The 2021 MLB draft finished up yesterday with 20 rounds of selection. An amount that made the ending feel very abrupt. The Phillies had 20 picks in those 20 rounds and have already added on 5 non-drafted free agents as I start to write this. You can find links to all of this on the Draft Tracker. Overall, I don’t think their draft is going to blow anyone away, especially if your primary source is pre-draft rankings, more on that later, but also there was a theme and a pretty good one. I tweeted during the middle of the day that going off public boards is not wrong, but from a fan engagement and encouragement standpoint, it does ask those fans to trust that your scouts are right and your player development is good. Given Phillies drafts historically and then some recent notable ones (looking at you 2016), there isn’t a wellspring of trust between Phillies fans and the player acquisition parts of the big league club.
A good place to start is the “going off the board” or reaches part of Day 2 of the draft which turned out to be neither of those things. I mentioned on may Day 2 recap that I expected Jordan Viars (3) and Micah Ottenbreit (4) might be underslot given it seemed like both were reaches based on public knowledge. It appears that Viars did not expect to get out of the 3rd round and was widely considered to be in that talent level by many teams. Ottenbreit also had his arrow way up and is definitely one of those players where you expect big growth in the next few years. Gavin Tonkel (9) is a player who had his stock go way up with the extra time before the draft and the Phillies pounced on a guy who might have been undervalued (Viars also benefitted from the extra time). I now expect Viars and Ottenbriet to at least get slot if not above. I still expect Jose Pena Jr. to get overslot because he is a project HS RHP. I don’t know on Tonkel, I would expect overslot, but maybe not hugely.
Those 4, plus Andrew Painter (1) and Jose Valadez-Acuna (14) really made this a HS heavy draft for the Phillies. It is a lot of risk in 20 players and a lot of projection and upside. Upside and risk really is the theme of the draft. The Phillies have a lot of low impact players in the system who profile as solid, but unspectacular major leaguers. The cost of going for upside throughout the draft was risk. There are a lot of pitchers in the Phillies draft class that lack in track record, control, or a lack of track record of control. The Phillies did go heavily into fastball velocity and spin rate. The interesting part of this has been that a lot of the industry has kind of zagged in this aspect, counting on their player development teams to pull more velocity out of arms. That said, velocity is king right now out of the bullpen, and a theme throughout the college arms taken is that they have a pretty easy projection as relievers, even if they look like starters now.
As for lack of track record. The Phillies took some players late in Ty Collins (16), Malik Binns (18), Seth Halvorsen (19), and Cam Wynne (20) who have big tools, but not lot of a innings. All 4 have big arm strength that makes them intriguing, but the Phillies are asking a lot of the player development to pull the best from these players.
Other than going hard on high school and risk, the Phillies strongly deviated from their normal hitter selection strategy. Both domestically and internationally the Phillies have hammered the up the middle positions (C, 2B, SS, CF) with players who not only play there now, but project to stick there long term. Gavin Tonkel and Logan Cerny (10) should probably still in center field, but Jared Carr (13) is there, but might not be there long term, and Ethan Wilson (2), Jordan Viars, and T.J. Rumfield (12) are all definitely corner bats. And while Cerny and Carr might be up the middle, they join the corner guys in adding a lot more power into an organization deeply lacking in it. Some of this is probably a change in draft in philosophy (this group took Baron Radcliff in the 5th last year), but also from an org need and playing time perspective there are a lot of up the middle players on the FCL and Clearwater rosters.
That is over 700 words without talking about the core of the Phillies draft, their first two picks. Andrew Painter is widely expected to be underslot, but also the Phillies were very high on him. There is definitely some of the Mick Abel thing going on where HS RHPs who aren’t complete monster (see Jobe) get pushed down a bit on draft day. I don’t know if there is an ace ceiling here right now, but it is a surprisingly high floor given the array of pitches and control at his size. There is a chance he takes a huge step forward as he fills out his massive frame. Ethan Wilson (2) was actually rated higher by some sites than Painter, and while his power was way down this season, the contact abilities were spectacular. He probably moves quickly through the system and is already one of the best hitters in the system. It is a surprisingly large amount of floor for the later risk, but also with the potential for a lot of 1-2 impact.
Since a couple of people asked about it, here is where some notable picks slot in to the system at first rough glance (a full ranking while come in the next week-ish).
- Andrew Painter: 2 or 3 with Johan Rojas ahead of Stott and Francisco Morales
- Ethan Wilson: 4-6 right in that Stott and Morales group
- Jordan Viars: 10-20 need to figure out if he is in the Baylor, Simmons, O’Hoppe grouping, but a chance he is behind Yemal Flores and Rickardo Perez
- Micah Ottenbriet: 15-25 range, probably on the high side of the Eduar Segovia, Gunner Mayer, Jordi Martinez grouping
- Jose Pena Jr: 20-30, middle to bottom side of the above group
- Griff McGarry: 20-30, probably below Pena
- Christian McGowan: 20-30, probably between Pena and McGarry, probably below Gunner Mayer
- Logan Cerny: 25-35, in front of the Carlos De La Cruz group, behind the Jhailyn Ortiz, Yemal Flores, and the catchers grouping
- Gavin Tonkel: 30-50, probably in the same group as Jadiel Sanchez and Marcus Lee Sang