MLB Draft retrospective: The Kid and Killer B go 30 years ago
By Wayne Cavadi
Thirty years ago, the Seattle Mariners and Houston Astros found success in the first round. They selected two Hall of Famers with their first picks.
Ah, the MLB Draft. Months and months of speculation come crumbling apart at the seams as teams make picks that no one saw coming. Easily the hardest draft to predict of the major sports, it is interesting to look back and see who got it right.
Thirty years ago, the Seattle Mariners and Houston Astros were two teams that had some first round success. Thirty years later, their picks are enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
The Seattle Mariners, coming off a 67-95 finish in 1986, took a teenager out of Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati. He had baseball in his blood, as his father was an All-Star major leaguer already. Two years later, Ken Griffey, Jr. would become immortal.
The Kid, as he affectionately became known, made his big league debut in 1989 as a 19-year-old. He launched 630 home runs before he called it a career, sixth-best in the history of the game. Despite hitting 16 home runs, 23 doubles and swiping 16 stolen bases, Griffey, Jr. finished third in the 1989 American League Rookie of the Year voting behind the great Gregg Olsen and Tom “Flash” Gordon.
Griffey, Jr. led the league in home runs four times in his illustrious career, hitting 56 in both the 1997 and 1998 seasons. His 1997 MVP campaign was one of the best of the decade. He slashed .304/.382/.646 with a 1.028 OPS. The Kid led the AL in runs (125), home runs (56) and RBI (147), while adding 15 stolen bases.
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Griffey, Jr. helped turn Seattle into a perennial power. Two years after his MVP season, on the brink of one of the franchise’s best runs, Griffey Jr. returned home. Injuries ravaged the rest of his career, leaving many wondering what could have been. He played more than 120 games just four times over the remaining 11 years of his career.
The 1987 MLB Draft was unique in that it was the only draft of the ’80s to produce two Hall of Famers in the first round. The Astros took Craig Biggio 22nd overall after a successful run batting in front of Mo Vaughn at Seton Hall.
Biggio made it to the majors quicker than Griffey, Jr. but was more seasoned having played Big East baseball. Biggio quickly became a jack-of-all-trades, adjusting positions several times throughout his career in order to etch out a spot in the Astros lineup.
Part of Houston’s Killer B’s with Jeff Bagwell and Derek Bell (and later Sean Berry and Lance Berkman), Biggio became the gutsy guy atop the order that would find a way on base. Whether it was one of his 3,060 career base hits (22nd all-time) or 285 hit by pitches (second all-time), Biggio found a way to score runs, 1,844 of them to be exact (15th all-time).
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A player’s success is not always certain due to early round draft picks in baseball. It seems each year more first rounders flail out than succeed. In 1987, however, two teams got it right. And the rest is history.