He’s a big pitcher with a big fastball. But he may need some work.
Who is he and where did he come from?
He’s Marcus Phillips and he comes to us from South Dakota via the University of Tennessee. The Red Sox selected Phillips 33rd overall, with a pick received via the Quinn Priester trade.
Fifty percent of my freshman year roommates were from The Mount Rushmore State, but only 0.002% of all Major League Baseball players in history were from there. Can Phillips beat the odds and become only the fifth player born in South Dakota to make the All-Star team joining Floyd Bannister, Keith Foulke (!), Justin Duchscherer, and Sean Doolittle? We’ll find out sometime over the next 15 years!
What position does he play?
If you paid any attention at all to the draft, you probably know the answer: he’s a pitcher. Specifically, a right-handed starter.
Will he be any good?
Phillips is something of a late bloomer. Coming out of high school, he didn’t have the opportunity to play major college baseball and ended up at Iowa Western Community College (as someone who has been to Council Bluffs, Iowa, I offer him my sympathies). He was actually still a two-way player at that point, but he transitioned to pitching full-time when he transferred to Tennessee a year later. He spent his first year with the Vols in the bullpen, where he showed good stuff but struggled with his control, walking 15 hitters in 20 innings.
But Phillips blossomed as a starter this season, putting up a 3.90 ERA over 83 innings of work in which he allowed 75 hits including 11 homers, walked 34 (a nearly 50% drop in his walk rate from the previous season) and struck out 98 batters.
Like just about every other pitcher Craig Breslow targeted in this draft, he’s a big dude, coming in at 6’4”, 246 lbs., with a big fastball that can touch 100. His slider is a legitimate weapon, but right now he doesn’t offer many secondary pitches.
Given his relative lack of experience he has a wide range of outcomes. If he can develop his arsenal a bit more and learn to stay in the strike zone, he could have a career as an MLB starter — and with his physical frame and tools, he could become a very good one. But it’s just as likely that he ends up in the bullpen, or never harnesses his stuff enough to have much of a career at all. He’s what I would consider a high-ceiling/high-risk pick.
Show me a cool highlight?
Marcus Philips played in the 2017 Little League World Series on the first team from Sioux Falls ever to make it to Williamsport. Here he is introducing himself and showing off his jump shot form:
And here he is hammering a homer to the opposite field:
Seven years later, Phillips would go on to win the 2024 College World Series with the University of Tennessee. He didn’t play a starring role on that team, but if ever makes it to the actual World Series, he’ll become just the fourth player in history to play in the Little League World Series, the College World Series, and the real World Series. You already know one of the other other three players who’s done that:
Oh, and since Phillips isn’t going to be playing first base and batting cleanup like he did for Sioux Falls Little League, here are some highlights of him pitching earlier this season:
When can we expect to see him on the Red Sox?
We’re going to have to be patient here as the Red Sox do everything they can to turn him into a big league starter. As is frequently the case with recently drafted pitchers who need some mechanical work, we may not see him on a minor league roster this season. I’ll guess he starts at Greenville next year a la Payton Tolle who, like Phillips, was a two-way player when he entered college.
If he doesn’t make it as a starter, he’s got the profile to turn into an effective reliever down the line.