Phillies Prospect Lists

[Austinfan]

Franco graded close to average after 3 ML seasons, i.e., he was coached up from bad.
Bohm is a better athlete than Franco.

Phillies would have lived with Franco's fielding if his hitting had progressed.
You don't need every starter to be 4+ WAR, you need a few, and the rest to be at least 2 WAR or so and some positive contributions off the bench.
Last time I checked it's still a team sport.

[andyb]

All of that is completely irrelevant when discussing Bohm's defense. The point is the scouts were correct about Franco. I am guessing you thought the scouts could be wrong. Certainly a number of posters here speculated that he was better than the scouts thought he would be.

Bohm is not that great an athlete. It is also very rare for such tall players to be good defensive 3B. I recall you thought Hoskins was a good enough athlete to be a passable LF. That was incorrect.

Right now the only information we have about Bohm's defense comes from scouting reports and they are pretty universal that it is below average. He reportedly works hard and could always get better. All we have are the scouting reports now and they are more accurate than your scouting reports which probably are based on almost no first hand data if any. Just admit you have no clue about this. None of us here do unless we have some inside source.

[julio]

Among the things we do not know, is the extent to which scouts’ views are skewed by the fact that Bohm IS unusually tall for a 3B, and thus how much “size bias” may have affected their judgement.

[zambonir]

I'm just waiting for someone to argue that these guys are all gonna be great and exceed their doubters because the Phillies are geniuses.

[Squire]

BA Top 100 9 (1/21/2020) - Just 2 Phillies

27 Spencer Howard, RHP

28 Alec Bohm, 3B

[andyb]

Among the things we do not know, is the extent to which scouts’ views are skewed by the fact that Bohm IS unusually tall for a 3B, and thus how much “size bias” may have affected their judgement.

There is probably something to that size bias, though to be fair, there is also probably data behind lots of tall 3B being forced to move to 1B because they become below average defensively over time. Kris Bryant might be the model for Bohm. Offensively he has a bit more power though Bohm might have a better hit tool. Defensively though, Bryant was a small positive in his age 23-25 seasons but has turned negative in his age 26 and 27 seasons. Maybe some of the regression is due to injury and the Cubs still moving him to the OF occasionally, but it does seem that he has lost something defensively.

If I were looking at Kris Bryant as a free agent in 1-2 years do I think he can stay at 3B? I am not so sure about that.

[andyb]

MLB.com releasing their top 100 list at 3 PM tomorrow (on MLB.com and MLB Network). Assume we'll see Bohm and Howard in some order again. Medina has rightly dropped out of all these new top 100 lists and Stott is usually in the mix for the last 10 spots though I am guessing most larger rankings have him more in the 100-150 range.

[Squire]

Mlb.com list

30 - Alec Bohm

34 - Spencer Howard

87 - Bryson Stott

[nycphils]

Using their ranking system (combination of how many players in the Top 100 and how highly they are ranked) we are #17. Not bad.

[schillingfan]

The real killer was the bad drafts when we were a bad team at the top of the draft. All three players are from 2017, 2018, and 2019. Only Bohm was a top ten pick.

[andyb]

The report on Stott is one of the better ones we have seen with a 55 defensive tool (both fielding and arm).

[andyb]

Fangraphs should have their Phillies list soon. Apparently they are doing it by Spring Training "pods" so they are doing the Tampa area teams now. Detroit list today.

[nycphils]

2015 (Amaro) = Randolph, Kingery, Luke Williams, Kyle Martin
2016 (Klentak) = Moniak, Gowdy, Stobbe, JoJo
2017 (Klentak) = Haseley, Howard, Seabold, Scheiner
2018 (Klentak) = Bohm, forfeit, forfeit, Eastman

‘16 is just the absolute killer, ‘15 not far behind except that Kingery saves it.

[Austinfan]

2016 wasn't a great draft so far:

'#2 Senzel 0.6 WAR
'#6 Puk 0.2 WAR
'#8 Quantrill 0.1 WAR
'#10 Collins -0.2 WAR
'#11 Lewis 0.3 WAR
'#16 Thaiss 0.6 WAR
'#19 Dunn 0.2 WAR
'#20 Lux 0.3 WAR
'#21 Zeuch 0.3 WAR
'#25 Lauer 0.4 WAR
'#28 Kieboom -1.0 WAR (HS)
'#31 Kay 0.1 WAR
'#32 Smith 1.2 WAR
'#34 Hudson 2.4 WAR
In the second round (Gowdy #42)
'#58 Neuse 0.2 WAR
'#59 Reynolds 3.9 WAR
'#62 Solak 0.5 WAR
'#64 Alonso 5.0 WAR
'#66 Bichette 2.1 WAR (HS)
'#77 Fraley -0.8 WAR

Only 1 HS player has made it to the ML from the 1st rd, and the two best players so far were taken at the end of the round.
So Moniak could conceivably end up the best player of this group in the end!

[andyb]

So Moniak could conceivably end up the best player of this group in the end!

Or the worst. I think just about every neutral observer would prefer to have Senzel or Puk today who were both in the mix for the top pick at the time. And part of having the top pick was getting extra money to spend on other players in the top few rounds and it is hard to spin the utter failure of the Gowdy and Stobbe picks to even advance out of Low A. Irvin and Romero were safer picks after that, but they don't look like great prospects at this point either.

2016 was likely a huge miss for this organization even if we don't know the final results yet.

[zambonir]

The original sin of the current Phillies organization, even more so than not starting the rebuild in 2014, is their failure to actually fire everybody in 2015. That one year of wheel-spinning led to another 18 months of inertia - MacPhail gets hired on June 29 but doesn't actually start the job until the end of the season; Klentak gets hired at the end of the season but doesn't really change anything up for 1-2 years, including keeping Mackanin and, IMO, deferring to Gillick and Almaraz in 2016. Based on subsequent drafts you have to think they would have indeed taken Senzel or Puk or Corey Ray (who actually is worse than Moniak considering the age difference). IIRC they didn't fully take advantage of their international pool that year either.

It was certainly an uninspiring year to have the 1-1 but as with any draft when you start to go down the list you see that other teams with lower picks managed to either scout or develop someone better.

[Austinfan]

When the only players to hit the majors are college players who were 24 or so by the 2019 season, and none can even post 1 WAR, it's a horrible 1st round.
The only standouts so far were 34, 59, 64, and 66.

If it looked that bad ex ante, then gambling on Moniak made sense, especially when that allowed you to sign Gowdy.
There's a luck factor, if Gowdy bounces back 100% from TJ surgery they're geniuses.

I have a simple rule for judging draft picks, if numberous better picks were taken a few picks after your pick, you screwed up, if the better players were taken 15-20 picks after your pick, everyone screwed up and someone got lucky.

If the Patriots knew Brady would be the GOAT, they should have used a 1st rd pick, not a 6th rd pick, on him.

[andyb]

The fact that it was a mediocre draft in the first round AND the fact that we made a bad pick can both be true. Hard to know if Gowdy was a bad pick because of the injury (though I thought we overpaid at the time). Not hard to know Stobbe was a bad pick though. Puk would have a lot more WAR if he did not have Tommy John surgery and Senzel has also missed a bunch of time because of injury. As I said, just about everyone in baseball would prefer having them over Moniak now.

[allentown]

I wonder if Gowdy wasn't a bigger gamble than we realized at the time. He pitched 9 IP, before ending his draft-year season and then missed the next two seasons. Was he injured when we signed him? This season is his last before he is Rule 5 eligible. He pitched 77 bad innings last year.

[Austinfan]

Maybe.

Given Moniak is 21 and Senzel is 24, you have to figure Moniak has more upside (and risk).
If Moniak had gone to college, last year would have been his junior season and when he was drafted.
Instead he was putting up solid numbers in AA ball.

This is why you can't look at age and see it as the same for HS and college players.
While Moniak isn't 3 years behind in development, he's still 1-2 years behind.