The Philadelphia Phillies seem to almost unanimously be viewed as a top 10 minor league system around the MLB, which is a far cry from where they had been in previous years.
Last week, Sports Illustrated released a countdown that used a formula to combine both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline's top 100 prospects lists to figure out the best farm system in the league. The Phillies came in as the best in the entire league. Then earlier this week, ESPN's Keith Law released his annual ranking of the top farm systems in the league and ranked the Phillies as having the sixth best farm system in the league.
Baseball America followed the lead of those two outlets yesterday, as they named the Phillies the eighth best farm system in the league. As noted in the countdown, the Phillies had been ranked as the 22nd best system entering both 2014 and 2015, so this is a pretty large jump in one year.
The Phillies' trades of both Cole Hamels and Ken Giles, among others, certainly have had a gigantic impact on infusing the team's minor league system with talent. Also, after a long run of either not having first-round picks or not making impactful selections, the Phillies seem to have hit on three straight first-round picks, with J.P. Crawford in 2013, Aaron Nola in 2014 (already at the big-league level) and Cornelius Randolph in 2015.
The exciting thing about the Phillies' future is that the recent run of countdowns praising their minor league system doesn't even factor in some of the young talent they already have at the major league level. The previously mentioned Nola, Maikel Franco, Vincent Velasquez, Odubel Herrera and Jerad Eickhoff are among the young players who have already shown signs of being long-term cogs at the major league level. If the Phillies are able to continue to produce major league talent from within, while having both money to work with and more high draft-picks on the horizon, they may be set up for a long-term return to contention beginning near the end of this decade.
Tim Kelly (@TimKellySports) is the Managing Editor of Philliedelphia.com, focusing on news and features.
