There is a particular kind of nerve it takes to spend your first pick in the draft on a kid who did not play a single high school game this spring. The Phillies had that nerve on Saturday.
With the 36th overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, the Phillies took Tyler Spangler, an 18-year-old shortstop out of Concord, California — six-foot-three, left-handed bat, the kind of long, projectable frame that makes scouts start reaching for names they probably shouldn't say out loud. In Spangler's case they said them anyway: Corey Seager. Cal Ripken Jr. Big left-handed-hitting shortstops don't grow on trees, and when one does, you talk yourself into it.
Here's the catch, and the Phillies know it's the catch: a back injury cost Spangler his entire senior season. He didn't hit against live pitching when it counted most. What he did do was show up to the Draft Combine and remind everyone why they liked him in the first place, and that was enough to hold his stock in the first round. Assistant general manager Brian Barber said the club is "completely comfortable" with the medicals — the front-office way of telling a nervous fan base to breathe.
I've covered enough South Jersey kids coming back from injuries to know how this actually goes. The talent doesn't vanish under a cast. What vanishes is the reps — the daily, unglamorous grind of seeing pitches and trusting your body again. Spangler is going to spend the next couple of years in the low minors doing exactly that, far from the lights, and Phillies fans are going to have to be patient in a way this city is famously bad at. But the tools are the tools. If the back holds, the Phillies drafted a shortstop of the future at pick 36, and that's a swing worth taking.
Meanwhile, Schwarber Keeps Mashing
While the teenager gets his feet under him, the grown man in the middle of the Phillies lineup is doing what he always does in July: launching baseballs into the seats and into the record book. Kyle Schwarber earned his fourth career All-Star selection this week — his third as a Phillie — and he did it the honest way, by leading the National League in home runs, a number sitting right around thirty going into the break. His slugging percentage tops every qualified hitter in the league. There is no nuance to Schwarber's case. You look at the leaderboard, you see his name, you write it down.
And the timing could not be better for anyone in this region who bleeds red pinstripes, because the 2026 All-Star Game is in Philadelphia. Schwarber and Bryce Harper are both headed to the Home Run Derby, and both will take their cuts in the Midsummer Classic in front of a Citizens Bank Park crowd that will treat every swing like a playoff at-bat. If you've got a South Jersey kid who's never seen an All-Star Game in person, this is the summer to figure out how to get across the bridge.
That's the Phillies right now in one snapshot: one hand planting a seed in California they won't harvest for years, the other hand cashing in a slugger who's producing right now, in his prime, in a home-city All-Star Game. The future and the present, on the same weekend — and South Jersey, 30 minutes from the ballpark, gets a front-row seat to both.
Jake Sullivan covers the Phillies and regional sports for The Neighborhood Gazette. Reporting from MLB.com, the Philadelphia Inquirer, PhilliesNation, and PhillyVoice. Draft details from the official 2026 MLB Draft; All-Star selections per MLB.com.