Former Phillies Friday: Mickey Moniak finally clicking with Angels

Mickey Moniak is a former No. 1 overall pick. (Cheryl Pursell)

Seven years after the Philadelphia Phillies made him the No. 1 overall pick, outfielder Mickey Moniak is finally starting to look the part, albeit in a Los Angeles Angels uniform.

Moniak opened the season with Triple-A Salt Lake, but the 25-year-old was recalled by the Angels in mid-May. In 44 games for the Halos this season, Moniak is slashing .331/.364/.631 with 11 home runs, 33 RBIs, a .994 OPS and a 2.2 WAR.

In 93 at-bats for the Phillies over parts of three seasons, Moniak slashed .129/.214/.172 with an unsightly .386 OPS. There’s something to be said for giving young players extended runway to get comfortable at the Major League level, and that’s perhaps something the Phillies didn’t do enough when Joe Girardi was their manager.

But by all accounts, the Phillies wanted Moniak to seize the center fielder’s job for parts of three seasons, and he didn’t do it. In fact, he was so bad when given opportunities — he struck out in 44% of his at-bats and posted a -0.8 WAR as a Phillie — that a team trying to contend couldn’t continue to justify running him out there.

And so, Moniak was traded to the Angels last July for RHP Noah Syndergaard, who helped the Phillies to win a pennant. Despite the success Moniak is having in 2023, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski didn’t seem especially interested in revisiting the trade when asked earlier this week.

“I’ll let you assess the trades,” Dombrowski said of how he views the Moniak-for-Syndergaard trade almost a year removed. “I’ve never assessed our trades. You can go ahead and write whatever you’d like on that.

“But we made a trade that helped us get to the World Series,” Dombrowski continued. “Mickey Moniak is playing very well and I’m very happy for him — he’s doing great. He didn’t play quite as well over here and sometimes you need a change of scenery.”

Certainly, there are examples of teams giving up on young players too quickly, and living to regret it. But in the case of Moniak, it feels like revisionist history to suggest that the Phillies were foolish to trade him. At the time of the trade last August, Moniak appeared to be one of the biggest draft busts in MLB history. With his play in Los Angeles — where he’s also graded out well defensively — Moniak may shed that label. But there was no evidence to suggest he was going to do so in Philadelphia.

On top of that, the Phillies sent catcher Logan O’Hoppe to the Angels to acquire Brandon Marsh in a separate trade on the same day Moniak was dealt for Syndergaard. Marsh is another player who has benefitted from a change of scenery, as evidenced by the fact that he is tied for the NL lead with five triples and has an .812 OPS. Between him, Cristian Pache, Johan Rojas, Simón Muzziotti and Justin Crawford, center field has arguably become the organization’s deepest position.

Sometimes a player finds success elsewhere, and it doesn’t have to be viewed as a disaster by the team that traded him away. That’s the situation the Phillies are in with Moniak.