Worth reprinting at least in part:
_Snapper Bean (Greater Kensington): _
In a draft where they had the #1 overall and the resulting (pre-new CBA) bonus pool, the 2016 Phillies draft (Moniak, Gowdy, Stobbe, Romero, Irvin, etc.) looks to be about as big of a miss as one could possible fear. Convince me I'm wrong.
J.J. Cooper: Well, let's compare them to their peers. Some drafts are great. Some are awful. I think you summed up the Phillies draft class, so let's look at who drafted right after them. OK, at No. 2 the Reds took Nick Senzel. They followed that up with Taylor Trammell. Nick Hanson, Chris Okey, Ryan Hendrix and Scott Moss were among other notable draftees. He's had some injuries, but if you were offering Senzel and offered the Phillies top 5 picks in the 2016 draft right now in return, the Reds would undoubtedly say no. Trammell is more highly regarded now than Moniak as well. Each team had a HS arm who has been hurt a lot (Gowdy for the Phillies and Hanson for the Reds). So massive advantage Reds draft there. On to the Braves who picked third. They took Ian Anderson, Joey Wentz, Kyle Muller, Bryse Wilson and Jeremy Walker. Anderson is one of the better pitching prospects in baseball now. Muller is a power lefty prospect and Wilson is a Top 100 prospect who has pitched in the majors. Walker is a likely up-and-down reliever and Wentz still has a shot. You'd definitely take the Braves draft over the Phillies draft. OK, on to pick No. 4. The Rockies took Riley Pint with the fourth pick, and you'd much rather have Moniak than Pint now, so that's a win for the Phillies. Robert Tyler (the Rockies' second pick) is a college pitcher who has yet to make it out of hiA as a reliever, so again, advantage Phillies--I'd rather have Romero. Bowden does have a solid shot at being an MLB reliever, and J.D. Hammer has already made it to the majors as a pen arm (after being traded to the Phillies coincidentally). This seems to be shaping up as a win for the Phillies, but Garret Hampson (3rd round) is an MLB middle infielder and Colton Welker (4th round) is a still promising corner infield bat. This one is much closer, but I'd still take the Rockies draft over the Phillies...
I'd probably take 6 of the other 9 drafts of teams picking in the top 10.
But I still think the 2016 draft is on Middleton and Gillick. Unfortunately it took a terminal illness to actually shake up the organization. But they still moved so slowly that the 2016 draft rested largely on the old administration (definitely Gillick if not Amaro, but also Almaraz and the entire amateur scouting apparatus). Imagine if we'd just started 2015 with a new GM, or at least hired one soon after MacPhail was hired, instead of four months later. Just absolutely terrible luck/planning that our only 1-1 year came under those circumstances, as well as in what still appears to be a less-than-stellar year for talent.
