Joe Jordan sees strength in Phillies' farm-club pitching
Joe Jordan has spent most of his winter reading. With every report ever written on every Phillies minor-league player at his disposal, the team's new farm director started there. Then Jordan picked the brains of his assistants and traveled to Arizona, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela to see players with his own eyes.
Joe Jordan has spent most of his winter reading. With every report ever written on every Phillies minor-league player at his disposal, the team's new farm director started there. Then Jordan picked the brains of his assistants and traveled to Arizona, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela to see players with his own eyes.
It's a system that was ranked 10th in the majors by Baseball America entering the 2011 season and was the victim of another blockbuster trade depleting it of top talent. That ranking figures to be slightly lower in 2012, but the Phillies still likely rank in the top half of the majors.
And as Jordan, hired from Baltimore last November to replace Chuck LaMar, scanned the clubhouse at Citizens Bank Park last week, he saw the strength. Seven of the 10 players the Phillies invited to their prospect development seminar were pitchers. Four of them - Trevor May, Brody Colvin, Jon Pettibone, and Julio Rodriguez - make up the so-called "Baby Aces." They will be in double-A Reading, possibly with the exception of Colvin, who could begin at single-A Clearwater.
Jordan acknowledged that the system is weighted toward pitching. Here's a brief question-and-answer session with the new farm director, who talks about learning an entire system.
Question: What was your main task this winter?
Answer: I've spent a lot of the time over the last three months talking to the staff that's here - whether it's front-office staff, pro staff, the scouts, the minor-league staff. I've gotten a lot of opinions on the players from them. So I've let them paint a picture. I have all of the reports in the organization that have been written on any player. That's where my familiarity has come from. I've seen a lot of them as amateurs. At Baltimore, we were in the Eastern League and the South Atlantic League. I mean, you have to see them firsthand. But I feel like I'm in pretty good shape. The staff is really good here. I'm pretty comfortable. I'm just ready to get started.
Q: So you've done a lot of reading?
A: Absolutely. But it's been good. We've just been working on so many things - whether it's budget stuff, philosophy, administrative. Pretty soon we get to put that all up and turn our attention to the players.
Q: What's your initial impression of the system on the whole?
A: It's a little weighted toward the arms, which I don't think is very different from most systems. It sounds like there are some guys in our minor-league system who are ready or soon-to-be ready to help the major-league club when they're needed.
As far as the overall system, everyone knows Hunter Pence came from another club. We sent really good players there to get him. There have been several of those. It is what it is. We have what we have. Our job is to get them ready. That's what we'll do. I like what's here. I'm familiar with a lot of them.