Lack of rotation depth could lead Phillies to more collegiate pitching at Draft

KANSAS CITY -- The moment the Phillies selected right-hander Gage Wood with the 26th overall pick of the 2025 Draft, everybody expected him to move quickly through the Phillies’ farm system.

A few people even wondered if he might push for a promotion as early as last fall.

(It was never going to happen.)

Wood has made his way to Double-A Reading this year, so the road to the Majors shouldn’t be much longer. But it will be interesting to see if he makes his big league debut with the Phillies or another team. Wood is the Phillies’ No. 1 prospect and the No. 53 prospect in baseball, according to MLB Pipeline. It makes him the Phils’ most attractive trade chip before the Aug. 3 Trade Deadline with few blue-chip prospects slotting behind him.

• Day 1 picks: 36, 64, 100, 128, 135
• Bonus pool allotment: $7,773,000
• Last year’s top pick: Gage Wood, RHP, pick 26 … So far, Wood has lived up to the hype. The only question is how quickly he reaches the big leagues, and if he reaches the big leagues with the Phillies or not.
• Breakout 2025 pick: Cade Obermueller, SP, pick 63 ... Obermueller has fared well in his first seven starts with Low-A Clearwater, going 0-1 with a 2.70 ERA. His four-seam fastball has touched 96.87 mph, and averaged 92.6 mph.

Trade or not, the Phillies need more talent like Wood in the system. The Phillies’ lack of starting pitching depth has had them scrambling following Andrew Painter’s recent demotion to Triple-A Lehigh Valley.

But talent might be more difficult to find this year. The Phillies would have had the 26th pick in this year’s Draft, but because they exceeded the second threshold of the Competitive Balance Tax, their first pick dropped 10 spots to No. 36 overall at the end of Competitive Balance Round A.

Randy Johnson (101.1 bWAR) and Johnny Bench (75.1 bWAR) are the two most successful players with the 36th overall pick.

But the most successful 36th overall pick since 1986 is Ryan Mountcastle (7.7 bWAR) in 2015.

Wood was the Phillies’ first college pitcher selected in the first round since Aaron Nola in 2014. In the Phillies’ previous 10 Drafts, they selected five high school hitters, a pair of high school pitchers and three college bats in the first round: shortstop Cornelius Randolph (2015), outfielder Mickey Moniak (2016), outfielder Adam Haseley (2017), third baseman Alec Bohm (2018), shortstop Bryson Stott (2019), right-hander Mick Abel (2020), Painter (2021), outfielder Justin Crawford (2022), shortstop Aidan Miller (2023) and outfielder Dante Nori (2024).

Wood started a Phillies’ run on college pitchers in the 2025 Draft. They used each of their first eight picks and 14 of 20 picks overall on college pitchers.

It suggested the organization felt the need to find more polished pitchers that could help more quickly, although Phillies assistant general manager of amateur scouting Brian Barber insisted last summer that wasn’t the intention.

"Not really," Barber said. "Some of that is just -- obviously when you're drafting, you would rather take a starting pitcher or a guy who has potential to be a starting pitcher. But one of our philosophies is that we'd rather take a big league reliever in the fifth round than a Minor League starter."

It will be interesting to see if the Phillies follow a similar plan this year. For what it’s worth, MLB Pipeline’s Jonathan Mayo had the Phils selecting Notre Dame pitcher Jack Radel in his latest mock draft.

The MLB Pipeline crew had the Phils selecting Mississippi pitcher Cade Townsend in another mock draft in late June.