Rise and Phight: 2/8/2022

Keith Law put out his rankings for baseball’s top minor league systems ($). The Phillies came in 28th, ahead of the Athletics and White Sox, writing this:

The Phillies did not earn having a farm system this bad. You get here because you won a bunch of games and made the playoffs a few times and maybe got to a World Series, great. You earned it. The Phillies didn’t do that. Their 82-win season in 2021 was their first winning season of any sort since 2011, their last playoff appearance. Their 2018 draft class is still in the net negative. All of their drafts since 2014, the Aaron Nola/Rhys Hoskins year, have produced 4.5 WAR in total. It’s a combination of bad picks and failed development, including players changed for the worse after getting into the system. They spent their last two first-round picks on high school pitchers, both of whom offer high upsides, but as I’ve written many times, it’s the highest-risk category without the reward to justify it over the long haul.

Not sure how I feel about this, but without having the in-depth knowledge of all of the other teams in the league, it’s hard to determine if this is too low or if it’s too low.

On to the links.

Phillies news:

• Kris Bryant is an option for the team once the lockout is over, but his price tag might be a little too high ($).
• Here is a fantasy baseball look at the 2022 Phillies as they currently stand.

MLB news:

• The U.S. Labor secretary has started to sniff around the lockout, something that could be avoided with, ya know, an offer on the table.
• With the lockout happening, there are a lot of long term problems baseball needs to solve now.
• Andrew Miller, one of the player reps in the negotiation room, has an inside look on how things have been going.
• Teams aren’t testing for steroids anymore...but that’s probably because there isn’t a CBA right now.