In the off-season, the Phillies couldn’t engage in talks for big name pitchers like Dan Haren or Johan Santana or even medium name pitchers like Joe Blanton or Jon Garland because of their lack of elite minor league talent.

Going into the season, they had only 2 top-100 prospects in RHP Carlos Carrasco and LHP Joe Savery. However, a quarter of the way through the season, the Phillies’ minor league system has seen several new names and some old names either emerge or step up their game and show that our farm system might be better off than we thought.

So that there is some baseline to the numbers you are about to see, here are the same numbers for some recent Phillies top prospects in the minors for their last year in the minors.

New Guys

Drew Naylor, RHP, 6′4” 210, Lakewood (A), Age: 21

The best indicator of future success for a minor league pitcher is their strikeout rate. If you can’t make minor leaguers miss, you certainly won’t make major leaguers miss. Naylor is one of three Phillies minor leaguers in the top-5 in strikeouts across the entire MiLB. In fact, Naylor is currently #1 after striking out 12 in his last outing. He has 13 more K’s than anyone in his league and is 6th in ERA and 3rd in WHIP. His fastball isn’t dominating, but he has good control and above average breaking pitches (curve and change-up). He will likely be promoted to A-Adv. soon, it will be interesting to see if he can keep his strikeout lead up there.

Antonio Bastardo, LHP, 5′11” 160, Reading (AA), Age: 22

Get the jokes about his name out of the way, this kid can pitch. He’s already been promoted once this season and his K/9 rate is the best our organization has seen from a starter since Cole Hamels. Like Naylor, he is also in the top-5 in K’s in the MiLB. Bastardo is not as good as Hamels, but he has made dramatic improvements this season. He is paper-thin and like Hamels, he strikes out most people on his change-up. He was a little old to be starting the year in A-Adv, but can make up for it with a strong rest of the season in Reading.

Edgar Garcia, RHP, 6′2” 190, Clearwater (A-Adv), Age: 20

Garcia actually has the better stuff than Naylor or Bastardo but is still raw and there are some questions about his work ethic. Baseball America says that he has a low-90s fastball with a lot of life and has the make-up of a middle of the rotation starter. He gives up too many hits, but he is still very young and has plenty of time to improve his control.

Old Guys

Fabio Castro, LHP, 5′8” 157, Reading (AA), Age: 23

Castro has been both a starter and and reliever for Reading this year. The Phillies probably aren’t sure whether to peg him as a starter or a reliever because of his size and potential durability issues. He has already showed his potential on the Major League level with a 3.30 ERA in 43.2 IP. When he started for the Phillies, it was clear that he had good stuff, but needed to work on his location. He has more strikeouts than IP and a decent H/9 rate, but he still needs to work on his control. If he gets that together, he could be a decent starter.

J.A. Happ, LHP, 6′5” 205, Lehigh Valley (AAA), Age: 25

Happ made 1 start for the Phillies last year, and I would be shocked if he isn’t in the rotation in the next couple months. Happ was injured for much of last year, but has had a huge bounce back year. He is kind of similar to Randy Wolf in that he has a low-90s fastball that hitters have trouble picking up because of his deceptive motion. Unlike Wolf, his best breaking pitch is a change-up. His K/9 rate has always been around 9, but this year, he striking people out at the best rate of his minor league career. He should be up soon, the question is whether he will be replacing Adam Eaton, Kyle Kendrick or someone else in the rotation.

Hyped Guys

Josh Outman, LHP, 6′1” 180, Reading (AA), Age: 23

One of the strangest moves of the year had the Phillies moving Outman to the bullpen. Outman has been considered one of our better starter prospects for the last couple years. The Phillies have been looking for the LH reliever all year, and my guess is that they are going let Outman get his feet wet in that role this season, and then put him back to starting next year. Like Happ, Outman uses deception to his advantage and has a very impressive K/9 rate. Unlike Happ, he gives up a lot of hits and clearly needs to work on his control with that 1.58 WHIP.

Joe Savery, LHP, 6′3” 215, Clearwater (A-Adv), Age: 22

One of the Phillies 2 top prospects, the Phillies first round pick last year has had a decent first year in the minors. Savery has a solid fastball and an above average change-up and curve ball. He is currently letting up too many hits and has a high WHIP, but he is still in the transition phase from college to pro. To go along with his solid pitches, Savery has a great work ethic and won’t fall short of the majors due to lack of trying. He has the 2nd highest potential of any Phillies pitcher and will be watched very closely by the organization throughout the year.

Carlos Carrasco, RHP, 6′3” 178, Reading (AA), Age: 21

Despite being only 21, Carrasco has been the Phillies top prospect for the past couple years. He has 2 of the best pitches in the system; his 92-94 MPH fastball with great late movement and his plus change-up. He has been up and down so far this season, either dominating the compitition or giving up a bunch of hits. He is 2nd in the Eastern League in K’s, but, like many of these other pitchers, he needs to improve his control. Carrasco has the highest ceiling of any the Phillies pitchers, but the Phillies will not rush him to majors.

What this means

None of these guys have the “can’t miss” stuff that Hamels or say, a Tim Lincecum has, but these are 8 guys that have a decent chance to be contributors in our rotation (or atleast trade chips, without killing our system) in the future. All 8 won’t develop into ML Starters, but chances are a couple will within the next couple of years. There numbers look similar or better to all the previous top prospects (Myers, Wolf, etc.)with the exception of Hamels and many of the strike-out rates are very impressive. With the price of pitching as ridiculous as it is these days (see Eaton, Adam) the best way to build your team is through young pitching in your system. For the first time in awhile, the Phillies are looking like the might have more than couple guys who can fit that bill.

Haven’t posted in a few days, been busy working on some other online stuff, but I have read a bunch of 76ers-related articles lately that I thought I’d share to stir up some good Sixers talk.

Let’s kick this off with our friend over at Sixers 4 Guidos (love the new banner by the way, Ricky!). Ricky is doing a […]

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About 20 games into the season, it looked as though the Sixers were headed for a high lottery pick and the only thing to look forward to was the off-season. It was at this point that I wrote an analysis of the team and how they could build towards being a championship contender. Here is an excerpt so you know how I did my analysis.

Everyone in the NBA is good, that’s why they are in the NBA, and there are 40-50 players not in the NBA that could thrive if put in the right situation. As a result, it’s hard to evaluate non-superstar players on an individual basis. The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to see if you could picture them being a productive member of a championship caliber team – in this year’s case, the San Antonio Spurs. Let’s look at where the current Sixers players would fit on a team like this…

Even though it might make more sense to use the Hornets, Lakers or Celtics as an example here, I’m going to stick with the Spurs, as they have still won 3 championships in 5 years, while those teams have combined for 0 in that span.

Starters
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Two league insiders prophesy a move to land Bulls restricted free agent Ben Gordon, an undersized shooting guard who could share the backcourt with big point guard Andre Miller. - SI.com

Hmm. […]

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The Sixers’ playoff run is over which means no more basketball in Philadelphia for a while. It’s a sad, sad time for hoops fans in the city.

I find it safe to say the 2007-2008 campaign was an unexpectedly positive one for our 76ers. That is the main reason for the first time in a while that Sixers fans are both optimistic and still 76ered-UP going into the offseason. Now it is time to start focusing on what’s next for this team. There are a host of topics and issues to talk about from the draft, free agency and possible trades. But in my opinion you can’t do any of that without first evaluating what we already have.

In the next couple of weeks I will go through the entire ‘07-’08 Philadelphia 76ers roster and give a snapshot evaluation of each player. I will strive to keep it standard across all players and at the very least cover a few main things: […]

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The two biggest questions or concerns are resigning restricted free agents Andre Iguodala and Louis Williams. Well those questions have been answered - early. In a conversation with Phil Jasner of the Philadelphia Daily News Ed Stefanski said about his two biggest free agents:

“I would say, ‘Thank God they’re restricted,’ because we have no intention of not matching any offer from another team,” Stefanski said. - Philly.com

But what does that mean? […]

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Wow, that was easily the worst game I have ever been to in every aspect. To be at a playoff game and only have 14,130 in attendance was disappointing but something I expected. I knew once they lost on Tuesday the fans would officially give up on the team and not come out and support Thursday night. And with […]

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I hope so because RSS feeds are the simplest and fastest way to keep up with your favorite websites and blogs. May 1^st has been marked by the blogosphere as RSS Awareness Day. Here is my contribution to the cause.

RSS: The short definition

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it. - http://www.whatisrss.com/

For an entertaining plain English video explanation of RSS head over to: http://rssday.org/

The Benefits […]

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I figured I just do a Brotherly Link Love post today since it has been pretty depressing reading the Philly boards and comments coming off the whoopin’ Detroit laid on the Sixers last night. And I really don’t want to waste my time typing up game 6 adjustments since it’s pretty clear Mo Cheeks doesn’t make any. So here is a blend of 76ers and other posts of interest for you to check out.

• The Mavs fired coach Avery Johnson today. This was a no-brainer for me. I have never thought of him as an elite coach, yet he was in charge of a high payroll team with championship potential. When it comes down to it, 0-9 in playoff road games since their 2-0 lead in the finals against Miami. That is enough to get the axe in my book.

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Not much to say after getting manhandled like that. This was the first game in the series the 76ers looked like they were completely out of their league and had no shot of winning.

Quick thoughts on the game:

Samuel Dalembert’s Tribal Warrior hair cut, as Pete called it, was good enough for 4 points and 6 rebounds in 30 minutes. […]

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