Questions With IRONPIGPEN: Part I

Every day, we will ask the IRONPIGPEN questions about the IronPigs or other Phillies prospects. You may already be familiar with him from our counter point series. For more on the IRONPIGPEN himself, please visit his blog, IRONPIGPEN: The Pork Stops Here!

What do you think of the IronPigs' chances in 2009?

IRONPIGPEN: I think it’s too early to tell for the IronPigs. Teams are not done signing players and, as you know, teams will start wheeling and dealing again once the Grapefruit League gets into full gear. So we’re going to hold off on our formal predictions until late March, when we have a clearer idea of everybody’s Major League and AAA rosters will look like. Right now, I can say I was encouraged by the players signed in December by Philadelphia. The signing momentum has stalled in January and February, though, and I think some other teams have started to pile up some more minor league guys than the Phillies so we’ll see. We were dead last a year ago though so, technically, all we need to do is move up one place in the standings and we can say we have improved!

The Phillies were named the 11th best farm system in MLB, after being closer to the bottom of the list the past few years. Does this seem accurate?

IRONPIGPEN: We don’t pay a whole lot of attention to these type of rankings. And, yeah, we question how accurate such a ranking is. We didn’t see such a radical infusion of talent on the minor league free agent market. Sure, players like [Jason] Donald and [Lou] Marson are moving up levels in the organization, but so are the other players from other teams. We look at individual prospect rankings just like everybody else, but we look at things from the perspective of a team, as well. Both the Lehigh Valley IronPigs and the Reading Phillies finished dead last in their league. The Clearwater Threshers had a losing record as well. We are of the opinion, that if the Philadelphia Phillies truly have the eleventh best minor league talent available in their organization, these three ball clubs’ records for 2009 will reflect that. We’ll see. We are still working on our predictions for where the IronPigs will rank in the International League. That’s what our ‘Organization In Focus’ features are for. We are trying to figure out who will be playing for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees and all the other teams in our league. We will comment when we are done with that. The other thing is, we know who the Phillies have at the A level, but we don’t scrutinize it anywhere near as closely as we do AA and up. We would say right now that # 11 from AA up is a mighty leap from where the Phillies’ teams were at last year.