Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Philadelphia Phillies. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.
Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.
Relievers Wit
Gunner Mayer, RHP
Jake Eddington, RHP
Andrew Schultz, RHP
Nelson L. Alvarez, RHP
Danyony Pulido, RHP
Griff McGarry, RHP
Enderson Jean, RHP
Pedro Peralta, RHP
Naoel Mejia, RHP
Eligio Arias, RHP
He’s still a little too wild for the main section of the list, but Mayer, a former small school sleeper from San Joaquin Delta College, has developed a plus changeup and is sitting 94-96 in relief. His fastball plays down due to a lack of movement. Eddington, a 2023 seventh rounder out of Missouri State, has a gorgeous arm action and an explosive, somewhat out-of-control delivery that produces some 96 mph fastballs. Each of Eddington’s pitches is very firm; this isn’t a guy who can change speeds. He has scattershot command that impacts his secondary pitch quality, but he looks like a potential reliever. Not to be confused with the unlikeable podcaster who looks like the parking garage attendant from Ferris Bueller, this Andrew Schultz is a hard-throwing 27-year-old righty from Tennessee. Schultz pitches backwards off his slider (which he can more reliably throw for a strike), then tries to induce chase with his upper-90s fastball. He has 20-grade command and shows hitters the baseball really early, which detracts from the effectiveness of his stuff. Similar to Schultz, the 26-year-old Alvarez has movement-based issues with fastball viability, so even though he sits in the mid-90s, he tends to operate more with his cutter and slider.
Pulido is a physically mature 22-year-old righty who has been up to 97 (he sits 93) and flashes a plus slider. He might throw harder as a reliever, where his below-average command probably belongs. McGarry was struggling to the point that he had to be put on the developmental list in 2023. In 2024, he shifted into the bullpen and was still walking a batter per inning. In the Arizona Fall League, he was 92-95 with a good slider and looked like a potential up/down reliever on the days he threw strikes. Jean in a very explosive, 6-foot-3 20-year-old righty with a lightning-fast arm action. He tends to scatter 93-95 fastballs all over the place and will touch a little higher than that. The 18-year-old Peralta has struggled with walks in his two DSL seasons, but he’ll also bump 97. Mejia and Arias are wild, low-slot DSL righties who tend to sit 93-95. Both could be funky relievers down the line if they polish their control.
A Plus Secondary Offering
Tristan Garnett, LHP
Wesley Moore, LHP
Ethan Chenault, RHP
Brandon Beckel, RHP
Garnett is a 6-foot-6, 240-pound human trebuchet with a 7-foot-4 release height and a screwball style changeup. Moore also has a changeup, which he throws more than half the time, but he’s a low slot guy. Both are competent upper-level depth types. A 2023 $125,000 signee out of UNC Wilmington, Chenault had A-ball success as a reliever in 2024. He has a great breaking ball and sat mostly 93-94 throughout the year. Beckel is a 6-foot-4 righty out of Texas Tech who has a very good vertical slider, which he had A-ball success with in 2024 because he flipped his usage such that it made up the majority of his pitches.
Big, Projectable Young Hitters
Alirio Ferrebus, C/1B
Yadimir Fuentes, C
Jose Familia, SS
Cesar Mujica, C
Adrian Garcia, SS
Romeli Espinosa, SS
Elian Adames, OF
Dayber Cruceta, OF
Ferrebus is a physical C/1B who mashed his way from the DSL to the Florida complex in the middle of last year. He has split time pretty evenly between catching and playing first base, and isn’t a lock to keep doing the former. A very projectable 6-foot-2 switch-hitting Cuban catcher, Fuentes’ regular season numbers weren’t very good, but he looked great during Dominican instructs, both throwing and hitting. Familia only hit .187 in 2024, but he’s a very good young shortstop defender and his frame portends pretty serious future strength, as he’s a broad-shouldered 6-foot-2. This is a name on the edge of the radar just in case Familia gets strong. Mujica, a Venezuelan catcher who turns 18 in March, is a strapping 6-foot-2, rotates well, and has an average arm. Garcia tracks pitches well and has a short, very simple swing that lacks explosiveness. He might provide more thump as his 6-foot-2 frame fills out. Espinosa, Adames, and Cruceta all signed on January 15, and all three are well-built athletes with exciting physical projection. They’re the Phillies’ lower-bonus names to follow in the 2025 DSL.
Pitchability Sleepers
Micah Ottenbreit, RHP
Estibenzon Jimenez, RHP
Brad Pacheco, RHP
Gerardo Lopez, RHP
Ottenbreit signed for $775,000 as a 2021 fourth rounder and then spent most of his first three pro seasons on the shelf. He had thrown just 14 pro innings entering 2024, then made 19 very encouraging and successful starts at Clearwater. He sits 92 with sink, has a really good curveball, and could take another step forward in 2025. Jimenez is a stocky 22-year-old righty with a really quick arm action that produces several 45-grade pitches. He had success as a High-A swingman in 2024. Pacheco had a 23-to-3 strikeout-to-walk ratio in the DSL, albeit across just 17 innings. The 19-year-old Venezuelan righty is of medium build and athleticism, sits 91-94, and has an above-average upper-70s curveball. Let’s see if he can sustain this across more innings. Lopez is a 19-year-old Mexican righty who signed in May of last year and hit the ground running in the DSL, where he was sitting in the low-90s with a pretty advanced power changeup and a mid-70s curveball. He’s smaller and will need to prove he can sustain viable velocity across more innings, but his secondary stuff is exciting.
Contact
José Rodríguez, 2B
Josueth Quinonez, OF
Nikau Pouaka-Grego, 2B
Jaeden Calderon, 1B/LF
Once a prominent prospect in the White Sox system, Rodríguez, a 23-year-old Dominican infielder, is serving a one-year suspension for violating the league’s gambling policy. He played 38 games before the suspension was levied and a couple more in LIDOM during the fall. If he can continue making a lot of contact despite an over-aggressive approach, he can be an above-replacement second base option in the upper minors. Quinonez had the best pure feel to hit among Philly’s DSL contingent last year. He tracks pitches well and moves the barrel around the zone. He lacks overt physical projection and power, but he should be monitored as he matriculates to the States in case he’s able to develop more juice than expected. He’s played center field but is realistically a corner guy, so he needs power. Pouaka-Grego, a 20-year-old Kiwi, had an incredible 2022 on the complex and then missed 2023 with a torn ACL. He didn’t hit especially well in his 2024 return and is more of a bounce-back guy to watch. Calderon, 19, had has two years with an .870-ish OPS in the DSL. He has good bat control but pretty vanilla physical tools for a 1B/LF.
Older Depth Bats
Otto Kemp, 3B
Keaton Anthony, 1B
Paul McIntosh, C
Caleb Ricketts, C
Carson Taylor, 1B
Kemp had power-hitting success at Reading in 2024. He has above-average power, but he’s a 30-grade contact hitter (struggling especially with secondary stuff) and a 40 defender at the hot corner. The 23-year-old Anthony missed the tail end of his draft year (and likely went unselected) because he was caught up in a gambling imbroglio that spanned many Iowa and Iowa State athletes. While the details of the wagers placed by several of the athletes have been reported, to my knowledge, Anthony’s have not. He signed as an undrafted free agent in 2023 and hit .327/.414/.454 across both A-ball levels in 2024. He posted a roughly average hard-hit rate and above-average contact metrics, but Anthony’s swing makes it nearly impossible for him to be on time versus fastballs. He’s still in the “prospect to watch” bucket more than he is a lock to produce in the bigs. McIntosh (who came over in the Jesús Luzardo trade) and Ricketts (who spent 2024 at Double-A Reading) are bat-first catchers who could conceivably threaten for the Phillies backup role this year. Each of them has issues on defense, as neither throw well. A former catcher, Taylor is now a lefty-hitting first baseman with 45 hit and power tools. He’s competent Triple-A depth.
System Overview
This is a top-heavy system that lacks depth but has star power up top, including several players who might impact a contending big league roster in 2025. Among the Phillies’ recent draft strategies has been to spread out mid-six-figure bonuses to multiple high school prospects in the middle of the draft. Though there is some representation from that contingent on this list (Devin Saltiban, Bryan Rincon, Mavis Graves), the hit rate on this group (Jordan Viars, TJayy Walton, etc.) has been low enough that this approach has failed to help the Phillies accrue depth in the way I thought it might. Some of this is simply due to the big club’s quality, which has mostly made the Phils deadline buyers and prospect traders during the last several campaigns. In 2024, they had more movement in both directions, and they seem to have made out pretty well in the Gregory Soto trade with Baltimore, though it’s early. Fielding multiple DSL rosters and their tendency to spread their international bonus pool around to several players (which they did again in 2025) should help foster better depth in the system soon. The Phillies’ Dominican instructs group was full of exciting, big-framed athletes from all over the world. Indeed, there are players from 10 different countries scattered all over this prospect list, including more from Venezuela than most orgs have.
A developmental, uh, development here is that there are suddenly pitchers manifesting good changeups out of thin air. Michael Mercado’s late-season cambio revelation is the best example of this right now, while Jean Cabrera and Gunner Mayer are other good examples. Can this continue and apply to several of the other arms with good breaking balls? It’d be a boon for this system if it can, especially if it can happen for Moisés Chace or a healthy Alex McFarlane as quickly as it did for Mercado.
A problem on the horizon here is the lack of catching. I’m excited about a lot of the very, very young catching in the system, but none of those players is in position to replace J.T. Realmuto if he departs in free agency after this season. The Phils have smartly loaded up on bat-first depth in the upper minors (Payton Henry lost rookie eligibility, but is in that mix too), but they should stay active on the margins of their roster throughout 2025 in an effort to have an in-house replacement ready just in case J.T. doesn’t re-up. Maybe A.J. Brown will want to revisit baseball — when you’re a catcher, the ball is thrown to you constantly. The Phillies have several looming free agent departures, but the team has already built up the depth to deal with them, especially on the pitching side.
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