ESPN's Keith Law ranks Adam Morgan over Jesse Biddle as top Phillies prospect
ESPN baseball analyst Keith Law released his annual Top 100 prospects ranking today, and while the complete list is only available to subscribers of Insider, I can tell you that Law ranks lefty Adam Morgan as the Phillies' top prospect. While you can argue that ranking Morgan ahead of lefty Jesse Biddle -- who most other publications have at the top of their lists -- is a bit contrarian, it is a lot closer to reality than MLB.com's decision to include righty Ethan Martin in its Top 100 picks.
ESPN's Keith Law ranks Adam Morgan over Jesse Biddle as top Phillies prospect
David Murphy
ESPN baseball analyst Keith Law released his annual Top 100 prospects ranking today, and while the complete list is only available to subscribers of Insider, I can tell you that Law ranks lefty Adam Morgan as the Phillies' top prospect. While you can argue that ranking Morgan ahead of lefty Jesse Biddle -- who most other publications have at the top of their lists -- is a bit contrarian, it is a lot closer to reality than MLB.com's decision to include righty Ethan Martin in its Top 100 picks.
Law has Morgan at No. 92 and Biddle at No. 95.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that a lot of these annual prospect rankings can be heavily influenced by people who have reputations at stake. For instance, MLB.com's decision to include Martin in its Top 100 could be evidence that the Phillies front office had some impactful input into the list, since Martin was acquired for Shane Victorino and it obviously makes the Phillies look good if they can say they acquired a Top 100 prospect in exchange for two months of a free-agent-to-be.
Anyway, everything I have heard from people outside of the Phillies organization is that Morgan is well ahead of Martin in terms of readiness for the big leagues, and a couple of scouts have said that they like Morgan as much as any pitcher in the organization. I personally would not rank him ahead of Biddle at this point, but I'm not going to criticize Law for doing so.
None of this is to say that Martin is not a prospect. He just has a lot of questions to answer, a lot more than Morgan.
By the way, to put all of these lists into perspective, Law yesterday ranked the Phillies farm system 27th in terms of overall talent in the majors.
All I know is in the last starts for both of them in the 2012 season which took place in the Eastern League playoffs in back to back games in Trenton against the Thunder, Martin pitched 7.1 innings with 11 strike outs and no walks giving up one earned run. The next day Morgan pitched 6 innings with 3 strike outs giving up one walk and earned five runs including two home runs. Both will start in the major leagues some day but at least going into the 2013 season you gotta say Martin is a little bit ahead of Morgan.— Dull- Law did also say the bottom-tier prospects , if they produce this year, ie as Asche did in 2012, then the Phillies will jump up from 27th. Those prospects being the likes of Larry Greene, Roman Quinn, Kenny Giles, Andrew Pullin, Carlos Tocci, Joes Pujols, Shane Watson and Mitch Guellar. — Romus
- At least I can agree with Murph when he said teams have a lot of inputs in the rankings. Most of these talent evaluators go by what they hear from teams. Most of the time they hype their prospects (see Dom Brown). Rarely Law and his colleagues see the players in person, unless is a can't miss prospect like a Bryce Harper. 70% of Baseball America's top prospects are busts.— EL Zorro
- Whatever happened to Trevor May, the Phillies top Minor League Pitcher of the year in 2011? I didn't buy then.— EL Zorro
- @Dull -- Have you ever heard of a small sample size?
While you sometimes add good commentary, specifically related to the Phillies minor league system, your comment here has no merit if you're basing your opinion on one start for each pitcher.— ITM - Funny to me that Darin Ruf has not been on the list when he tore up AAA last year. It would be interesting to see what percentage of Top 100 prosepct become legit MLBers--and what percentage of legit MLBers were Top 100 prospects. It's like having a Top 100 Gold Digest golf course--it feels good but, the course didn't change the day it made the list.— Barneyboy
- Maybe because Ruf did play in the majors, they don't list him as a prospect anymore? I still think he has to prove himself in the Bigs, and I am hoping he does so this season.— Paul SoTX
- Sickels has Ruf at #7. Biddle is his #1, Morgan #2. Martin is below Ruf on his list at #8. But, to El Zorro's point he had May #1 last year and Schwimer all the way up at #9. Didn't quite go that way.
— s - I put about as much credence in what Keith Law has to say as I do in what Sean Hannity has to say.— oakmontleo
- Interesting find. Some guy did a thesis where he correlated rankings to MLB performance. What he found is there is a correlation to where a guy is ranked and how well he produces, with differences across ranking sources. Baseball America was the best predictor in his study:
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1449&context=cmc_theses— s - It's like handicapping horses before they head into the starting gate. There are so many disclaimers and considerations that factor in. Doubt it -- check out the rankings of last year's Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey. Nobody's crystal ball was clear enough to see that one coming.— Claudio Vernight
- none of these are particularly highly rated ... ESPNhas Phils ranked 27 out of 30...
bottom line: 2 good starting pitchers, 2 acceptable starting players (shortstop, catcher) and everything else about the Phils sucks -- hundreds of millions of dollars and over a dozen prospects squandered away on one of the worst 40-man rosters in baseball by the biggest imbecile employed as a g.m.— warbiscuit - ESPN has Phils ranked 27 out of 30 farm systems ...pathetic how Clueless Rube has dismantled the farm system for a lot of short-term rentals and trash (Oswalt, Pence, Revere, etc) instead of any intelligent signings or trades for quality players in their prime ...most incompetent imbecile in charge of a professional franchise competing for triple crown of terrible baseball management : 1. squandering the most money, 2. destroying the farm system, 3. having a mediocre major league roster for all the trouble— warbiscuit
- Any qualitative list gets absurd after 3 (or 1 for that matter).— bobcitydoc
- Huh? Keith Law? Adam Morgan? Is this an upstart country-western act? All I care about are Cole Hamels, Roy Hallday, Cliff Lee, KK and that new Lannan guy. Please.— eman
- Seabiscuit, you can put ESPN in the same league as Keith Law.— oakmontleo
Gotta give credit where credit is due: Murphy here is acknowledging that major league front offices significantly influence the reporting on their teams in order to make the team look better than it actually is. Front offices types push, reporters in the media comply.
3 cheers to all the posters that have been saying this for the last year. You have won a major battle.
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- CoettaGarner25, yes, I'm aware May was traded to the Twins. My point was, he was the #1 Phillies prospect before last season and I believe was ranked as one of the best 100 prospects in the game by many experts. He's not this year. BTW, The Twins have 7 players in Law's 100 list.— EL Zorro
- You can call them prospects or not, but Ruf, Galvis, Brown, Aumont and most like a couple of other pitchers, are going to get a shot at some point this season to contribute. Inciarte, Asche, and Joseph or Valle could play their way onto the roster in the Spring. Guys like Worley and Happ took advantage of their opportunities even though they were never rated highly on any of these lists. It is, and will always remain, a crapshoot. If you also include Revere, who is still very young, they have a lot of young talent. I look forward to the season. I predict Divisional title number 6 in the last 7 years.— Paul SoTX
- If you've ever read the scouting reports on Darin Ruf you'd understand why most people don't consider him a prospect.— Jeff Dowder
So let me get this straight ... ML teams influence the rankings. So the Phillies front office "influenced" Keith Law into ranking their farm system 27th out of 30 teams?
Got it. Thanks.— zubzub- Murph: "Impactful input"? C'mon, man. That's brutal writing. You're better than that.— andrewfrombrooklyn
