most super raw tools guys don't develop that well. My intuition is telling me that Jiwan James could develop like Brown, but I have nothing objective to back that up.

On the pitching side, they have a more balanced mixture of upside (May, Cosart, Aumont, Ramirez and others) with polish (Carpenter and the batch of potential relievers). If May can refine his command he could be a legitimate B+/A- guy next year, but that's a big if. Mathieson is a special case; under the right circumstances he could pull an Andrew Bailey in 2010; but he could also languish in Triple-A and/or get hurt again.

The Halladay/Lee trade is a strong blow; losing Drabek, Taylor, and D'Arnaud rips the guts out of the system. Getting Aumont, Gillies, and Ramirez in return helps some but none of them are as good as the three they lost.

Overall, this system is in flux due to recent trades but still has a lot of very interesting, if difficult to predict, talent.

Phuture Phillies favorite Jiwan James gets a mention and also slots in 16th, while surprise SONAR score favorite Leandro Castro is 13th. All of the other recognizable names are about where you'd expect them.

Freddy Galvis, Anthony Hewitt, Jon Pettibone, Joe Savery and Colby Shreve are probably the most noteworthy guys on Sickels' OTHERS list.

[Minorleagueball.com for more on prospects in general, and the full post]

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Comments

Some had a fanpost for it (Friar, maybe).

That said, I just saw the Baseball Prospectus Top 20 for the Toronto Blue Jays. They should send us a thank you card for their top 3 prospects.

by Cormican on Jan 16, 2010 12:18 AM EST reply actions

But it’s not like the Phillies got Roy Halladay in return or anything.

http://www.thegoodphight.com

by WholeCamels on Jan 16, 2010 8:19 AM EST up reply actions

Roy who?

by yosoysean on Jan 16, 2010 9:30 AM EST up reply actions

Yeah, I know, and I'm a big fan of the trade

I was just mentioning it, perhaps my tone came off a bit different than I meant it to.

by Cormican on Jan 17, 2010 12:46 PM EST up reply actions

Of the prospect evaluators, Sickels is the one I feel has the least grasp of our system at least. Check out his 2009 list, for example, then compare it to how, say, Kevin Goldstein evaluated our prospects last winter, or BA (which had Dom Brown at #1, where he remains).

To be fair, the trick is predicting who’s going to emerge and who’s going to fall flat. Nobody saw Trevor May coming last year (other than PhuturePhillies himself) and few thought Gose would be the breakout guy of the toolsy OF draftees; everybody overrated Julian Sampson (including the aforementioned PP), and most did Zach Collier as well.

Bottom line, I still feel quite good about our farm system. My only regret is that Taylor, Drabek and Marson all could be missed as soon as this year. But them’s the breaks.

by dajafi on Jan 16, 2010 1:51 PM EST reply actions