The 5 best first overall MLB draft picks
2001—C Joe Mauer, Cretin HS (St. Paul, Minnesota)
Drafted by: Minnesota Twins
Signing bonus: $5,150,000
MLB career: 2004-present (Twins)
Baseball-Reference WAR: 50.9
FanGraphs WAR: 46.6
1643 G, 7041 PA, 1882 H, 912 R, 134 HR, 829 RBI, 50 SB, .308/.390/.444
Joe Mauer is the fourth-best first overall pick in MLB history, but he has competition from two other players for the best pick in the first round of the 2001 draft. Four picks after Mauer was taken by the Twins, Mark Teixeira was taken by the Texas Rangers. With a supplemental first round pick late in the draft, pick number 38, the Mets took David Wright. Mauer, Teixeira and Wright are all roughly 50 WAR players.
Prior to the 2001 draft, the Minnesota Twins had a tough decision to make. Everyone assumed the top pick would be either catcher Joe Mauer, a local boy from St. Paul, or Mark Prior, a starting pitcher from USC. Mauer was a sweet-swinging left-handed-hitting high school catcher and Prior was the definition of a staff ace coming out of college who would be nearly big league ready.
The Twins chose Mauer and sent him to the minor leagues, where he would play three seasons before making his major league debut in 2004. Meanwhile, the Chicago Cubs drafted Mark Prior. After just one partial minor league season, Prior was in the Cubs’ starting rotation. In 2003, Prior went 18-6 and struck out 245 batters in 211 1/3 innings. At this point, it looked like the Cubs had made the better pick.
Mauer got to the big leagues and hit .308 in 35 games in 2004. He would go on to lead the league in batting average in three of his first five full seasons, including a huge .365/.444/.587 season in 2009 that won him the AL MVP Award. He hit 28 home runs that year and looked like a future Hall of Fame catcher.
While Mauer was soaring to such great heights, Prior had arm trouble that prevented him from ever having another 200-inning season after 2003. In fact, he only had two seasons with 100 or more innings and threw his last major league pitch in 2006 at the age of 25.
After winning the MVP Award in 2009, Mauer continued to have seasons worth 4-5 WAR, except for an injury-marred 2011 season. In 2014, he was shifted from catcher to first base and his value took a hit as he no longer hit for power or got on base as well as he once did and the bar for hitting is much higher at first base than at catcher.
Since 2014, Mauer has hit .269/.354/.383, making him right about league average as a hitter. After consistently being a 4-5 WAR player for the first 10 years of his career, Mauer has been a 2 WAR player over the last three-plus years. He’s not the player he once was but he’s still been good enough to be the fourth-best first overall pick ever.