Phillies Looking For Upside With No. 1 Overall Pick

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Thursday will be the most important day of 2016 for the Philadelphia Phillies and they're not even playing a game.

Thursday is the 2016 MLB amateur draft and the Phils own the No. 1 overall pick.

"We're gonna go after the best player in the entire draft, not necessarily someone that people look at statistically and say this guy is really good in college right now," Phillies director of amateur scouting Johnny Almaraz told the 94WIP Mike & Ike Show on Tuesday. "What we want is the most impact come four or five years, whether it's college pitcher, a position player, or high school."

Johnny Almaraz, Director of Amateur Scouting for the Phillies on the 94WIP Mike & Ike Show:

While no one player has separates himself as being the clear star of this year's draft, 6-foot, 7-inch left-handed pitcher from the University of Florida, A.J. Puk, is the favorite to first overall.

However, many of the first-overall selected players in previous drafts were high-school players.

"If you look at the history of the draft, the most successful picks ever taken one-one, have all been high-school position players which is pretty shocking I think to a lot of people,"  "But you're looking at the A-Rod's [Alex Rodriguez], the Ken Griffey Jr.'s, the [Joe] Mauer's, the Adrian Gonzalez's, and the Darryl Strawberry's. That class of players that existed back then."

A little over 48-hours away from the draft, Almaraz says the Phillies have still not made their decision.

"As a matter of fact, we don't [know yet]," Almaraz said. "I left the draft room about five minutes ago to come join you guys on this phone and then we're talking about different scenarios right now. We've got interest in several hitters and several college pitchers, and a couple of high school pitchers. But we're really debating, which is healthy for the organization because we're listening to a lot of opinions, real opinions, from all our scouts which is extremely important  so that we make the best decision. But we're narrowing it down and hopefully we can come to a pretty narrow group of guys the next eight, nine hours."