I already mentioned Michael Taylor in my post about young African-American talent in the major and minor leagues, but with his name coming up in the Roy Halladay trade rumors, it’s time for Taylor to get his own Minor League Prospect Watch post.Taylor is a 6’6 250 lbs. outfielder in the Philadelphia Phillies minor league system. With his combination of height, power, & speed; the most logical comparison for Taylor would be Dave Winfield. However, unlike Winfield who didn’t spend a day in the minors once he was drafted; Taylor has taken some time to develop his talent after being drafted out of Stanford. He struggled his first year, but has absolutely raked the ball in the past two seasons. He obviously has the physical talent to be a star in the majors and coming out of Stanford means he can combine his physical talent with brains as well. Barring injury it seems that he has all the tools to go on and have a long productive career in the majors.
Here are Michael Taylor’s stats for the season to date:
.326 AVG/17 HR/70 RBI/.404 OBP/.557 SLG/.961 OPS/20 SB
You can check out Michael Taylor’s career minor league stats on his Baseball Reference player page and his First Inning player page.
Here is where Michael Taylor ranks among minor league prospects:
Ranking in ScoutingBook (5/22/2009): #67
Ranking in Baseball America 2009: N/A
Ranking in Baseball Prospectus: #55
Ranking in MiLB.com 2009 Season Preview Unranked
Ranking from the Sporting News: Unranked
Ranking from ESPN: #100
Here is everything you need to know about Michael Taylor:
A 6-6, 250lb monster back in high school, Taylor avoided an early draft by committing to Stanford. When he emerged from college, he was gobbled up by the Phillies in the same 5th round selection that netted them Ryan Howard six years earlier, and scouts see similar things in the two sluggers. After ditching his 'Stanford Swing' for a bigger and more wide open hammer, Taylor tore up the minors last year, slashing .361/.441/.554 at A-level Lakeland and .329/.380/.560 after a promotion to high-A Clearwater. Taylor smashed 19 total homers in just under 500 at-bats. He strikes out a bit too much, especially on quality breaking pitches, but the Phillies system has never shied away from big strikeout numbers, so he'll probably be allowed to smash and swish, as long as he produces overall. As an outfielder, he has limited range, though his speed is probably average, or even a bit better than average. His strong throwing arm that suggests right field is his natural position. While his approach at the plate looks crude, he's actually a pretty polished product: he'll face his first real tests in AA in 2009 while shooting for a Phillies job in 2010.(Scouting Book)
Taylor was one of the best athletes in the 2007 draft -- and that hardly does him justice, as he's a supreme athlete in an NFL sense, not a baseball sense -- but had the ol' Stanford swing that has made scouts less willing to draft hitters from that school than just about any other major college program. The Phillies revamped Taylor's swing from that stiff, funny-looking Stanford approach to a more fluid swing that lets him utilize his lower half and hit for power, with potentially 40-homer power down the road. He's adequate defensively in a corner with an average arm. Taylor is still learning, or perhaps re-learning, the game, but wins raves from the Phillies' player development people for his aptitude and work ethic. Taylor played the year at 22, so he was old for the Sally League and not young for the Florida State League, meaning 2009 will be the first real test of his new swing and approach as he goes to Double-A.(ESPN)
Michael Taylor was a fifth round pick in 2007 out of Stanford. Although an excellent athlete with physical strength, a strong throwing arm, and decent speed, his college performance was erratic, and he never quite lived up to expectations. He did show improved power during his junior year, hitting .335/.395/.584 with 12 homers, but a lot of scouts doubted that his swing mechanics would work with wooden bats. Indeed, he hit just .227/.300/.385 in the New York-Penn League after signing in 2007. I did put him in the 2008 book, noting his physical potential and the fact that he was very intelligent, giving him a Grade C rating. Taylor made adjustments to his swing during '08 spring training, and the results were remarkable: he hit .361/.441/.554 in 67 games for Lakewood in the Sally League, then .329/.380/.560 in 65 games for Clearwater in the Florida State League, hitting 39 doubles, 19 homers, stealing 15 bases, and posting a 50/89 BB/K ratio in 492 at-bats last year. Scouts reported that his swing still needed some adjustments, and not everyone believed that he'd be able to repeat these numbers against advanced pitching. I wrote in the 2009 book that Taylor had long arms and might be vulnerable to inside pitches at higher levels, giving him a rather conservative Grade B rating. The Phillies opened Taylor in Double-A this year, with outstanding results: .333/.408/.569, 15 homers, 18 steals in 22 attempts, and a 35/51 BB/K ratio in 318 at-bats. He was promoted to Triple-A last week, and so far he's 5-for-24 (.208) with two doubles, a homer, three walks, and seven strikeouts. Obviously the Triple-A sample size is too small to mean much at this point, but by the end of August we will have a better read on how he's made the adjustment. Certainly his Eastern League numbers are very much in line with what he did last year. There are a lot of things to like about Taylor. He's always had the tools, and his skill advancement looks legitimate to me. He uses his intelligence well, studying pitchers and showing the ability to make needed adjustments with his swing and his strike zone judgment. His work ethic is highly-rated. Of course, being smart and hard-working doesn't mean you'll succeed even when you have the physical tools to go with it, but it certainly helps a lot, and right now I think Taylor deserves the benefit of the doubt. He's definitely a Grade B+ prospect at least right now, and if the end-of-season Triple-A numbers are solid he could get a Grade A-. He turns 24 in December, so he's not a super-young prospect, giving him less future projection than a Jason Heyward or Michael Stanton. But Taylor's across-the-board tools and blossoming skills are very intriguing; he doesn't have an "old player" profile. I can see him developing into something like a cross between Hunter Pence and Mike Cameron.(Minor League Ball)
Philadelphia outfield prospect Michael Taylor has earned a recent promotion to Triple-A Leigh Valley after a dominating stint in Double-A. Taylor, a former 5th round selection in 2007 out of Stanford University, was third in the Eastern League with a .333 average and OPS of .977 was 252 points above the league average. Taylor entered the season ranked as the Phillies sixth-best prospect and best power hitter according to Baseball America. So far this season he has lived up to the billing. Taylor is quite the physical specimen, listed at 6'6 and 250 pounds, and his combination of speed (19 stolen bases in 23 tries) and power (16 home runs and .236 ISO) make him an interesting prospect to watch for. He has also shown the ability to draw walks and get on base. He had a walk rate of nearly 10 percent and a wOBA of .438 in Double-A this season. This comes after a breakout season last year in which batted .341/.408/.553 with 19 home runs between the South Atlantic League and the Florida State League, both of which are generally regarded as pitchers-friendly leagues. His power numbers are up slightly this year due to his increased fly ball percentage (up to 41.3 this season from 33.7 last year). This has also caused his home run percentage to climb to 3.9 to 4.8. Taylor has appeared in just five games thus far in Triple-A and has managed only three hits (one home run). However, his promotion comes at an interesting time as his name is being brought up in recent trade talks. Taylor could become trade bait as the deadline looms closer.(Hardball Times)
When Taylor got off to a scorching start in low Class A last year, some skeptics (OK, we'd have to be included in that group) wondered what Taylor would do against more advanced competition. Wonder no more, Taylor has improved his slugging percentage on every step up the ladder and is hitting .337/.399/.574 at Reading this year. But his best attribute may be his consistency—Taylor has hit better than .330 in all but one month over the past year and a half.(Baseball America)
You could make a darn good argument that Taylor and high Class A right fielder Dominic Brown form the best duo of outfield prospects in any organization. While Brown got the acclaim as Philadelphia's top prospect entering the season, Taylor continues to force his way up the rankings by barreling through the EL. He's now up to .351/.412/.615 in 49 games with 10 home runs, 17 walks and 23 strikeouts. In other words, that's one heck of a fifth-round pick. (Baseball America)
Any concerns about Taylor's bat coming out of Stanford have been pretty well answered, as Taylor has hit .320 or better in each of his three full-season stops. At Stanford, Taylor didn't use his legs much in his swing, but he's figured out how to make that adjustment in the pros. That explains why he's hitting more home runs now than he did in college with a metal bat. (Baseball America)
Taylor’s exploits have been well covered this season, and for good reason. Taylor couples a good walk rate (10.8%) with a fairly low K rate (14.9%) for a slugger, and then you add in the .193 ISO and the .345 SecA and you have the best prospect at Lakewood, and one of the better statistical seasons in the SAL. The big caveat for Taylor was his age, but he took some of that sting out by continuing to rake at Clearwater, where he was closer to age appropriate. (Phuture Phillies)
Taylor began the year with a .361/.441/.554 line at Low-A Lakewood which created a mixed reaction. At six-foot-six and 250 pounds, Taylor looks like a potential monster, but at the same time he’s 22 years old and coming of of a highly disappointing three-year career at Stanford that left scouts scratching their heads. Moved up to the Florida State League in mid-June, Taylor continues to bump up his stock by mashing in a much tougher offensive environment, most recently by delivering multi-hit games on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to raise his batting line for the Threshers to .342/.392/.546 in 53 contests. There are still questions about what it all means, since both his age and the three-year hole he dug himself in Palo Alto are a lot to make up for in some people’s minds, but the further this goes, the more his doubters fall by the wayside. (Phuture Phillies)
Baseball America: You got off to a great start this year. Were there any adjustments you made this season after getting your first taste of pro ball last year?
Michael Taylor: I've been pretty consistent in saying that I learned a lot from last year in terms of getting 230 professional at-bats in, and that's obviously a big part of it. Also just continuing to just make strides as a player. One of my goals more than anything is just to try to get a little bit better in some aspect of my game. So as a hitter, as a defender as a baserunner, just trying to learn something and do the things that I know will help me progress in the long run. How quickly that comes or how much time that takes just depends on the player and depends on a lot of different factors. Another thing is I'm fully healthy this year, which is fantastic. Last year I had a lot of back problems, which inhibited me from putting in the work I needed to put in to be as consistent as I could be. It was very nagging, it was very frustrating, but at the same time I knew I wanted to play and get those experiences because I knew I had the whole off-season to go in and make chances and corrections and do things I needed to do to get better.
BA: Is more of that development done during game situations or in BP and off the field?
MT: It's really both. A lot of hitters talk about getting in the cage and hitting off the tee first, and making the swing adjustments and getting the approach that will be successful in BP, and then BP taking it to the game. And that's really where I started, whether it's in my backyard or in the Stanford cages off the tee, working, trying to figure things out, being frustrated some days, encouraged others, from there to batting practice and from batting practice to spring training, where I finally got to see live pitching. It's been a process and it's been a process more than just last year—it's been a five, six, seven-year process. I'm not saying this is coming to any kind of fruition right now, but I'm starting to see some strides in a positive direction, so it's exciting.
BA: After your early success, have you noticed a difference in how pitchers are attacking you?
MT: It's definitely getting tougher. To be honest with you, I'm not really seeing those first-pitch cookies any more, those 2-0 cookies that you see early on in the season. You come in and you do well, you make an adjustment and the league makes an adjustment to you.
BA: What kind of approach do you like to take to the plate for every at-bat?
MT: I try to have a plan for every single at-bat for every single pitch. I'm not saying it always works out, but I feel like the less at-bats I give away over the course of a 500 AB season, if I give away 50, I may not scrape out 15, 20 more hits, and that's the difference between hitting .275 and .300. For me, I try to go up there, take every pitch, have my plan—and I know we're not supposed to be stepping out—but just to clear my head, take what happened and just get my new plan for that next pitch. If I do that, I feel that I have a chance to be successful with my approach.
BA: Does your approach or the pitch you're looking for vary based on different scenarios?
MT: It depends on the situation. Some organizations preach, 'Guy on third base, less than two outs, they're going to come with the breaking ball or the changeup. I know that, I've experienced that before. But I'd say 90 percent of the time, to be successful at any level of baseball you have to be fastball efficient. So you go up there looking for the fastball that you can handle. (Baseball America)
You hate to compare someone who just finished his first full season to Ryan Howard, but the similarities are unmistakable. A 6-foot-6 260-pound power hitter who was a fifth-round Draft pick by the Phillies? One difference, though, is that Taylor had a much better first full season than Howard did. Howard, in 2001, hit .280 with 19 homers, 87 RBIs and five steals at Lakewood. Taylor batted .346 with 19 homers, 88 RBIs and 15 steals between Lakewood and Clearwater, including a .361 mark at Lakewood before his promotion. His average, 170 hits and 274 total bases all ranked in the Minors' top 10. The Stanford product, who was drafted in 2007, has a plus arm in right field and raw power at the plate. Though he hit .227 at Williamsport in his '07 debut, this is more what the Phillies thought him capable of. (MLB.com)
Five-tool outfielder Michael Taylor was called up from Double-A Reading July 16, bringing the hype surrounding the Eastern League All-Star to the Lehigh Valley. There was so much hype in fact, that the IronPigs decided to get dressed up for the occasion wearing tuxedo jerseys which made ESPN’s SportsCenter Top 10. OK, maybe the ‘Pigs sported the jerseys for the ballpark wedding before the game, but there was still a lot of interest in Taylor’s first start. The 6-6, 260-pound outfielder was in the hunt for the Triple Crown when he was called up from the Eastern League. His .333 batting average and 65 RBIs was third in the league and his 15 home runs was fourth. In its history, the Eastern League has had only five Triple Crown winners, one in the last 30 years, which shows how Taylor was tearing apart the pitching at the Double-A level. Taylor went 0-for-3 with a run, walk and a strikeout in his debut with the IronPigs. Over his first four games, Taylor went a combined 2-for-13 which left some wondering if he was ready for the call up. However, since starting with a .133 batting average, Taylor caught fire and hit .389 from July 20-24 (five games) and is now carrying a more respectable .263 average going into the series finale against the Gwinnett Braves this evening. It will be a while, but with time Taylor, the number six prospect (rated by Baseball America) in the Phillies system, could eventually create hype for another call up. Although, if Taylor is not shipped away in the Roy Halladay sweepstakes and does ever get the promotion to Philadelphia, don’t expect the Phillies to break out tuxedo jerseys. (Examiner.com)
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