While the Phillies have glaring holes in left and center field, their head of baseball operations doesn’t envision former first-round draft picks Mickey Moniak and Adam Haseley filling them to begin the 2022 season.
“I’m not, per se, counting on either one of them to be on our club next year to start off,” president Dave Dombrowski said Tuesday at the annual GM meetings being held in California, according to Scott Lauber of The Philadelphia Inquirer on Wednesday.
After declining the options of starting left fielder Andrew McCutchen and starting center fielder Odúbel Herrera, as well as outrighting the arbitration-eligible Herrera, Philadelphia has playing time available in the outfield. However, it seems that Moniak, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2016 draft, and the next year’s eighth pick Haseley won’t be expected to take it.
The two both saw very limited action in the majors this past season and struggled in the at-bats they were given.
Haseley, 25, started in center on opening day for the Phillies. He went 4-for-21 with a double in nine games, before stepping away from the team for personal reasons. He returned to the minors in June, but injured his right groin a few weeks later. Haseley then started a rehab stint in the Florida Complex League in mid-July, but was placed on the COVID-related injured list after six games.
He began another short rehab stint in mid-August, before finishing out the season in Triple-A. He batted .233/.313/.325 with five home runs in 56 total minor-league games.
Moniak, 23, was in the majors for a few stretches, but only appeared in 21 games for the Phillies and went 3-for-33 with a home run. He spent the rest of the season in Triple-A Lehigh Valley, where he hit .238/.299/.447 with 15 homers and eight triples in 99 games.
“Haseley is a tough one because he didn’t play very much this past year,” Dombrowski said, according to the same story. “He has to go out and has to play more. Can he establish enough at-bats during spring training to get that done? I don’t know. Moniak, we liked. He was up and down and got quite a few at-bats.”
The lack of consistent production, especially in the majors, from the young outfielders has made it necessary for the Phillies to look elsewhere in 2022. That doesn’t mean the time can’t come for Moniak and Haseley to still help the team. They’d need to play their way into a major-league role, but that is far from a certainty.
“If they do, great,” Dombrowski said. “Who knows?”
