Mickey Moniak

Phillies Place Jake Arrieta On 10-Day IL

By Connor Byrne | September 17, 2020 at 2:20pm CDT

Sept. 17: Arrieta’s strain is a Grade 1 strain, manager Joe Girardi tells reporters (Twitter link via Matt Breen of the Philadelphia Inquirer). He won’t pitch again during the regular season but could still be a potential option in the playoffs, should the Phillies get there.

Sept. 16: The Phillies announced that they’ve placed right-hander Jake Arrieta (right hamstring strain) and outfielder Kyle Garlick (right oblique strain) on the 10-day injured list. Those moves helped clear space for the promotion of outfielder Mickey Moniak. The Phillies also recalled righty Connor Brogdon.

Arrieta’s injury makes it possible that we’ve seen the last of him in a Phillies uniform, as he’s due to reach free agency after the season. The Phillies signed the former NL Cy Young winner and ex-Cubs star to a three-year, $75MM shortly before the 2018 campaign began, but the returns haven’t been positive for the club. Arrieta has missed time with multiple injuries and performed like a back-end starter when healthy, having logged a 4.36 ERA/4.55 FIP over 352 2/3 innings in a Phillies uniform. He has thrown 44 1/3 frames of 5.08 ERA/4.67 FIP ball with 6.5 K/9, 3.25 BB/9 and a 51.8 percent groundball rate this season.

Arrieta’s disappointing production in 2020 is one of the reasons the Phillies are fighting for their playoff lives at 24-23. Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler have given the team top-level numbers out of its rotation, but Arrieta, Spencer Howard, Zach Eflin and Vince Velasquez have all failed to prevent runs at an acceptable level in a combined 28 starts.

Phillies To Promote Mickey Moniak

By Steve Adams | September 16, 2020 at 2:50pm CDT

The Phillies are set to call up former No. 1 overall draft pick Mickey Moniak, per Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia (Twitter link). It’ll be the Major League debut for the 22-year-old outfielder.

Moniak wasn’t initially included in the Phillies’ 60-man player pool to begin the shortened season, but he was added shortly before the trade deadline. Now, with Kyle Garlick sustaining an apparent oblique injury, Moniak join the club for his first taste of the Majors. He spent the 2019 season in Double-A, where he posted a .252/.303/.439 batting line. Those numbers don’t immediately stand out, but in the pitcher-friendly Eastern League, that was actually 15 percent better than the league average (115 wRC+). Moniak connected on 11 home runs and piled up extra-base hits, adding 28 doubles and 13 triples to his ledger. He also swiped 15 bases in 18 tries.

Solid 2019 output notwithstanding, it’s also fair to say that Moniak’s career to date hasn’t quite gone as the Phillies would’ve hoped when taking him with the top overall pick. That’s not to say that he’s not a legitimate prospect — he ranks ninth among Phillies prospects at FanGraphs, 12th at Baseball America and 13th at MLB.com — but fair or not, the expectations for any top overall pick are understandably sky-high.

Moniak may not rank within the game’s top 100 prospects or even within his own club’s top 10 on some lists, but he’ll now be afforded the opportunity to prove his doubters wrong and establish himself as a piece of the Phillies’ future. He’ll join an outfield mix that features Bryce Harper, Adam Haseley, Roman Quinn, Andrew McCutchen ad Phil Gosselin, giving the clubs another left-handed bat capable of playing any of the three outfield spots.

As it stands, the Phillies will be able to control Moniak through at least the 2026 season, although that timeline could be altered depending on future optional assignments. The Phillies will need to make a move to select Moniak’s contract, as he’s not currently on the team’s 40-man roster.

Recent Player Pool Additions: Tigers, Rangers, Rays, Pirates, Phillies

By Steve Adams | September 3, 2020 at 9:30am CDT

The flurry of trades leading up to the deadline created some vacancies in teams’ player pools, and we’ve continued to see a few clubs add prospects to their ranks even in the days since the deadline as they look to get said players some vital developmental reps late in the season. Here’s a look at some of the latest additions around the league…

Outfielder Parker Meadows and right-handers Logan Shore, Jason Foley and Alex Lange have all been added to the Tigers’ pool, the team announced Thursday morning. Meadows, the No. 44 pick in 2018 and the younger brother of Rays star Austin Meadows, is the most highly regarded of the bunch. He posted strong numbers that summer but struggled in his first full season, slashing .221/.296/.312 against older competition in Class-A. He’s ranked 13th among Detroit prospects at MLB.com and at FanGraphs. Lange, 24, was the better of the two pitching prospects acquired from the Cubs in the trade that sent Nick Castellanos to Chicago last year. He’s pitched as a high as Double-A already and could be an option for the Tigers by next year. Foley was an undrafted free agent in ’16 who missed the 2018 season due to injury but returned with solid numbers in Class-A Advanced last year. Shore, a former second-round pick of the A’s, was sent to Detroit as a PTBNL in 2018’s Mike Fiers trade. Shore’s changeup is considered a potentially plus pitch, but the rest of his arsenal isn’t regarded nearly as highly.

Earlier Additions

The Rangers announced that infielder Davis Wendzel, outfielder Bubba Thompson and outfielder Steele Walker were all added to their 60-man pool this week. Wendzel was the No. 41 overall pick in the 2019 draft, while Thompson was selected 26th overall back in 2017. Wendzel saw just seven pro games after being drafted last year, so he’s still relatively light on overall professional experience. Thompson had a strong 2018 campaign in his first year of pro ball but saw his production crater in Class-A Advanced last year. He fared better in the Arizona Fall League, however. The 24-year-old Walker was a second-rounder of the White Sox back in 2018 but was traded to Texas over the winter in exchange for Nomar Mazara. He hit .284/.361/.451 in 525 plate appearances across Class-A and Class-A Advanced last year.
Infield prospect Greg Jones was added to the Rays’ player pool, per a club announcement. Tampa Bay selected the now-22-year-old Jones with the No. 22 pick out of UNC Wilmington in 2019. He posted a .335/.413/.461 slash in 48 games and 218 plate appearances with the Rays’ short-season Class-A affiliate in the New York-Penn League, although that wasn’t a particularly aggressive initial assignment for a college bat. The success is still notable, of course, and he’ll get some additional simulated game reps and face time with coaches over the season’s final month.
The Pirates added 2019 first-rounder Quinn Priester to their player pool earlier this week, MLBTR has learned. The Illinois native was selected with the 18th overall pick in the 2019 draft and logged 36 2/3 innings between Rookie ball and short-season Class-A last year. Priester pitched to a 3.19 ERA in that time with a 41-to-14 K/BB ratio and a hefty 59.1 percent ground-ball rate. He’s considered to be one of the organization’s best two to three best pitching prospects.
The Phillies added former No. 1 overall pick Mickey Moniak to their player pool a day prior to the trade deadline. As Jim Salisbury of NBC Sports Philadelphia noted at the time, it was possible the timing of the move was sheer coincidence and not part of any scheme to trade the 22-year-old outfielder. Moniak had been rehabbing a knee injury, Salisbury wrote, and he’d progressed to the point where he’s able to work at the Phillies’ alternate training site rather than rehab at their Spring Training complex. Moniak hasn’t lived up to his 1-1 billing, but he did post better-than-average numbers against much more advanced pitching in a pitcher-friendly Double-A setting last year. His .252/.303/.439 slash doesn’t look like much, but that checked in 15 percent better than average in the Eastern League, per wRC+.

Phillies, Marlins Working Out Details Of Prospective J.T. Realmuto Swap

By Jeff Todd | February 7, 2019 at 11:19am CDT

Reports emerged this morning that momentum was growing between the Phillies and Marlins on a deal to send star catcher J.T. Realmuto to Philadelphia. Now, it seems, the sides have made yet further strides, to the point that they appear to be on the cusp of a completed transaction.

Joel Sherman of the New York Post cites multiple sources (Twitter link) for the proposition that the negotiations are “down to physical reviews” and the supplemental prospect pieces in the swap. He reports that top Phillies pitching prospect Sixto Sanchez would join young backstop Jorge Alfaro as the two key pieces of the package.

That report builds upon prior indications of a nearing agreement. Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweets that two of the other organizations that had been pursuing Realmuto now believe he’s destined to land with the Phils. Craig Mish of MLB Network Radio on Sirius XM tweeted that he expects a deal to occur today, while MLB.com’s Jon Morosi reported the growing momentum with the Philadelphia organization specifically.

In terms of the final details of the package, it seems that’s still open to discussion. (One wonders whether other Marlins players or third teams could also be involved.) Sherman reports (Twitter links) that players under consideration including top-ten organizational prospects Mickey Moniak, Adam Haseley, and Adonis Medina, with Jon Heyman of MLB Network reporting (Twitter links) that Alec Bohm, Luis Garcia, and Spencer Howard all also being talked about.

That bunch of names covers most of the top portion of the Phillies farm, so there’ still a good bit of variability in the outcome here. Sherman says the outlook for the deal still looks good — indeed, Sanchez’s medicals are already under review in Miami — but there’s haggling left to go. The Marlins want four total players and are unsurprisingly trying to pry loose some of the Phils’ best remaining farm assets.

East Notes: JDM, Red Sox, Mets, A-Gon, Phillies

By Connor Byrne | March 3, 2018 at 11:04pm CDT

Newly signed Red Sox slugger J.D. Martinez figures to spend most of his time at designated hitter, though the team is planning how to set up its outfield when he does factor in as a defender. “At home he’ll play left field and if somehow he plays somewhere on the road here, he’ll play right field,” manager Alex Cora told Jason Mastrodonato of the Boston Herald and other reporters Saturday. Cora went on to reveal that right fielder Mookie Betts could move to center during road games in which Martinez plays the field. Of course, it’s unclear how often this will come up for Boston, which already has an excellent outfield trio of Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr. (center) and Andrew Benintendi (left). Unlike those three, Martinez has struggled of late in the field, where he has posted minus-27 Defensive Runs Saved and a minus-24.9 Ultimate Zone Rating since 2016.

Phillies Sign Mickey Moniak

By Steve Adams | June 20, 2016 at 4:01pm CDT

The Phillies announced that they have agreed to terms with high school outfielder Mickey Moniak, who was the No. 1 overall pick in the draft earlier this month. Terms of his bonus were not disclosed by the team, but MLB.com’s Jim Callis reports that Moniak received a $6.1MM bonus (Twitter link). The No. 1 overall pick came with a slot value of $9,015,000 this season.

Moniak, who turned 18 just over a month ago, rated as the No. 5 overall prospect in the class on the pre-draft rankings of Baseball America, ESPN’s Keith Law and Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com. However, the bulk of mock drafts from those outlets in the days just prior to the draft had forecast that Philadelphia would indeed tab the California native as the top pick in this year’s draft.

Moniak had been committed to UCLA but will forego college and instead embark on his professional career. The aforementioned rankings heap praise onto Moniak for his hit tool, grading it as the top high school hit tool in the entire draft. He’s an above-average runner that is said to have great instincts in center field, and each of the reports above expresses confidence that he can stay there. Moniak doesn’t project to develop significant power due to a fairly slight frame, though Baseball America invokes a comparison to Marlins outfielder Christian Yelich — an outcome with which the Phillies would surely be thrilled.

The Phillies, per Callis, had an overall draft pool of $13,405,200, which was the second-largest among all big league teams this season. Because Moniak didn’t command the full value of that slot — and it’s worth noting that none of the players selected first overall have commanded full slot value since the current iteration of draft signing rules was implemented — the Phillies will be able to reallocate roughly $3MM worth of savings to later picks. Among the notable high school names drafted by the Phillies that may require over-slot deals to break college commitments are second-round pick Kevin Gowdy, third-round pick Cole Stobbe and 11th-round pick Josh Stephen.

Phillies Select Mickey Moniak With First Overall Pick

By Jeff Todd | June 9, 2016 at 6:12pm CDT

The Phillies have made it official, taking high school outfielder Mickey Moniak with the first overall selection of the 2016 draft. That makes him the first draft choice of GM Matt Klentak.

Philadelphia had been connected with several other players in recent months, including southpaws Jason Groome and A.J. Puk. But the rebuilding organization ended up going with the youngster out of Carlsbad, California, as had seemed increasingly likely in recent weeks. He is currently committed to play at UCLA.

Moniak doesn’t wow with off-the-charts physical prowess, but ESPN.com’s Keith Law says he “appears to have the best hit tool in the high school class.” Baseball America and MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo and Jim Callis join Law in rating Moniak the fifth-best overall talent in the draft.

While some question whether he’ll ever develop significant power to match his 6’2 frame, the evaluators agree that Moniak ought to be capable of manning center field in the long run, with his good wheels aiding him both in the field and on the basepaths. The 18-year-old draws universal praise for his instincts on the field as well as his work ethic.

It seems likely that the Phils are angling to preserve some of their spending power with the choice. That’s not to say that Moniak isn’t a top talent — by all accounts he is. Rather, somewhat like the Astros did in going with Carlos Correa over Byron Buxton back in 2012, the idea would be to take a more affordable player with hopes of adding yet more talent later in the draft. (Lance McCullers, Rio Ruiz, Brett Phillips, and Preston Tucker were among the other early-round choices that year by Houston.)

Philadelphia has $9.015MM to put towards signing Moniak, but it can allocate any savings to other selections. The club’s total pool adds up to just over $13.4MM, ranking second to the Reds — who just top their National League foes thanks to landing the first overall competitive balance Round A selection.

« Previous Page

Headlines

Mickey Moniak

Navigation

MLBTR INFO

Connect