Yeah but he was a second round pick. Moniak, Romero, and Irvin have all exceeded him from the top of the Phillies draft. Not by much but they at least have made the majors. Stephen and Darick Hall have both done as much in the minors as Chatham has also.
All these reports of him being near the top 10 for the Red Sox are just misleading. First, it has been a mediocre system of late (so Seabold 8th or 14th with the Red Sox might be 20th with an average organization). Second, it is pretty clear that he disappointed last year by not getting a callup before supposedly lesser prospects did who played similar positions. There is no way Arauz should have passed him if Chatham was really a high level prospect. They already burned the option with him so there was no cost to bringing him up. He is just a guy a step above a DFA guy.
Finally, MLB.com has not updated their prospect rankings. They won't do that for a few more weeks. They make an attempt to slot traded players but they also tend to overrank those traded players. I just hope we did not give up much for this guy. He is not better than what we had other than being a little older than Maton. He is taking up a 40-man slot now in an organization that needs those slots. Hopefully Dombrowski is right about him, because there is a cost to keeping mediocre guys on the 40 when you release other players.
