Prospect list coming in Sunday Inquirer
News blogs, sports blogs, entertainment blogs, and more from Philly.com, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.
Prospect list coming in Sunday Inquirer
Bob Brookover, Inquirer Baseball Columnist
The Inquirer, with input from Phillies beat writer Matt Gelb, super sub Marc Narducci and myself, recently put together a list of the Phillies’ top 25 prospects heading into the 2013 season. The top 10 will be revealed in the Sunday Inquirer with the following 15 coming in the Monday newspaper.
Look for a bonus list Monday of some of the prospects who did not make our list, but were in the conversation.
The best part about our top 25 list is that Phillies director of player development Joe Jordan agreed to comment on each of the players on our list.
Jordan briefly discussed the Phillies’ catching situation, which is intriguing at all levels, but it did not fit into what we were doing with our list.
Carlos Ruiz, of course, is serving a 25-game suspension to start the season because of a failed drug test last year. Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. has indicated that the team will go with veterans Erik Kratz and possibly Humberto Quintero to start the season. He has not ruled out adding another veteran catcher.
Catching became a position of depth for the organization when the Phillies acquired Tommy Joseph from San Francisco in the Hunter Pence trade. Joseph and Sebastian Valle are the two most advanced catchers in the farm system and both appear ready for triple-A Lehigh Valley. Valle, in fact, finished last season with the Iron Pigs after Joseph joined the organization and became the top catcher at double-A Reading.
Cameron Rupp, a third-round pick in 2010, increased his value with a strong season at single-A Clearwater and it’s possible the Phillies will want him to remain the guy behind the plate at Reading for prospects such as Jesse Biddle, Adam Morgan and Austin Wright.
Jordan was asked if it was possible that Joseph and Valle could share the catching duties at Lehigh Valley.
“I don’t think that would be ideal,” he said. “We have some challenges ahead getting everybody in the right spot. Exactly where that is going to be has been heavily discussed, but yet to be determined.”
Shortstop Roman Quinn, the team’s second-round pick in 2011, also has Jordan excited because of his “top-of-the-scale speed.”
“We have to take our time, but he has a chance to impact a game in a lot of ways,” Jordan said. “He has to stay hungry. He was very hungry last year and he can’t lose that.”
Quinn, 19, will open this season at single-A Lakewood.
Read all about the top 25 prospects in the Sunday and Monday Inquirer and let us know what your list would look like.
1 year of Pence --cost: Singleton, Cosart, Santana, Zeid
2011 post-season: 4 for 19, .211
traded for Schierholz (no longer on team),Joseph (middling prospect --nt top 100 per Baseball America) and another low-level non-prospect, so in retrospect (since Oswalt and Pence are long-gone, as is Scheirholz), Rube gave up Villar, Gose, Happ, Singleton, Cosart, Santana, and Zeid (7 prospects, 6 highly rated) for non-prospects Joseph and Rosin and 1 win from Oswalt in 2010 post-season— warbiscuit- and if Clueless rube didn't give away Lee before 2010 for peanuts (or acquired or retained anothter starter like Myers --who was much better than Oswalt first half of 2010) then Rube wouldn;t have had to make panic move for 2 good months from overrated washed-up Oswalt
and if Rube replaced Werth with one of many outfielders availible after 2010 then he wouldn;t have had to make awful panic deal for overrated PEnce..
bottom line deals for Oswalt and Pence were both unnecessary if Rube did his job in off-season, they were 2 of worst trades of decade and depleted Phils orgnaization, the effects of which will comtinue ot be felt for years— warbiscuit - No it won't. Phillies have 2012 draft, 2013 draft, 2014 draft and so on. — mwcnabb
- Saw Cody Ashe several times last year at Reading. He has an excellent swing and could become a 15- 20 HR guy with experience. He certainly will be a .300 hitter. In my mind, he is their top position prospect.— McGooter
- @McGooter. Congratulations. You are the only commenter to actually stay on point.
Asche, Joseph, Galvis and Ruf are definitely part of the future. I'd say Ruf is the top prospect. Hoping he gets a real chance to play this year.— zubzub - Franco may end up being a better third baseman than Asche. He's not far behind. No way would I pencil in Asche as a .300 hitter yet. Career, he's under .300 in the minors. He also doesn't get top prospect type marks for his defense. But I think he may end up being pretty good. John Mayo's recent rankings (MLB) don't even have Asche in the top 10 of 3B prospects (one guy, I know). Interestingly enough he has Ruf at #5 ... but for 1B. He has Singleton as #1 at 1B. Sound familiar? Singleton was looking good as a first baseman when we had him then they tried moving him around since Howard was (is) blocking 1B. After Singleton was traded to Houston he went back to 1B and started excelling again. Ruf is in a similar boat moving from 1B to LF.
— s - Let's not forget Gillick's decisions to trade two A pitching prospects (Gavin Floyd, Gio Gonzalez) for Freddy Garcia.— comin4ya23
- let's not forget that Gillick won the World Series after his various bad moves --and is in the HoF for winning 3 Championships and building 4 franchises into elite team- all Rube has done is take an eilte organization and turn it into an aging expensive meciocre one with no present or future— warbiscuit
- Phillies should have won the World Series in 2007 if Gillick hadn't attempted to make Rod Barajas the starting catcher and Wes Helms/Abraham Nunez his starting 3B. I guess Amaro had his hands all over that one too - right???!!— michael2_19030
- Don't be silly, the 2009 WS is the biggest disaster in recent Phillies history.
And that one was on Chollie who is clearly the worst situational manager in the NL East, and is in the lower 1/3 of baseball.
He costs the Phillies 5-7 games a season. He is not a net plus.— fmMD - The nice thing about trading away these supposedly top-flight prospects is that we can sign them as free agents in 6 years and not deal with learning the strike zone, sophomore slumps...let them toil with 100-loss teams like Astros and Mets.— mwcnabb
- Ruben could have a team of Pujols, Mike Trout, David Wright, Miggy Cabrera, Justin Verlander, Matt Holliday, Felix Hernandez, Matt Cain, Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Asdrubal Cabrera, Mike Stanton, a stocked farm system, etc., and someone would still complain.— carlosbeltran
- That's nothing, the Phillies had bad year last year, with a worse one coming up, and people are saying silly things like they're "excited" about the Phillies.
When I hear that, I assume they must be Mets fans.— fmMD - What a bunch of crybaby trolls and comments on here. Gillick didn't win the Series. Amaro didn't lose the Series. The PLAYERS lost the Series and their injuries and ineffectivenss have caused the downward spiral, not Amaro. (and for the record you all know I don't even like Smuggles). It's the players, they have to do it and they haven't. How do you think the owner of the Rangers feel, being there twice, once within 1 strike of a championship and lose? How does the owner of the Angels feel after giving Pujols a quarter of a BILLION dollars and seeing him not perform and the team not win the WS? As always how do you think the Yankee owners feel, spending all they do and not winning it EVERY year? C'mon trolls, knock off the stupidity and c'mon decent people ignore the trolls. They'll crawl back under their bridges and back into their meanigless existences, eventually.— Mark1npt
- And, oh yeah...how about the owners of the stacked Tigers team last year? Or the ultra spending ultra stacked Dodgers of this coming season? What's going to happen when they DON'T win it this year either? I guess you idiots can blame all their futility on Amaro too and the 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon effect that all his trades had on unsettling all the crucial balances in the rest of the baseball universe for all the other teams, too? Right? Thought so. Please, if you can't say something even remotely CONSTRUCTIVE just shut up and leave. You don't bring anything of any value to the table.— Mark1npt
