Phillies to stick with 'simple approach' in Draft
PHILADELPHIA -- The Phillies find themselves in relatively new territory as they prepare for the 2019 MLB Draft.
They have the 14th overall selection after picking no lower than 10th in each of the previous five. (They selected J.P. Crawford with the 16th overall pick in 2013.) It means the Phillies have been playing better baseball and moving out of their rebuild. It also means it will be more difficult to find a future big leaguer, but it is a good problem to have.
"We focus on the top 20 players across the country, we line them up and we're going to take the best player available," Phillies amateur scouting director Johnny Almaraz said Thursday afternoon at Citizens Bank Park. "Pretty simple approach. We've probably got a group of about five players that we believe are going to be there. We're doing all of our homework with a pretty good grouping of college and high school players."
The 2019 Draft will take place tonight through Wednesday, beginning with tonight's Draft preview show on MLB Network and MLB.com at 6 ET. MLB Network will broadcast the first 41 picks (Round 1 and Competitive Balance Round A), while MLB.com will stream all 78 picks on Day 1. MLB.com will also provide live pick-by-pick coverage of Rounds 3-10 on Day 2, beginning with a preview show at 12:30 p.m. ET. Rounds 11-40 can be heard live on MLB.com on Day 3, beginning at noon ET.
Go to MLB.com/Draft to see the Top 200 Prospects list, mock drafts from MLB Pipeline analysts Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo, the complete order of selection and more. And follow @MLBDraft on Twitter to see what Draft hopefuls, clubs and experts are saying.
Here's how the Draft is shaping up for the Phillies, whose first selection is the 14th pick:
In about 50 words
The Phillies have chosen position players in the first round in each of Almaraz's first four Drafts. It does not guarantee the Phillies will take another position player Monday, but in a pitching-rich league in which everybody seems to throw 95 mph or more, talented hitters are harder and harder to find. Almaraz likes hitters because he believes the organization always stands a good chance of developing them.
What they're saying
Might the Phillies lean toward a college pitcher or player knowing they might have a faster path to the big leagues? It could help a team expected to contend for the foreseeable future.
"My philosophy is always to take the best player," Almaraz said. "What's happened over the past couple of years, there's more college players available than the high school group. The college players, we have a tendency to focus on more because there are just more of them that are more polished and more advanced."
Who might they take?
The 14th pick is a crapshoot. The Phillies have been linked to everybody from Baylor catcher Shea Langeliers to Elon right-hander George Kirby to Texas Tech third baseman Josh Jung to West Virginia right-hander Alek Manoah. The one thing they have in common? Every one of them is a college player.
Money matters
The Phillies have $6,475,800 available in their bonus pool, including $4,036,800 for their first-round pick.
Under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, each team has an allotted bonus pool equal to the sum of the values of that club's selections in the first 10 rounds of the Draft. The more picks a team has, and the earlier it picks, the larger the pool. The signing bonuses for a team's selections in the first 10 rounds, plus any bonus greater than $125,000 for a player taken after the 10th round, will apply toward the bonus-pool total.
Any team going up to 5 percent over its allotted pool will be taxed at a 75-percent rate on the overage. A team that overspends by 5-10 percent gets a 75-percent tax plus the loss of a first-round pick. A team that goes 10-15 percent over its pool amount will be hit with a 100-percent penalty on the overage and the loss of a first- and second-round pick. Any overage of 15 percent or more gets a 100-percent tax plus the loss of first-round picks in the next two Drafts.
Shopping list
Some Phillies fans might be surprised to read the names of Jung and Langeliers, because the Phillies selected third baseman Alec Bohm in the first round in 2018 and the Phillies could sign catcher J.T. Realmuto to an extension in the next couple of years. But the MLB Draft is not like the NFL or NBA drafts. It is incredibly difficult to acquire and develop talent in baseball, so there is little harm in stockpiling at a specific position, if an organization believes that player at that spot in the Draft is the best talent.
Trend watch
The Phillies have had success with college players in the past few Drafts, so it would not be a surprise to see them continue in that direction. It helps that there are more metrics behind those players, with college teams being able to provide launch angles and spin rates for their players and pitchers.
"We're collectively accumulating all this information and making really good objective decisions," Almaraz said. "You have data on every single thing, and you're able to comp them to Major League data."
The recent top picks:
2018: Alec Bohm, 3B, Wichita State (third overall)
2017: Adam Haseley, OF, University of Virginia (eighth overall)
2016: Mickey Moniak, OF, La Costa Canyon High School (first overall)
2015: Cornelius Randolph, SS, Griffin High School (10th overall)
2014: Aaron Nola, RHP, Louisiana State University (seventh overall)