Yesterday was the appetizer to the draft. Today the real madness begins. Starting at 1pm eastern teams will begin a flurry of picks with a pick per minute for 8 rounds and over 240 players drafted. I could give you a list of best players available, but we already saw yesterday with the second round that the Phillies care nothing for national rankings. What we do have is the past two draft day 2s under Almaraz.
Here is what he did in 2015 and 2016:
- 3rd Round: Lucas Williams / Cole Stobbe
- 4th Round: Kyle Martin / JoJo Romero
- 5th Round: Bailey Falter / Cole Irvin
- 6th Round: Tyler Gilbert / David Martinelli
- 7th Round: Luke Leftwich / Henri Lartigue
- 8th Round: Greg Pickett / Grant Dyer
- 9th Round: Mark Laird / Blake Quinn
- 10th Round: Josh Tobias / Julian Garcia
That is 4 high school players, so maybe we expect 1-2 to go off the board today. I expect at least one college starter who the Phillies see as a starter and another 1-2 that project as relievers long term. Unless the Phillies take an overslot guy in the third, I don’t expect too many senior signs late to make the money work. For the most part the Phillies have gone best player available, and also have stayed mostly up the middle with their college bats. We have a 2B, 2 CFs, a C, and then a 1B, but then you add that to their earlier round track record where they took another college 2B (Kingery) and a college CF (Haseley) and there is a pattern of sorts. Also without knowing Howard’s bonus situation we don’t know whether the Phillies have
Once again, don’t freak out over individual picks until we know all the bonuses and where that money may be going. Without the ability to trade you will see the Phillies “reach” for guys they love.
I will be posting along with the draft all day and will try to keep up with the picks as they come in.