Thoughts on the Phillies Draft

If there is one difficult draft to grade immediately after, it's baseball's. The Phillies had the number one pick in this year's draft, and ended up picking someone who was almost never #1 on any mock draft boards before the final week, but are getting high grades for their draft. If that makes zero sense to you, it's okay, because you are not alone. This one is a tough one to grade, for me.

First, let's start with every caveat in the books. Cole Hamels, Chase Utley, J.P. Crawford, and many other former greats or current top prospects were not taken #1 in the MLB draft. Moniak certainly possesses many gifts as a baseball player, and a lot of people are excited to have him. He projects out as able to play center for his whole career, and his offense will develop into a more complete game in time. He also seems easily signable, and that will allow the Phillies to spread out a larger signing pool of cash to players they drafted in later rounds. There's some good strategy to it.

Now though, i'm not happy with the pick. Moniak projected out as the fifth best player in this draft on both ESPN and MLB's big boards. When you pick at #1, picking the fifth best talent just isn't good enough. Sure, he's good for your bonus pool of money to sign guys, but that's because he's not as big of a talent. Sure, you can say there wasn't a clear #1 in this draft, but Moniak was a clear #5. Now, it is true that the best player in every draft does not come out of the #1 pick, and Moniak may have turned into the best player in this draft even at #5. If you watch his highlight films, he's certainly got a good ceiling. I just struggle to get excited when his "ceiling" equivalent in the majors (again, according to alleged experts) is Christian Yelich. Yelich is a nice player, but not the kind you dream about at #1. Despite his inconsistencies, I would like to have enough faith that our player development guys could have taken A.J. Puk and his "stuff" and made a #2 starter out of him, at least, or that we could have taken a talent like Groome, Ray, or Lewis and made more of them. With the projections as is, I think the Phillies probably have two to four better centerfield options within the major and minor league systems, and I don't think Moniak has the potential power to move to a corner slot. Hopefully I'm wrong.

I'm not grading out the draft as a failure. Moniak could be our #1 prospect in a year or two. He could be our best player in ten years. The picks we made after him, particularly Kevin Gowdy and Cody Stobbe, are very intriguing players with high upside that we are going to be able to sign because we picked Moniak. They picked a pair of college hitters on the final day who had 33 and 20 homers this season. They picked 17 pitchers. They picked 21 college players, which should move up faster. In fact, you can look at this draft and say they got a nice haul from it. My personal philosophy though is that you pick the highest ceiling. You pick the top player on the board with the top pick. It seems to me that the Phillies over-thought this pick. Hopefully I'm wrong, and ten years from now we're all wearing Moniak jerseys to games. Right now though, i'm starting as a skeptic.