The LA Angels released Mickey Moniak on Tuesday:

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:

  1. Carson Wentz (#2 overall)
  2. Ben Simmons (#1)
  3. Derek Barnett (#24)
  4. Morgan Frost (#27)
  5. Nolan Patrick (#2)
  6. Adam Haseley (#8)
  7. Mickey Moniak (#1)
  8. Markelle Fultz (#1)
  9. German Rubtsov (#22)

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 Ryan Ellis trade. Patrick had the migraine issues and is no longer in the NHL. What kills you about that draft in particular is that the Flyers could have blindfolded themselves and thrown a dart at the top 5 with an 80% chance to get an All-Star. Alas, Nico Hischier, Miro Heiskanen, Cale Makar, and Elias Pettersson wound up elsewhere.

Then to Haseley and Moniak. Haseley gets the slight nod because he at least got some games in 2019 and 2020. Moniak only made 47 appearances for the Phillies before the LA trade.

Markelle Fultz is 8th. Outrageous! Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, forgetting how to shoot the basketball, his mom and agent in the picture. Talk about a total disaster. He only played 33 games here before he was shipped out in the trade that returned Jonathan Simmons and draft picks.

And lastly, Rubtsov, who played four NHL games and is now in the KHL.

Interestingly enough, the Philadelphia Union rarely use their picks these days, but they did have a good draft in 2016. They got Josh Yaro, Keegan Rosenberry, and Fabian Herbers in the top 6. Rosenberry now captains the Colorado Rapids while Herbers has more than 200 career MLS appearances. Yaro found his way back to MLS with St. Louis after some time in the lower levels.