Mickey Moniak trade closes the book on five Philadelphia draft busts

Philly’s Fab Five died April 6, when Rays pitcher Ryan Yarbrough hit Mickey Moniak in the right hand during the last game of spring training.

Moniak was the last of the five players whom Philadelphia sports teams had drafted No. 1 or No. 2 overall in 2016 and 2017, and, after six mundane years in the minors, it looked like drafting Moniak was finally going to pay off. Moniak had won the job as the Phillies’ starting centerfielder with a .378 Grapefruit League average, a 1.351 OPS, and six home runs, the last of which he’d hit earlier in that game.

Moniak, out of nowhere, represented a salvation for a city that had been burgeoning with hope in the summer of 2017 but ultimately met disappointment: two point guards who wouldn’t shoot, a traitorous quarterback, and a center who couldn’t handle contact. Moniak was the last hope, a final consolation.

That consolation never came.

Moniak missed almost two months. He returned to the Phillies on May 30, but his swing never returned. He got six hits in 50 plate appearances over 18 games, only 14 of them starts, and was hitting .130 when he was sent to triple A on July 16. Moniak was, however, hitting .277 with five homers and an .859 OPS in 20 triple-A games when the trade deadline arrived Tuesday. That made Moniak valuable enough to land Angels starter Noah Syndergaard, putting an exclamation point on the end of one of the more disappointing eras in Philadelphia sports history.

Bryce Harper, the most-hyped No. 1 pick in baseball history — he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated at the age of 16 — understands the gravity of being a franchise’s savior.

“That ‘Number One’ pick is something you have to live up to. It’s a big pick. It can change an organization. It can change the way an organization works,” said Harper, who has won two MVP awards. “If you’re not successful, everybody talks about it.”

The pressure of playing in a city as highly pressurized as Philadelphia didn’t help, Harper said: “I think it’s going to help him, going out west, playing in a different market. I’m not saying he couldn’t handle this market, because I think he could have, given everyday reps.”

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Moniak was not successful, although, to Harper’s point, with only 105 plate appearances in parts of three major-league seasons with the Phillies, Moniak wasn’t given much time to fail.

“I’ve always been a guy that takes a little bit to get comfortable at every level. And once I get comfortable, it’s on from there,” Moniak said the day after the trade. “I wasn’t really given that opportunity there.”

Not everyone is Harper, who was an All-Star as a 19-year-old National League rookie of the year. Moniak is just 24, the same age as Chase Utley and Ryan Howard when they made their big-league debuts.

“He’s still super-young,” Harper said. “He’s still super-raw as well.“

The book isn’t closed on Moniak, or on Carson Wentz or Ben Simmons or Markelle Fultz or Nolan Patrick. It’s just that the chapters written in Philadelphia didn’t have happy endings.

It began on April 28, 2016, with Carson Wentz, on whom the Eagles spent a king’s ransom to move to No. 2 in the NFL draft.

Just 42 days later, the Phillies chose Moniak No. 1 overall, a surefire major leaguer with speed, range, and modest power.

Two weeks later, the 76ers used the top overall pick to draft Simmons, a pedigreed Australian point-forward, perfect for the new, positionless NBA.

Just 364 days after that, Danny Ainge snookered covert Twitter assassin Bryan Colangelo into trading a first-round pick to move from No. 3 to No. 1 in the 2017 draft, where Colangelo selected Markelle Fultz, a swing guard whose polished offensive repertoire was supposed to compensate for Simmons’ offensive limitations.

Finally, the next day, Flyers then-general manager Ron Hextall ignored his scouts and drafted big center Nolan Patrick with the No. 2 overall pick.

So much promise. So much talent. So undeveloped. So overrated.

Now, all gone.

It’s all just so ... Philadelphia.

In football-crazed Philadelphia, Wentz’s story hurts most.

On March 2016, the Eagles traded two starters to Miami to move from No. 13 to No. 8, and then, eight days before the draft, they sent that pick, their first-round pick from 2017, a second-rounder from 2017, and a third- and fourth-rounder from 2016 to Cleveland to move to No. 2, where they picked Wentz. He was slated to be the team’s No. 3 quarterback that season, but an injury to Vikings starter Teddy Bridgewater helped the Eagles trade Sam Bradford to the Vikings and recoup some of the capital Wentz cost them.

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Wentz played well as a rookie and was an MVP candidate in 2017, and he was progressing into the franchise quarterback the Eagles had sought since they traded Donovan McNabb in 2010: a big, athletic horse with a cannon arm. But a knee injury in Game 13 ended Wentz’s 2017 season and he never regained his mojo. The knee limited him in 2018 and seemed to trigger latent back problems that ended that season. He got knocked out of his only playoff game, after the 2019 season, struggled on the field in 2020, and resented the Eagles’ drafting Jalen Hurts in the second round that spring. And so, after he was benched in Game 12, he forced an offseason trade to Indianapolis.

Simmons’ story is nearly as painful; more so, according to Ruben Amaro Jr. Amaro is a lifelong Philadelphian who played for the Phillies, ran the front office, and now serves as a TV analyst.

“A guy that is that talented ... that was a really, really big disappointment,” Amaro said. “If Ben Simmons had gone and played for the Charlotte Hornets, would he have become a great player? Maybe.”

Simmons certainly wasn’t suited for Philly.

Simmons missed his first season with a foot injury but spent those months studying the game, so by the time he took the floor in 2017 he had become a point guard. He won the rookie of the year award, he went to the next three All-Star Games, and he made two all-defensive first teams — but his unprecedented refusal to shoot from the perimeter proved an insurmountable obstacle for the Sixers in the playoffs.

Ultimately, Simmons’ refusal to dunk in Game 7 of the 2021 Eastern Conference semifinals cost the team the series, and subsequent mild criticisms from teammate Joel Embiid and coach Doc Rivers persuaded Simmons to demand a trade.

Sixers president Daryl Morey refused to trade Simmons for anything but a superstar, but Simmons refused to report for work, claiming that a back injury, and then mental problems, incapacitated him. That precipitated a 58-game holdout that ended when Morey traded Simmons for disgruntled Nets superstar James Harden.

The bizarre drama that framed Simmons’ departure today obscures the bizarre drama that framed Fultz’s arrival and his entire, brief tenure.

Fultz landed with the expectation that he would immediately provide perimeter punch, but a mysterious malady that affected his shoulder, or his shoulder blade, or his brain, or maybe all of those body parts, robbed Fultz of the shooting form that made him a college All-American. The Sixers traded him to the Magic at the trade deadline during Fultz’s second season. He had played just 33 out of a possible 156 games, including playoffs.

Patrick was more involved, if only marginally more effective, and certainly just as mysterious. A 6-foot-2, 198-pound instinctive forward, Patrick was picked to complement two-way standout Sean Couturier as the Flyers ushered star Claude Giroux into his dotage. That seemed likely after a strong rookie season in 2017-18, when, as a 19-year-old, Patrick scored 13 goals with 17 assists.

Instead, Patrick stagnated as a sophomore, then lost his third year to migraines whose cause — concussions, heredity, overwork — he and the Flyers never divulged. He was a nonfactor in the COVID-19-shortened 2020-21 season, after which he was traded to Nashville with Philippe Myers for defenseman Ryan Ellis. Patrick then was dealt to the Vegas Golden Knights.

At that point Fultz was long gone, Wentz was Public Enemy No. 1 in Philly, Simmons was disgruntled, and Moniak wasn’t on anyone’s radar as a factor in the Phillies’ 2022 season.

As it turns out, he wasn’t a factor.

Or was he?

Remember, Moniak begot Syndergaard, who started Thursday night and delivered a victory. He occupies the spot in the rotation vacated by Zach Eflin, whose knee injury has forced the Phillies to cobble together starts by several relievers. The last bullpen start, on Tuesday, resulted in a 13-1 loss in Atlanta. Moniak brought value. Moniak homered in his second Angels game, but he helped the Phillies even in his absence.

He’s not alone.

Wentz landed the Eagles a third-round pick in 2021 that the Eagles used to trade up in the first round to take DeVonta Smith, as well as a first-round pick in 2022 that they helped turn into more picks, including a first-round pick in 2023. Wentz played well in Indianapolis last season, but his chronic selfishness led the Colts to punish him with a trade to Washington.

Fultz landed the Sixers a second-round pick, which helped the Sixers secure Matisse Thybulle at No. 20 in 2019, and a first-round pick in 2020, which turned out to be No. 21, where the Sixers drafted rising star Tyrese Maxey. Fultz did not play for the Magic in 2019, and he played in just 98 games in the last three seasons.

Simmons was the principal player who brought Harden to the Sixers. Harden is a fading star but retains real value. Simmons developed a back problem and did not play for the Nets, who are in disarray.

Patrick-for-Ellis might have been the biggest win of all for Philly fans, but Ellis suffered a pelvic injury that limited him to four games last season. Patrick managed just 25 games and seven points for the Golden Knights last season.

Certainly, those No. 1 and No. 2 picks didn’t leave the teams and the city with nothing.

That’s not the point.

The point is, on June 23, 2017, after the Flyers drafted Nolan Patrick, Philly thought it had a cornerstone centerman, a 10-year backcourt, its center fielder through 2030, and a quarterback who win Super Bowls and MVP awards.

On April 6, or at least by the deadline Tuesday at 6 p.m., every one of those hopes died.