The Phillies haven’t won much in 2015, but they have won the race to the bottom, as Jake Kaplan of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes. For the first time since 1998, the Phillies will pick No. 1 in the amateur draft and while there isn’t a slam-dunk top choice, it never hurts to have the top pick. The Phillies will also get the largest bonus pool in the international signing period, which will aid them in the long term.
Kaplan notes that this will be the first No. 1 pick for incoming Phillies president Andy MacPhail. The highest he ever drafted was No. 2 when he was with the Cubs in 2001 – he used that selection to take right-hander Mark Prior.
Here’s more out of the NL East..
- Phillies interim GM Scott Proefrock announced that former top prospect Jesse Biddle has suffered a torn UCL, as Kaplan tweets. The left-hander will undergo Tommy John surgery on October 14th. Biddle was rated as the No. 71 prospect in the country by Baseball America prior to the 2014 season, but his struggles through multiple levels of the Phillies’ farm system knocked him out of the top 100. Things weren’t much better this year for the 23-year-old (soon-to-be 24), as he pitched to a 4.95 ERA with 6.4 K/9 and 4.4 BB/9 in 24 outings between Double-A and Triple-A.
- Despite talk that he’ll be ousted as Nationals manager, Matt Williams says that no one in the front office has talked to him about his job status, as Bill Ladson of MLB.com writes. Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com recently reported that Williams is all but certain to be fired after the season while a source says that GM/president of baseball ops Mike Rizzo is safe.
- Rizzo says that the front office will meet tomorrow and that decisions will be made “sooner rather than later,” as Mark Zuckerman of CSNmidatlantic.com tweets. The GM added that he doesn’t “want anybody twisting in the wind.”
I’m just happy the phillies didn’t suffer 100 losses after such a not so good first half
I may be in the minority but there’s no difference to me between 99 and 100 losses. If the Phillies had gone into today needing a loss to guarantee themselves of the #1 pick (and more importantly larger draft signing pools), you’re darn right I would have been pulling for that 100th loss. Having a couple extra million in that draft pool is like adding a mid 1st round pick. That’s huge for a rebuilding team. But thankfully they wrapped up that worst record last night.