Phillies Place 5 in Baseball America Top 100 Prospects
By Matt Veasey
The Philadelphia Phillies have received more respect from yet another major prospect talent evaluation source.
On Friday evening, Baseball America released their 2016 Top 100 Prospects list, and the Phillies were honored to have five players named to those ranks.
For the few uneducated, Baseball America is a decades-old publication in both print and web media well-respected and widely recognized as one of the game’s best authorities and resources on minor league, prospect, and amateur coverage.
If you do the math, there are 30 Major League Baseball organizations. In order to at least be representative on any Top 100 list, a club would need to place at least three and preferably four players on that list.
Placing five names in the Top 100 also helps to highlight the reason that Baseball America has lifted the Phillies to #8 in their organizational rankings. The Phils not only have those five prospects on the way, but have depth down through the system, with a number of others who were certainly under consideration.
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Over the last week here at TBOH we have been presenting our own Phillies Top 10 Prospects ranking. All of the five listed by Baseball America have been mentioned, or will be in the next few days, on our list as well.
Here are the five Phillies who were ranked by BA, along with the skills grades provided by their site:
| 6. J.P. Crawford, ss, Phillies |
| Hit: 60. Power: 50. Speed: 50. Fielding: 60. Arm: 60. ETA: 2016. Age: 21 |
| 27. Nick Williams, of, Phillies |
| Hit: 60. Power: 60. Speed: 50. Fielding: 55. Arm: 50. ETA: 2017. Age: 22 |
| 75. Jake Thompson rhp, Phillies |
| Fastball: 60. Curveball: 45. Slider: 65. Changeup: 50. Control: 55. ETA: 2016. Age: 22 |
| 88. Cornelius Randolph of, Phillies |
| Hit: 60. Power: 50. Speed: 40. Fielding: 40. Arm: 50. ETA: 2019. Age: 18 |
| 96. Andrew Knapp c, Phillies |
| Hit: 55. Power: 50. Speed: 30. Fielding: 45. Arm: 50. ETA: 2016. Age: 24 |
On the TBOH ranking, Knapp was mentioned in our “the Field” piece for the #10 spot on our list. Wanting to highlight a handful of prospects, we gave credit there to a few mentioned by the various members of our staff who were polled for the piece, and who did not receive enough support to be raised above the rest.
We had Randolph in our #5 overall slot in a piece just released a couple of days back. Thompson, Williams, and Crawford are surely going to show up as the release of our TBOH rankings concludes over the next few days.
Just two weeks ago, the Phillies had seven players named to the MLB Pipeline Top 100 Prospects list, with catcher Jorge Alfaro and pitcher Mark Appel named in that ranking. Alfaro came in at #6 on our list, and Appel was just named to the #4 spot in our TBOH ranking.