Phillies mock draft roundup

The MLB amateur draft is right around the corner and you know what that means. None stop speculating on players that may not even sniff the major leagues for another 2-3 years! Get hyped!

Actually this year might be different as some of the top college players might, might, have a chance at seeing major league time this year with the season still expecting to start some time in July. Pitchers stand a better chance at this, but there still remains the possibility that some of the name you see on June 10 show up again in August or September.

With that in mind, we also know that it’s everyone’s favorite season - mock draft season! We all love seeing who the Phillies are supposed to take and seeing the reasons behind these picks, whether it be because X player slides to them or Y player was taken before they had the chance to take him themselves. So, let’s see some of the more recent drafts that have shown up in recent days.

• At MLB.com, Jim Callis takes his stab at predicting the entire first round sans Houston, who has lost their pick this year. In his mock draft, he has the Phillies taking Garrett Mitchell, an outfielder out of UCLA. His reasoning goes like this:

Mitchell is another huge wild card because he has five-tool upside but also Type 1 diabetes and just six homers in 121 college games. There’s a lot of recent chatter that the Phillies could take Bitsko, and all three of the best high school arms are in play here.

• Bleacher Report (contain your eyeroll, mister) has the Phillies selecting Pete Crow-Armstrong, a high school outfielder from Harvard-Westlake HS in California. They didn’t give any reasons why or any kind of scouting report, so it looks like the author’s dart landed in just the right spot. Remember the last time the Phillies took a high school outfielder from California? Yeah...
• Kiley McDaniel over at ESPN put out his second version of his mock draft the other day and this time, he thinks the Phillies are going to go with Nick Bitsko, a pitcher from nearby Central Bucks East High School. Here is what Kiley had to say:

Bitsko is the hottest name in the industry. He posted a video on Instagram with some Rapsodo data over footage of a bullpen session, but a lot of prep pitchers have done that. What made this notable was that Bitsko reclassified to the 2020 draft class in January and has thrown only one bullpen for scouts since then (his spring season never started). The three innings he threw over two events last summer provide the only track record most teams have with Bitsko. Showing that he’s at full strength and has improved since the summer and giving more complete data such as this to clubs would serve to make him an option at most picks in the first round, rather than just an over-slot option after pick 30.

San Diego and Philly are both known to be interested, and Bitsko’s style of pitching appeals to a number of teams, including Baltimore and Arizona, which both pick in the compensatory round, so they have plenty of ammo to meet Bitsko’s price. There’s an argument that Bitsko has the highest ceiling in the draft besides the consensus top three, but there are teams that simply don’t have enough information to be comfortable drafting him.

Interesting. It’s been seen a lot on Twitter how a lot of players are posting personal workouts and analytic information for all to see in the hopes it would boost their draft profile headed into the draft. Pitsko is obviously hoping this will work.

• What would a mock draft be without Keith Law chiming in from The Athletic ($) with his second go ‘round as well at trying to see who will go where. He thinks the Phillies go with Crow-Armstrong as well, thinking the glove he possesses will carry him to a career in the big leagues.

Crow-Armstrong bulked up this winter and is one of the best defenders in the draft class, bringing a nice floor of a clear big leaguer (because of the glove) who hits for some average, and some more upside if the power he flashed this spring is a sign of power to come.

• Eric Longenhagen at Fangraphs brings us his version of a mock draft, aptly titled “Mach 1”. I love a clever pun. Anyway, his thought process leads him to conclude the Phillies will go with Clayton Beeter, a pitcher from Texas Tech. Among a cluster of college pitchers taken, Longenhagen had this to say:

I think some of the teams picking in the middle of round one (Reds, Rangers, Cubs, Red Sox, D-backs) might be more motivated than usual to take a pitcher who they can plug and play in their bullpen sometime this summer, and the Phillies are perhaps the most needy of these. Tennessee lefty Garrett Crochet and Texas Tech righty Clayton Beeter (in the James Karinchak mold mechanically, 94-98 with a 70 slider) each have two pitches that would probably miss big league bats right now and would be good fits for this.

Bullpenning them for the rest of this year doesn’t preclude you from developing them as starters next spring. It doesn’t seem Philly is limited to this player pool and is casting a wide net; they’re also interested in [Nick] Bitsko and [Tyler] Soderstrom according to sources. [Robert] Hassell is also just great value at this point and would be a threat to go at any of these picks.

As more mocks come out throughout the coming weeks, we’ll grab them and make sure we have you covered.