Basic Info
Age: 22
Height/Weight: 6’5”, 205 lbs
Hometown: Zephyrhills, FL
How Acquired: 20th round of 2006 draft
Stats
Brown has shown significant improvement every year in the minors. In 2008, he refined his eye and did a very good job of drawing walks and getting on base. In 2009, he began to realize his power potential, improving his slugging from .417 to .504 despite jumping up several levels. While his stats aren’t spectacular in any area (see Tyson Gillies .341 BA or Ryan Howard’s 46 HR in 2004) he is solid across the board. He hits for average, takes walks, is starting to hit for power and can steal a base or two, and he has the potential to improve in each area.
Scouting Report
The name most commonly associated with Brown is Darryl Strawberry. He is super-athletic (as I’ve said here many times, he was recruited by Miami and Florida State to play WR, but the Phillies gave him some nice bonus money to reconsider) and has the potential to be a 5-tool all-star. For those who might not be familiar, the 5 tools are hit for average, hit for power, running speed, arm stregnth and fielding range. Baseball America recently said, despite all the hype about his offense, his arm is his best tool right now.
He’s not a masher, and would probably be in the 20-25 range HR wise, but he’ll likely hit a load of doubles, get on-base, and be an efficient player in the Chase Utley mold (though not quite that good). I see his future stat line as something similar to what we used to see from Bobby Abreu (.280-.300 BA, .370-.390 OBP, .480-.500 SLG, 20 HR, 25 SB, 40 2B), but with better defense and not as good OBP. I predict he will make an all-star game or two. His ceiling is star level, but very few prospects with that ceiling ever reach it, so I’m not about to predict it. And he could always end up being Marlon Byrd as well.
One story about Brown adds to my confidence that he will be a great player for us. For the first 2 1/2 years after he was drafted, the Phillies and everyone else were mispelling his name. It’s DomOnic, not DomInic. Brown never said anything because he was too polite and humble. He just went about his business when many athletes would have corrected the team immediately because their name, and others knowing their name, is as important as succeeding for yourself. I personally think this showed a lot about his character and where his priorities are.
Path to the Majors
Brown will likely spend the entire season in AA, perhaps earning a late call-up to AAA. I expect Jayson Werth will not be playing RF for the Phillies in 2011 so my guess is the Phillies would platoon Brown in RF with either Ben Francisco or a FA signing much like Utley platooned with Polanco when he first came up. In 2012, Ibanez will be gone as well, and Brown will have a full time job and the Phillies will potentially have the best and fastest defensive outfield in baseball with Victorino, Brown and Gillies.
Final Top 20 Prospects Rankings
So now that we are done counting down my Top-20 prospects, here is the final pre-2010 list. I’ve made a couple changes to 11-20 based on some research I’ve done.
- Domonic Brown, OF
- Phillippe Aumont, RHP
- Trevor May, RHP
- Tyson Gillies, OF
- Anthony Gose, OF
- Sebastian Valle, C
- Domingo Santana, OF
- Antonio Bastardo, LHP
- J.C. Ramirez, RHP
- Brody Colvin, RHP
- Jarred Cosart, RHP
- Jon Singleton, 1B
- Scott Mathieson, RHP
- Mike Stutes, RHP
- Freddy Galvis, SS
- Jiwan James, OF
- Drew Carpenter, RHP
- Yohan Flande, LHP
- Jesus Sanchez, RHP
- Austin Hyatt, RHP
For prospects 11-20, and all other Phillies’ prospects posts, visit the Top Prospects page.
So with the outfield of Brown, Gilles, and Victorino, who plays left?? This also leaves a lot on the shoulders of Ryan Howard and Utley to carry the power load if Brown is going through some offensive struggles. Not to mention the reliance on left handed batters, and we all know how Ryan does against lefties. Hopefully Brown can hit lefties in the major, otherwise we might be in for some trouble.
Gillies would play left as Brown has the better arm, I believe.
Brown hit lefties very well last year, better than he hit righties, but it was the first year he did that, so we can’t tell if it was just a fluke or not.
Another thing about that potential 2012 outfield is that would only cost just over $10 million total – so we’d have lots of money to spend in other areas. This year, our outfield costs $23.5 million.
I can’t wait to see that outfield. There are also guys on the cusp of breakout years like Jiwan James, Anthony Gose and Domingo Santana, so who is to say they won’t be in the mix. Any way you slice it it will be cheap. I really wanted to see Michael Taylor, but I’ll take Roy. I actually have a better feeling about Taylor than I do Drabek. I don’t think he is al he is cracked up to be.
If you guys get a chance check out Aumont’s youtube clip for out pitches in the WBC against David Wright, Youkilis, and Granderson. He has straight nasty stuff seriously. I am really anxious to see what happens with him.
This probably wont happen but, I can image Gillies in center and Shane in left. Theres a whole lotta lefties in that future line up but, if i had to choose between a right handed heavy lineup to a left hand, I would choose left.
I know this has been discussed and parsed in many ways…
But now that you have ranked all of the prospects which group is better for this Phillies team moving forward:
Aumont/Gilles/Francisco/JC Ramirez
vs.
Carasco/Knapp/Marson/Donald
… This basically looks at the Lee rental moving forward. Obviously there was great value in having Lee for the W.S. run, but looking forward they may still end up coming out ahead.
Richie -
“I actually have a better feeling about Taylor than I do Drabek. I don’t think he is al he is cracked up to be.”
I agree with this completely. I’ve said many times I think Kyle Drabek will have a similar career to Myers.
Brown reminds me of Matt Kemp. That is a good thing.
That is exactly who I compare him to Pete. That is funny. Taylor I think is going to turn out to be like a Derek Lee hitting wise and an average right or left fielder. I would love for Aumont to have a better career than Drabek that would be great. His breaking ball is knee buckling Aumont’s.
FYI – I just updated the payroll analysis and organizational depth chart (located on the right side bar)
A nice piece on Gillies.
http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2010/02/25/phillies-prospect-gillies-beating-odds/
Here are some 2010 over/under win totals for the fast approaching season. Courteosy bookmaker.com
I’ll submit some guesses for your comic relief.
Arizona- 82 over
Atlanta- 86.5 over
Baltimore- 72.5
Boston- 94
Chicago C- 83 over
Chicago W- 82
Cincinnati- 78
Cleveland- 73
Colorado- 83 over
Detroit- 81
Florida- 81
Houston- 77
Kansas City- 71
LA Angels- 84
LA Dodgers- 84
Milwaukee- 80.5
Minnesota- 82
NY Mets- 81 under
NY Yankees- 94.5
Oakland- 78
Philadelphia- 92 over
Pittsburgh- 71
St. Louis- 88
San Diego- 71
San Francisco- 83 over
Seattle- 83
Tampa Bay- 89.5 under
Texas- 83
Toronto- 71
Washington- 72
@ Ken: I like your guess on the NL East teams. I think that final 3 game series to end the season with Atlanta will decide the champ and NL wild card team. The schedule works out great with division games from September 6th til finish. This should provide excitement! My guess will be Philly @ 95 (92 last year) and Atlanta @ 91 (86 last year). It should be noted that the only division team the Phils had a losing record against last year was Atlanta (8-10).
I saw Brown play in Reading last year and he looked really good. It should be agreed upon though that he will not sniff the majors this year. If that’s the case, he may not be ready to fill in if/when Werth isn’t resigned. We may end up seeing a RF rotation for 2011 with Francisco and a player to be named later being the major players.
1
Below, and I mean below unless the submit post button winds up spacing the table sensibly is a list of the 20 most watched baseball games of the decade at the network level. To the right are the ratings, then the number of millions of viewers.
What seeems to stand out are the lack of games since 2004. This year’s Phils and Yanks rank 18 and 19 for 2 games, and that’s it from the second half of the decade. The 05-08 matchups were hardly nationally compelling (WSox-Hou, Cards-Tigers, Red Sox-Rox, Phils-Tampa), which probably has a lot to do with it), but it does perhaps amplify on how much more magnetic NFL football is to the networks which should effect future rights fees. Maybe it was equally dominant in the previous 2-3 decades, I don’t recall. Only 1 baseball game drew enough viewers that it would have cracked the 20 most watched NFL games of the past decade, and thatc dates back to Game 7 of the 01 Yank-AZ series. When you have MLB representation in cities like Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Cleveland where football is so much more popular, it only headlines the many parts of the country where there is no team, and football is king. Bud Selig can edit stats to talk about how healthy his regime has been, but whoever replaces him has a lot of work to do in battling an ever fragmented entertainment market. The table follows…
Sun., 11/4/01
Yankees/D’Backs G7
FOX
23.5
39,084
2
Wed., 10/20/04
Red Sox/Yankees G7
FOX
19.4
31,460
3
Wed., 10/27/04
Red Sox/Cardinals G4
FOX
18.2
28,844
4
Sun., 10/27/02
Giants/Angels G7
FOX
17.9
30,814
5
Thu., 10/16/03
Red Sox/Yankees G7
FOX
17.1
27,485
6
Wed., 10/15/03
Marlins/Cubs G7
FOX
16.9
26,505
7
Sun., 10/24/04
Red Sox/Cardinals G2
FOX
15.9
25,463
8
Wed., 10/31/01
D’Backs/Yankees G4
FOX
15.8
23,692
9
Tue., 10/26/04
Red Sox/Cardinals G3
FOX
15.7
24,422
10
Tue., 10/19/04
Red Sox/Yankees G6
FOX
15.6
25,088
11
Tue., 10/30/01
D’Backs/Yankees G3
FOX
15.4
23,407
12
Sun., 10/28/01
Yankees/D’Backs G2
FOX
15.0
23,550
13
Thu., 11/1/01
D’Backs/Yankees G5
FOX
14.4
21,323
14
Sat., 10/25/03
Marlins/Yankees G6
FOX
13.9
23,240
15
Sat., 11/3/01
Yankees/D’Backs G6
FOX
13.8
22,672
16
Sat., 10/23/04
Cardinals/Red Sox G1
FOX
13.7
23,168
17
Sat., 10/22/03
Yankees/Marlins G4
FOX
13.6
20,885
18
Sun., 11/1/09
Yankees/Phillies G4
FOX
13.5
22,761
19
Wed., 11/4/09
Phillies/Yankees G6
FOX
13.4
22,339
20
Thu., 10/23/03
Yankees/Marlins G5
FOX
13.2
19,919