If you blinked, you may have missed it.
That was the time flying by, quicker than any of us realized. We’re halfway through May, which means that All-Star weekend is coming up in two months. And now, thanks to MLB thinking that their presentation needs to rival that of the NFL and/or the NBA, that means the MLB first year player draft is coming up soon as well. We’ve documented how much we don’t care for the league making this into some kind of event that it really is not, but hey, why not?
With the
quickly approaching MLB draft coming up, that means people are starting to think about which amateur players will go where. This may be the last year the draft looks like this with the impending labor dispute threatening to upend everything we know about the sport, so while it’s still something we’re used to, let’s take a look at what those who are a lot smarter on this topic than I am are saying about who the Phillies might be selecting.
Remember: the Phillies have fallen 10 spots in this year’s draft thanks to being over the largest luxury tax so many years in a row.
Just Baseball – Hunter Dietz, LHP – Arkansas
Double-dipping in the Arkansas cheese dip, the Phillies go back and grab an exciting southpaw in Hunter Dietz. He’s been in the race for the top southpaw in this class for a while now, and while the track record isn’t as lengthy as his peers, the angle he creates allows his breaking pitches to be absolutely devastating. The fastball has reached into the upper-90s, too.
ESPN – Aidan Ruiz, SS – Stony Brook HS (NY)
*no written report at this time on ESPN
MLB Pipeline – Wes Mendes, LHP – Florida State
An athletic 6-foot-1 left-hander, Mendes will use a robust five-pitch mix to keep hitters guessing. While his fastball sits around 92 mph and tops out at 96, it does feature some life upstairs with some angle to his glove side. His 80-mph changeup is his best secondary, a plus cambio he sells well with arm speed, the kind of offspeed offering that seems to pause in mid-air with late arm side depth to it. His low-80s slider can show some good short glove side tilt and he can back foot it to right-handed hitters and he’s added a new, harder cutter, with better shape and control of it as the season has gone on. He’ll use his upper-70s curve to steal a strike early in counts.
Baseball America – Hunter Dietz, LHP – Arkansas
Like basically all of the pitchers mentioned in this mock outside of Flora, Dietz has a chance to go as high as the early teens depending on how he pitches down the stretch. He’s currently leading the SEC with 108 strikeouts and owns a 3.22 ERA over 13 starts and 72.2 innings—far and away a career high—with a 35.4% strikeout rate and 8.5% walk rate.
There will be many more mock drafts put up for us to discuss, so check back often as we update the mock draft round ups.
