Philadelphia Phillies: Top Prospects by Position
After many years of substandard production, the Phillies farm system has served the team very well during the past decade. It provided the core to the 2008 World Series squad and has since been tapped time and time again in trades to improve the big club.
Despite those trades, the system remains in a good position and is by no means barren, as some naysayers have suggested.
Recently, draft guru John Sickels and Baseball America each released their prospect rankings for the Philadelphia minor league system. It is very interesting that after the initial three prospects, they had a very difficult time agreeing on the top ten prospects.
In my opinion, this is very indicative of the current state of the farm. There is a lot of talent, but most of it is in the low minors and needs more time before we can get a clearer picture of what exactly the Phillies have there.
So rather than doing a traditional top ten prospects ranking, I have decided to change things up a bit. Instead, here is a list of the top prospect at each position—plus a few other names to watch.
Players who have spent enough time in the MLB to qualify as a rookie will be excluded from this overview, even if they spent significant time in the minors this season. This means players like Domonic Brown, Michael Stutes, John Mayberry Jr. and Scott Mathieson are not eligible for inclusion here.