The Phillies' second-round pick is officially in the fold. Caden Bogenpohl, the 6-foot-6, 245-pound outfielder out of Missouri State, has signed for $1,416,600, exactly full slot value for pick 64, according to Jim Callis. No games of chicken, no under-slot savings to spread around — Philadelphia just wrote the number and moved on.
Jim Callis broke the signing news along with the numbers and the scouting profile.
This isn't a small-school afterthought pick. Bogenpohl is the highest-drafted outfielder in Missouri State program history, and the highest overall pick the Bears have produced since Jeremy Eierman went 70th overall back in 2018. He put together a monster junior year in Springfield, leading Conference USA in walks and finishing his college career as the program's all-time leader in free passes. That kind of plate discipline at his size is part of why teams were willing to overlook some of the swing-and-miss.
And the raw power is not a projection — it's already been measured. At the MLB Draft Combine, Bogenpohl put on a show, posting exit velocities north of 114 mph with a combine-best blast checking in at 119. Callis' numbers back that up directly. For a guy built like a tight end, that kind of bat speed is the entire pitch. The catch, and it's the one every scouting report flags, is that he only hit 6 home runs this spring despite that raw juice — the power hasn't fully shown up in games yet, and a 31% whiff rate from his 2025 season explains why.
That's the trade-off the Phillies are buying into: a player who profiles as a boom-or-bust masher rather than a polished, ready-made prospect. He's not fast, he'll likely slide over from center field to a corner spot at some point, and the swing-and-miss is real. But teams don't get exit velocities like his very often, and Philadelphia clearly decided the offensive ceiling was worth the risk at pick 64.
Bogenpohl now heads to Clearwater to get his professional career started and will be assigned to one of the Phillies' minor-league affiliates shortly. It's the start of a long developmental runway — the Phillies' player development staff will have their hands full trying to turn that raw power into in-game production without losing what made him a second-rounder in the first place. If they figure it out, Philadelphia's farm system just added a genuine slugging prospect. If they don't, he's a cautionary tale about betting on tools over performance.