Phillies prospects are making some national top 100 lists

Well, it’s national prospect season again. It’s always fun to talk about the future, especially when it comes to the promise of underpaid minor leaguers. It helps shape how the team proceeds in building future rosters, both from internal promotions and from trading to acquire better players. To this end, national prospect lists are being put out and the Phillies are beginning to see just what the prospecting industry thinks of what they have on the farm.

So far, we’ve heard from Baseball Prospectus and what their prospect writers think of the Phillies farm system. Then, Fangraphs put out their list of top Phillies prospects and how they rated. If you’ve been following MLB Pipeline, you’ll no doubt notice they are bringing in top 10 prospects at each position, with Alec Bohm landing on the list at third base and Sixto Sanchez among right handed pitchers. Now, we have the cream of the crop - top 100/101 lists of the best prospects in the game. We’ve got some Phillies youngins’ landing on the top 100/101.

From Baseball America:

• Sanchez (#13 overall)
• Bohm (#65)
• Luis Garcia (#88)

From Baseball Prospectus:

• Sanchez (#23)
• Adonis Medina (#57)

There are a few things of note here. First, the omission of Alec Bohm from the BP list is rather strange. Internally at The Good Phight, we’ve noted how they have been the low group on Bohm, mostly due to the concern they mentioned about how well he’ll ever hit:

So, the problems: Bohm is a great hitter but often prioritizes contact and shortness to the ball over fully tapping into his 7 raw. He struggled in his first professional summer—with the reports to match—although his time in short-season was marred by minor injuries. The long-term concern is his ultimate defensive home. It’s not a bad body, but it’s a big one, and he isn’t rangy at the hot corner. Bohm has plenty of arm for the left side, although he can struggle with his accuracy at times. This whole profile could go R/R first base at some point, which means that pop will have to become a priority. We’d also like to see him settle in during 2019 and really mash too.

They have always as a group tended toward the athletic up the middle guys and power arms and we see that in abundance with their list. Still, a guy that was drafted third overall in 2018 (and without a predraft concern about signability) that doesn’t land on a top 101 the following year seems rather odd. They’re the experts, not me.

Meandering over to Baseball America and Bohm lands there....but not Medina. This is also a fascinating development because of the regard we hold Medina in. He was reportedly the main piece dangled for Manny Machado at last year’s trade deadline, but himself was not enough to consummate a deal. For some reason, now Medina is not on a list of the top 100 prospects in the game. I’m sure they have their reasons - I just don’t agree with them.

Pretty soon we’ll get the top 100 list from Fangraphs and then we’ll have the big three lists. For now, the safe consensus about the Phillies system is this: they have an impact arm in Sanchez, a very good arm and very good bat prospect in Bohm and Medina, a kid that oozes potential in Garcia, and a lot of other goodies coming up that haven’t made their national mark yet. Hopefully, this season sees some leaps forward by several players and raises the overall profile of the team’s farm system.