My recap of Day 1 of the Phillies draft was on the harsh side, and no real amount of things they could do on Day 2 was really going to change that. It was clear they had allocated a large amount of their draft resources towards signing Tyler Spangler away from Stanford, and that they would probably be having a low excitement conventional draft from that point forward.
Largely that was true, though they clearly did some math overnight and found they had enough money saved or able to be saved to take Will Gasparino in the 5th round. He is very similar to Caden Bogenpohl, expect he hasn’t sold out his power for contact and retains much of the swing and miss. It will be interesting to see the two of them share an outfield. It doesn’t change my opinion of the Bogenpohl pick, but that is the difference between using a 2nd round pick and a 5th round pick on a big slugger project, even if their bonuses might end up somewhere closer in the end.
Much of Day 2 proceeded like the 2025 draft in a positive way. Finally someone on the analytics side or one of the scouts has got them to just stop taking 6’5″ small school RHP with poor deliveries and fastball angles. Instead we have a lot of what other teams have been taking for the last 5 years with a little extra weird thrown in. It was a lot of big extension, low approach angle fastballs, with weird deliveries. If the Phillies can get more command and velocity out of this group, there are interesting relievers in here. I would have liked to see 1-2 of them been upside starting pitching projects like a Griff McGarry or George Klassen, but because they were saving some money there were more pure relievers and older, less projectable arms. That said, Christian Coppola (12) seems to have an outlier sweeper, and that makes him quite interesting.
On the hitting side, they took Gasparino out of UCLA followed by C Macon Winslow from UNC, but largely stayed away from big school bats falling. Reece Moroney (10) doesn’t seem to have big upside, but there might be some utility ceiling there, totally fine where he was picked. Brayden Bakes (13) probably won’t hit high level pitching, but if he does there are tools to work with there. Clyne (15), Quintanar (16), and Haworth (18) are less interesting and seem to be org guy upside players and I might have liked to see more dart throws on arms, but they aren’t egregious picks.
The two HS picks were fine. Patrick Clemmey is more the age of a 1st year JuCo player and has a big college commitment, but missed a lot of time in HS. Braeden Lipoff doesn’t look to have big projection or athleticism, and HS catchers are very risky as an overall demographic. Bringing them both into the system would be good, but until we see bonuses we won’t know if that is possible. Sort of in that same bucket, but a college guy is Justin Lee who doesn’t look like an easy sign from the outside, but has very intriguing upside for late in the draft.
It still all comes down to the Phillies making a big bet on Tyler Spangler. He looked like a potential top 10 pick coming into the year, and maybe if he plays all year he ends up there. He didn’t and it was due to an injury that may or may not be a long term problem, and cost him a lot of developmental and evaluation time. It is a bet they can win, but it is a place (injuries that have him off a lot of team’s boards) they have bet on before (Aidan Miller, Griffin Burkholder) with mixed results.
Getting a second big bat upside bet in Gasparino to go with Bogenpohl did add some upside to the overall draft, but it still falls into that area where that isn’t a place of developmental strength for the Phillies. While it is good to see them be more modern in their pitcher evaluation, they didn’t really add any boom bust arms to try and work where they have had more success. It leaves it in a place where Brian Barber is once again asking you to trust their evaluation and development, and that just isn’t a well you can keep going back to with their track record. Maybe they do crack through and we look back at this on being a great plan when your first pick is #36, but we are just going to have to once again try and trust that they know what they are doing.