ALLENTOWN – Mark Leiter Jr. remembers his first season in the Phillies organization well. He arrived in 2013 as a 22nd-round pick out of the New Jersey Institute of Technology and noticed that the Phillies’ minor-league system was not exactly stocked with pitching prospects.
He counted two: Jesse Biddle and Adam Morgan.
Other names were on the various prospect lists, but guys like Shane Watson and Mitch Gueller were simply high draft picks who had done nothing to earn top prospect consideration. Guys like Ethan Martin and Phillippe Aumont, meanwhile, were trade acquisitions who never consistently excelled in the minor leagues, let alone the big leagues.