Crossing Broad
The LA Angels released Mickey Moniak on Tuesday:
The Los Angeles Angels are releasing outfielder Mickey Moniak, sources tell ESPN. They owe him $333,333 — one-sixth of the $2 million salary he won in an arbitration hearing over the winter. Similar situation to J.D. Davis’ last spring. Arb settlements are guaranteed. Not cases.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 25, 2025
Moniak was the #1 overall selection in the 2016 MLB Draft. He had a decent 2023 with the Angels but regressed in 2024 and here we are. At 26 years old, maybe someone can take a flier and turn the kid into a legit ball player.
The thing about the 2016 MLB Draft is that it wasn’t a strong one. Ian Anderson won a World Series with the Braves but Nick Senzel was just a guy for the Reds while Riley Pint and Corey Ray didn’t do much of anything. There wasn’t a single All Star in the top 25 and you had to go further down the list to find the players who made it, like Shane Bieber, Zac Gallen, Corbin Burnes, Cole Ragans, and Will Smith.
Moniak was part of that city-wide draft class that included guys like Nolan Patrick, Ben Simmons, and Carson Wentz. Top-five selections, each of those players. You add in the 2017 draft class and it’s the Mona Lisa of “what could have been,” which we would rank like this:
Right, so Wentz has to be at the top. He was playing at an MVP clip in 2017 before the injury and had an important role racking up regular-season wins, which put Nick Foles in a great position to finish the job. Carson flamed out a few years later, but that second season was special.
Simmons is ranked second. We got a Rookie of the Year season and three All-Star nods before his tenure blew up in spectacular fashion. He’s currently coming off the Clippers’ bench after an injury-plagued couple of seasons in Brooklyn.
Barnett has to be third simply for the fact that he recovered the fumble that more or less won the Eagles their first Super Bowl. He was a serviceable player for a few seasons but never really had that breakout year and committed some really stupid penalties along the way.
From there, it’s a slop fest. Frost gets the #4 ranking because at least he played a bunch of games, 278 to be exact, before he was shipped off to Calgary this winter. He was inconsistent, a slow starter, just never really hit the ceiling in Philadelphia. Or maybe he did, and it was lower than we thought.
Nolan Patrick is 5th. They got a couple of 30-point seasons out of him before shipping him off to Nashville in the...
