Selecting the Philadelphia Phillies All-Time 25-Man Roster

It hasn’t always been sunshine and rainbows for the Philadelphia Phillies, but you can go through their lengthy history and build an all-time, 25-man roster that would rival any team’s all-time greats.

Of course, any time that you can lay claim to two of the greatest players of all-time at their positions, Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton, building a roster around them becomes a whole lot easier.

But it doesn’t stop there for the Phillies. The Phillies’ all-time roster will consist of Cy Young Award winners and Most Valuable Players. It will consist of All-Stars, Silver Sluggers and Gold Glove winners. You’ll find postseason heroes, including a certain World Series MVP.

For the sake of consistency, this all-time, 25-man roster was built just like an MLB roster of today. Alongside the obvious, everyday players, you’ll also find a full starting rotation, bullpen and bench. However, in order to claim one of these spots, each player must have qualified for the position in their playing career.

That means that in order to be slotted into a certain position, a player must have played enough of a certain position to qualify as one of the all-time greats.

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Ranking All 25 Phillies Players by How Frustrated Fans Are with Them

It should go without saying that the 2012 season has been a frustrating one for the Philadelphia Phillies and their fans.

The frustration started in spring training, when fans learned that Chase Utley and Ryan Howard would miss a majority of the first half of the season and just continued to mount from there. Injuries to several key players, including Roy Halladay, kept the fire burning.

The Phillies’ play on the field suffered as a result, and the level of frustration came to a boiling point. After winning five consecutive National League East crowns, the Phillies have found themselves in the cellar looking up for most of the season.

In a season like this, it’s hard to place the blame on a single player. However, it is a lot easier to decipher which players are frustrating fans the most, and that’s exactly what this list will do.

This slideshow will rank the least frustrating player (No. 25) and move down the list to determine which player has been the most frustrating (No. 1) this season.

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Philadelphia Phillies: Grading Ruben Amaro Jr.’s Last 25 Roster Additions

When a ship starts to sink, the first thing that everyone on board starts to do is find the holes. It’s common sense. If you can find the holes, plug them and bail some of the water over the sides, then you can keep the ship afloat. You can even sail back home if you do a good enough job.

Well, if the Philadelphia Phillies were the ship in this analogy, they’d be sinking fast. The time has come where everyone knows that the ship is sinking and now, it’s up to the front office to find the right plugs.

But long after the ship is either sunken or fixed, the time will come when the people on board will look back and want answers. Why did the ship sink? Why was the ship even in that predicament? Could it have been prevented? Why wasn’t it?

It’s a pretty common question for the Phillies this season: “Why?”

This isn’t a team that was built, despite all of its injuries, to play in last place. It is the job of the general manager, Ruben Amaro Jr., to ensure that his team has the best shot at the postseason.

So naturally, when the ship starts to sink, Amaro is the guy that gets the blame.

This slideshow is going to analyze the last 25 roster additions that Amaro made to the MLB roster in an effort to improve the product in some way, shape or form. The roster additions extend over the last two seasons and include a number of various transactions.

That includes free-agent signings, trades, minor league call-ups (not September call-ups), etc.

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Each Philadelphia Phillies Player’s Season Explained in 140 Characters or Less

The last place Philadelphia Phillies.

For a team with one of baseball’s largest payrolls, it doesn’t seem like much of a possibility, but somehow, it’s something that the Phillies have managed to accomplish.

Just a year after assembling the “four aces,” the Phillies are stuck in the National League East’s cellar. They went from having two Roys in the rotation to having none, though Roy Halladay will return, but who’s to say that the division crown isn’t out of reach by that point?

The Phillies’ disabled list has looked more like their 25-man roster than their 25-man roster this season. Halladay, Ryan Howard, Jose Contreras, Michael Martinez, Chase Utley, Justin De Fratus, Cliff Lee, Michael Stutes, Jim Thome, David Herndon, Laynce Nix, Vance Worley and Freddy Galvis have all hit the DL this season.

In more ways than one, it sure seems like a lost cause. The rhetoric has always been that if the Phillies could keep in the race with their big names on the DL, they would be able to jump back into the lead at some point once they returned.

But that possibility seems like it slips further and further away with each passing day. It may be time to admit that the Phillies, as they are currently constructed, just can’t make a run this year. Sure, they were dealt a bad hand, but that’s not an excuse.

Maybe it’s time to retool.

Until then, here’s a clever way of showing you what went wrong (or right, in that rare moment) for each of the Phillies’ players this season—in just 140 characters.

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25 Biggest Letdowns of the Philadelphia Phillies’ Season Thus Far

Things are getting ugly for the Philadelphia Phillies, and fast.

For a team that was expected to come into the regular season as a favorite in the National League East, poised to contend for their sixth consecutive division crown in spite of injuries to some of their big players, you could easily make the argument that their 2012 season has been a letdown as a whole.

But when you break it into several, smaller letdowns, that’s when you start to uncover the bigger picture. It’s time to face the music. As it’s constructed now, this Phillies team just isn’t very good.

Coming into the regular season, that wasn’t supposed to be a problem. We knew the offense would miss Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, but an elite pitching staff and more than a couple of All-Stars that remained in the lineup were supposed to be enough to pick up the slack.

There’s still time for this Phillies team to turn things around, but that window of opportunity is fading fast. If they have any chance of roaring back into contention, they’ll need to solve these early season letdowns and leave them in the past, and fast.

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25 Draft Picks the Philadelphia Phillies Have the Best Odds of Signing

There’s nothing quite like Major League Baseball’s amateur draft, for all parties involved.

For high school players, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime and the biggest decision you may ever make. It’s an emotional high but also a time to weigh the risks: Do you get your professional career starter and forgo a college education, or spend time in college to refine your skills? 

For college players, it is the reward after all of the hard work. Guys spend three to four years in college working their tails off, not only playing baseball, but studying as well. Being drafted is like coming full circle; the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you will.

But the oft-forgotten beneficiary of the MLB draft is the organization. Take for instance, the Philadelphia Phillies. This is a club that used the draft to add hitters and pitchers from both the college and high school level and restock their farm system.

A farm once described as “barren” could be roaring back to life with just 40 selections of some of the most promising players throughout the country.

But it’s all meaningless unless the player comes to terms with the club—in this instance, the Phillies—on his first professional contract.

Some players are more likely to sign than others. It should go without saying that a college senior has more urgency to sign that a high school senior with an opportunity to go to college. Then again, a strong college commitment could draw a player away from a team.

This list will attempt to signal out which of the Phillies’ top draft picks from this season have the greatest potential to sign a contract.

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Re-Ranking Philadelphia Phillies’ Top 25 Prospects After the 2012 MLB Draft

After trading away most of their top prospects in blockbuster deals over the last few seasons, the Philadelphia Phillies went into the 2012 amateur draft with one goal in mind: Add top talent back into the system.

Of course, that’s not an easy thing to do when you don’t own a single selection in the draft’s first round. The Phillies wouldn’t choose a player until the 40th overall selection as compensation for losing Ryan Madson.

Even then, the Phillies didn’t do what we expected them to. It seems as though they never do. Instead of selecting a college player with a clear path to the MLB, they select a high school pitcher with a high ceiling by the name of Shane Watson.

Then they selected another high school player. And another. And yet another. They would continue to select high school players as their first five selections in the draft, blowing their pre-draft strategy to smithereens.

Then again, the Phillies’ real strategy for the last couple of seasons has been to draft the player they believed to be the best available. That’s how they wind up with so many high school players.

But there is an obvious risk in drafting high school players. Nine times out of 10, they come into the organization as a project. Their tools are extremely raw, and though they may possess a ton of that natural, raw talent, it will likely take years to develop it into an MLB skill-set.

That’s why there are just two players from this year’s draft class cracking my top 25. The Phillies didn’t draft any clear-cut, top prospects this year. That’s not to say it was a bad draft. They selected a boatload of potential, but few players have the current skill set to be considered a top prospect, at least, in my opinion.

So with a crop of new players ready to come into the system, it’s time to re-rank the Phillies’ top 25 prospects.

That comes with a caveat of sorts: This list is my own opinion and not affiliated with any other prospect lists. For help with evaluation, I referred to the greatest source for Phillies’ prospect information on the web, Phuture Phillies. 

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Grading Each of Philadelphia Phillies’ Top 25 Draft Picks

Given the way the 2012 season has gone for the Philadelphia Phillies, it was only fitting that this year’s amateur draft be an event filled with surprises for the club.

Heading into this year’s draft, experts believed that the Phillies would focus on college bats with quick paths to the MLB, and while they selected a few college bats that could possibly fit that profile, it is obvious and undeniable that the Phillies remained within their uncomfortable “comfort zone”—high school players with less-than-certain futures but huge ceilings.

With another draft in the books, it will be years before we can fully assess this year’s crop of talent, but Ruben Amaro Jr., Marti Wolever and Co. will certainly be hoping for the best.

The following slideshow will offer up an initial grade for each of the Phillies’ first 25 selections. Did the Phillies make the right selection with certain picks? Did they reach for a guy, or let one slip past them?

There’s only one way to find out.

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Predicting the End-Year Stats for All 25 Philadelphia Phillies Players

The 2012 season has been a roller coaster ride of twists, turns, loops, spins, climbs, and dives for the Philadelphia Phillies, and we’re only two months in.

It’s been an odd season for this Phillies’ ball club. With some of the injuries they’ve faced, including guys like Roy Halladay, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard, you wouldn’t expect this ball club to be in contention, but they are.

Though they’ve been in last place for most of the season, the Phillies have remained within striking distance throughout the season, and that is undoubtedly because of the fact that their fill-ins, replacement, and bench players have played well.

They’ve also had a number of guys who played smaller roles in the past step up and become major contributors.

But if the Phillies have any intention of conquering the challenging National League East and laying claim to their sixth consecutive division crown, they’re going to need certain players to have good statistical seasons.

Here’s a little forecast of what the player’s numbers could look like on the final day of the season.

Follow @Greg_Pinto

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25 Bold June Predictions for the Philadelphia Phillies Roster

Results from the first two months of the season have been a mixed bag for the Philadelphia Phillies.

It is easy to focus on the bad, the most obvious of which is the disabled list. Ryan Howard and Chase Utley have not played a single inning this season. Roy Halladay is on the shelf. So is Jim Thome, Laynce Nix, Jose Contreras, Mike Stutes, David Herndon, and Michael Martinez.

Ouch. They would be shoo-ins for the Disabled List All-Star Game, if such a thing existed.

It is not so easy to focus on the positives, but believe it or not, there were plenty of them. How about the hot starts of Carlos Ruiz and Jonathan Papelbon? The Phillies may have finished the first couple of months in last place, but on the first day of June, they sit just 2.5 games out of first.

There is a lot to look forward for this ball club in the month of June. There is a light at the end of tunnel for a lot of these injured players and the club is firing on all cylinders right now.

A quick look at the schedule shows that this could be a big month for the Phillies. Here are some predictions that should help determine what needs to go right, and as always, what to watch out for.

Follow @Greg_Pinto

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