He seems to have been a pick of the stat guys. Go back to the original draft thread. We had a number of PECOTA-inspired day 1 and 2 picks that year. In later rounds are scouts seem to be as good as anyone's. It's the #1 and sandwich picks which, apart from Nola, have been a disaster zone. I think we'd do well on draft day if we got all the scouts in the draft room, thanked Almaraz, his staff, and Klentak for getting everything organized, and allow the scouts to sort out the picks on their own. When the guys at the top of the scouting department/org fall in love with a guy, it seems to be the kiss of death, which likely means they look for the wrong things and use very rose-colored glasses in deciding which deficiencies the development staff can fix. I really do think the higher-ups laser focus on one thing for the primo-$ selections. We used to focus on speed and athleticism, with the conceit that we could teach athletes to hit and be plus baseball players. Then we got worried and focused on power, landing LGJ, Encarnacion, and Ortiz -- all for big $. Throughout this whole period, we've liked good glove, small, no-hit LA SSs, who might or might not have quite enough glove/speed/arm to stick at SS.
The saving grace is that both Sal and the domestic scouts seem to do above average with pitching prospects.
The Phillies have been searching for another Whitey Ashburn since he joined the Mets in the expansion draft. I can't think of an organization which has been so deficient in signing and developing OFs over almost a 70-year period. There have been some unfortunate injuries along the way, but the organizational record on OFs over many administrations has been awful. We have turned a couple of primo-pick 1B into good-hitting sort-of OFs.
When you spend your primo picks on pitchers, you can expect half to be a dead-loss due to injury. We'd still be way ahead of where drafting H.S. position players has gotten us with our primo picks. That was supposed to be the MacPhail philosophy.
