What Happened to Long-Ago Draftees?

[phillychuck]

I went through the old [draft] threads from '05 to '18 (more recent ones have players still in the minors) and picked out players I found really interesting or rooted for in the minors. Most are not the top picks, but guys who flashed at least for a time:

Year --name--(round)
05 Mike Zagurski (12) he made a decent career for himself
06 Dominic Brown (20) we were sure he wouldn't sign...
07 Mike Rizzoti (6) One of the first Reading bombers
08 Michael Schwimmer (14) outspoken and now a sabermetrics guy
09 Jon Singleton (8) remember how excited we were when he was spotted in CLW?
10 Cameron Rupp (3) tough guy and fun to watch
11 Adam Morgan (3) minor league no-hitters were really exciting
12 Dylan Cozens (2) another Reading bomber
13 Mark Leiter (22) might have made it absent the terrible injury
14 Rhys Hoskins (5) we've had some stellar 5th round picks; another Reading bomber
16 Darrick Hall (14) Dallas Baptist, the Phils' feeder program
17 Nick Maton (7) hit like a maniac for weeks at a time in the minors
18 Logan O'Hoppe (23) still sorry about that trade; I believe in his talent

[bkox]

13 Mark Leiter (22) might have made it absent the terrible injury

Hes putting up some good numbers in the Cubs bullpen this season

[phillychuck]

I hadn't seen that! Good for him!

[zambonir]

Yeah he pitched against us last series (or at least warmed up).

[bkox]

One of the "kids" I was rooting for as he moved through the minors was Steve Susdorf. At 27, he spent a 4 day weekend with the Phils in 2013, after having some success even into Lehigh. My favorite quote of his when asked how it felt to be in the Bigs for four days was "Fabulous. First time in my life I got a paycheck that had a comma in it." He was gone from the game less than a year later.

According to Linkedin, hes now a Senior Project Manager at DPR Construction

[allentown]

I'll add to your list:
Dugan -- good hit tool, couldn't stay healthy, I liked him at Reading
Travis Mattair (07) -- I rmember we were very excited when we signed him, thought he had a chance to be our 3B
Collier and Gose (08) -- both tantalized for a while as OF prospects, never thought much of our #1 pick that year
Altherr and Kelly Dugan in (09) -- both looked like they would make it, Dugan had good hit tool, couldn't stay healthy, I saw both play and they were good

Roman Quinn (2011) we were sold on him for many seasons, in the end health problems and didn't hit enough
Cord Sandberg (2013) another OF in the time of Altherr and Cozens who showed power

[bkox]

Altherr and Kelly Dugan in (09) -

Both now 32 years old and both are still holding on to the dream. Dugan is playing in Lancaster in Independent ball. Altherr is playing for the Tri City Valley Cats managed by our old friend Pete Incaviglia

[bkeich]

Altherr still surprises me. He looked like he could hit, big, lanky, athletic guy, just looked like a player. He was tantalizingly close to me, he had all the tools, but somehow they just never added up to anything more than below average.

I could never see what was missing, hand eye coordination maybe. Seemed like a guy who wanted it, did the right things, had athleticism and even baseball ability, but just didn't all work. Shame.

[zambonir]

He was wrecked by injuries IMO. Couldn't put it back together at the major league level in between them, ran out of options, game over.

But I'm enjoying everyone reminiscing about all the guys they never would have included in deadline trades

[Squire]

I think I yelled with excitement in my office when the Phillies took Jake Blalock

[phillychuck]

I was sure he'd out-hit his brother, who had a weird career after looking like a stud when he first came up. Many attribute Hank's demise to the HR he hit during the All star game, believing he changed his high-average swing to generate more power, but failed to generate enough while watching his average decline.

My all-time favorite minor leaguer (who was drafted before 2005) was Travis Chapman. He was quite the hitter for a half-season at Reading. I remember attending one game where it was 7-6, two outs in the bottom of the ninth there, and Chapman was coming up. He was on every pitch all night, and I remember saying to my Dad, he is going to hit one out and win this game. As soon as I said it, crack, line drive over the LF fence. I was sure he was the next Mike Schmidt. He got beaned halfway through that season and was never the same player (was injured a lot, too). Good defensive 3B, also. He got 1 MLB AB in 2003, then got hurt again and played mostly below AA ball.

[Varjak]

09 Jon Singleton (8) remember how excited we were when he was spotted in CLW?

I still remember how incensed people were when he was included in the Hunter Pence trade. The way people talked at the time ("We included Zeid too?!" "We threw in Santana as well?! Why don't we just give them Oswalt back while we're at it!"), one would have thought this was a deal that would eclipse Ferguson Jenkins and Ryne Sandberg as the worst trade in Phillies history.

[DurhamBull]

I still remember how incensed people were when he was included in the Hunter Pence trade.

Thank you for remembering that! I don't follow the minor leagues so I didn't have my own opinion on Singleton or the trade in general, and I was a little dismayed at the time based on what I read on this board. While I don't like to see anyone not achieve their best outcome, when Singleton's name has cropped up over the years it has made me glad the trade didn't turn out to be as lopsided as some had perceived it to be.

[bkox]

Honestly the trade that sent Hunter Pence to SF was probably the worst of the two trades. All 3 players we got back ended up with negative WAR

[allentown]

Yes, it was a terrible trade. It likely also was a salary dump. Pence had become unpopular with a lot of fans. There was unhappiness about how quick that team was ousted from the playoffs.

[Docs]

I had not found this board yet at that time, if I had, I would have also voiced my displeasure with the trade (and a few others during that era). My issue was not that I believed that these prospects would have hall of fame careers, it was that boston's future first base coach didn't understand the market value of prospects, and he could have dialed the trades back and left something in the cupboard for another trade.

That said, it was in the post RAJ era rebuild that I found this board, and specifically this annual thread. I used to follow the draft and would scour the internet trying to see which of our picks signed. One summer, my search sent me to this thread for the signing status of one of the picks, and then sent me back to this thread to find an update on another pick, and I realized "hey this group is doing the same exact thing as me, only they are way better at it!" The next couple of years I followed this thread during and after the draft, and then slowly became an all year tourist, enjoying your conversations about my favorite topics, bewildered by the respect members show for each other on the internet! It took me a while before I finally created a login and started posting, making me feel like Tommy Williams from Shawshank Redemption. Thank you for those that maintain the board, thank you for those that contribute to the conversations, thank you for this annual draft thread (my favorite thread each year) and thank you for taking me in and letting me be part of this community (even if there wasn't a vote).

[phillychuck]

One final comment--you can't analyze a trade like the one where we acquired Pence by looking at the actual outcome--that is just one of a myriad of possibilities. You have to analyze the trade by what was known at the time--what was expected of Pence, what were the possibilities of the prospects. Singleton and Cosart, who headlined the trade, seemed to the fans to be poised for good MLB careers, maybe very good. The Phils probably knew more than we did, though, about those two...Singleton smoked his way out of the league because of a marijuana addiction (although he's clean and back now, many years later) and Cosart had temperament issues that led to a journeyman-type career. Perhaps the Phils knew that, but fans didn't and justifiably criticized the trade based on what they knew. Based on the outcome, it was a mostly a good trade for the Phils, based on the probability distribution of possible results as known by fans at the time, not so good (especially with Santana, who also had significant upside, thrown in). Based on insider knowledge of the off-field limitations of Cosart and Singleton, it may well have been a much better trade at the time than many of us thought.

[zambonir]

The Pence trades were bad coming and going. He didn't really make the 2011 team that much better (on the position player side it had other flaws - Ibanez and Polanco - rather than the young OFs Pence actually replaced) and exchanging Burrell and Werth for Ibanez and Pence reflected the team's still-primitive approach to run production. Then to add insult to injury, yeah, he and Vic were both deal more to avoid the luxury tax than to start a rebuild as they still went all-in in 2013 and 2014.

The sad/ironic thing is that if the current ownership approach was in play back then the 2013-2014 teams might have still been able to make a better go of it. They still wanted to win but had to shop in the bargain aisle to fill out the roster (Michael and Delmon Young, Ben Revere, Lannan, even Burnett) whereas now they would have spent more $ (or at least retained Pence and re-signed Vic (who actually was good and did win a championship in the immediate aftermath). That probably wouldn't have worked out in the long run either but the financial burdens of a few bigger contracts wouldn't have made the 2015-2018 teams any better or worse either way.

I've got no problem trading anyone or everyone in the right deal (and especially pitchers - Drabek, Knapp, Sanchez and even Spencer Howard are among the shiniest objects the Phillies have traded, while the Carrasco and Happ deals were both worth it). But you still don't want to make bad trades.

[BostonRoss]

I was happy with the trade to acquire Pence at the time and I still am. The Phillies were probably the best team in baseball in 2011, and I wanted to see them go for the jugular. As phillychuck said, we can't evaluate it based on team results. Pence was a very good player, and All-Star in 2011 and 2012; he even got MVP votes in 2011. He put up 2.3 WAR in 54 games for the Phillies. The chances of Pence being a major postseason contributor were far greater than those of Mayberry, Brown, or Francisco.

Most trades of prospects are not of the Bartolo-Colon-to-the Expos variety. The Phillies traded even better prospects for Halladay, and that was a clear win despite only one postseason series win for the Phillies while Halladay was on the team.

I guess people who didn't like the Pence trade would have hated the Dodgers' move to acquire Trea Turner and Max Scherzer if they were Dodger fans. The 2021 Dodgers won more games than the 2011 Phillies, but they too lost in the postseason and didn't get to the World Series while they had Scherzer and Turner. And the players Dodgers traded are better than those the Phillies traded (Josiah Gray is an All-Star). But the Dodgers went for it--good for them.

[Philsmania]

Using old school thinking, the Phillies won the Pence trade. From mid-2011 onward Pence had a more consequential career than the four guys the Phillies traded combined. In fact, if I'm correct, nothwithstanding Singleton's brief comeback this year, Pence's ML career outlasted all of theirs. Where the Phillies lost it and the Astros won it was in what both teams did afterwards. The Phillies salary dumped Pence the following season and he went on to become a beloved semi-iconic player for the GIants (he'll very likely be on their equivalent of the WOF). The Astros, meanwhile, employed the four guys they got from the Phillies not as building blocks but as assets who helped them aquire other guys. Santana was one of those assets and it looked in Milwaukee like he was a step away from becoming a special player but, somehow, never took that step.

The more costly trade for the Phillies was probably the Oswalt trade. Villar and Happ both had lengthy productive careers. Oswalt, however, did play a role in the 2010 Phillies' big second half surge so the trade is not an abject disaster. Had the Phillies gotten past the Giants and beaten the Rangers in the WS, I doubt there would be any regrets about that trade. Unfortunately, that was his last good year. We basically traded Villar and Happ (Gose ended up not amounting to much) for two good months of Oswalt and an October lottery ticket. See also the Tigers trading Michigan native John Smoltz for Doyle Alexander in 1987.