The Phillies took a swing on raw power this draft, and now they've made it official. Second-round pick Caden Bogenpohl has signed with Philadelphia for $1,416,600, full slot value for pick 64, locking in one of the more physically absurd prospects in this year's class.
2nd-rder Caden Bogenpohl signs w/@Phillies for $1,416,600 (full slot 64 value). @MoStateBSB OF, plus-plus raw power & huge exit velos (119 mph at @MLBDraft Combine) but only 6 HR this spring. Very athletic for 6-6/245.
Start with the frame: 6-6, 245 pounds, and built like he fell out of an NFL tight end factory instead of a college outfield. At the MLB Draft Combine, Bogenpohl put on a show, ripping five swings at 114 mph exit velocity or harder, topped by a 119.4 mph missile that stood as the hardest-hit ball of the entire event. That's the kind of number that gets scouts drooling regardless of what the box score says.
And the box score is the catch. Bogenpohl hit only 6 home runs in 55 games as a junior at Missouri State, a steep drop from the 20-homer freshman season that broke a school record previously held by Phillies legend Ryan Howard. Reports on his profile point to a brutal 53% groundball rate, among the highest of any hitter in this draft class, which explains why all that plus-plus power hasn't shown up consistently on contact.
That gap between tools and production is exactly why he fell to the second round instead of going in the first, and exactly why the Phillies felt comfortable paying slot value instead of getting into a bidding war. It's a classic player-development bet: take the rawest power in the class, hand him to a farm system that's turned plenty of projects into big leaguers, and see if the swing decisions catch up to the bat speed.
For a Missouri State program that had never produced a drafted outfielder this high, and hadn't seen a player go this early since Jeremy Eierman went 70th overall back in 2018, this is a program-defining moment. For the Phillies, it's a lower-cost, higher-variance addition to a farm system that now gets to find out whether a 119 mph exit velocity translates into anything close to that in games. He'll report to Clearwater before landing at a minor-league affiliate, and every scouting department in baseball will be watching his groundball rate a lot closer than his home run total.