Apr 14, 2017; Seattle, WA, USA; Former Seattle Mariner Ken Griffey Jr. waves to the crowd before a game against the Texas Rangers at Safeco Field. Mandatory Credit: Jennifer Buchanan-USA TODAY Sports
The five best first overall picks in MLB history were all drafted out of high school, two of them by the same team six years apart.
The Minnesota Twins started off the 2017 MLB Amateur draft by picking Royce Lewis out of JSerra High School in San Juan Capistrano, California. They no doubt hope to get a long, productive career from the young player, just as many teams with the number one overall pick have done before them. Recent number one overall picks include David Price (Tampa Bay, 2007), Stephen Strasburg (Washington, 2009), Bryce Harper (Washington, 2010), and Carlos Correa (Houston, 2012).
We’ve become so accustomed to the yearly MLB draft it’s easier to forget that many people were strongly opposed to it when it was created in 1965. Before the draft, amateurs were able to sign with any MLB team that offered them a contract. Teams in better financial shape were able to sign many top players and stash them on their minor league teams.
This created an inequity where teams like the Yankees and Cardinals loaded up on good prospects. The first attempt to counteract this was the bonus rule in 1947. This rule stated that any player who received a signing bonus of more than $4,000 would have to remain on the major league roster for two seasons before they could be sent to the minor leagues. This led to some very young players getting little playing time early in their careers. It hurt some players, while others still went on to Hall of Fame careers, like Sandy Koufax, Al Kaline, and Catfish Hunter.
The manipulation of the bonus baby rule and the increase in signing bonus amounts led to the MLB Amateur Draft in 1965. Owners claimed it was meant to distribute talent more fairly, but keeping down the rising cost of signing bonuses was a major factor also.
If you think about baseball players like you would other professions, say a doctor or teacher or lawyer, it makes the idea of a draft completely untenable. These are the best amateur baseball players in the country and they are forced by the MLB draft to sign with the team that drafts them. The best doctors, teachers, or lawyers in the country aren’t forced to sign with specific hospitals, schools, or law firms. It hardly seems fair to force the best amateur baseball talent in the country to play for the team with the worst record the year before. Fairness aside, this is how the draft works, to the benefit of MLB teams.
The first pick of the first June Amateur Draft in 1965 was Rick Monday by the Oakland Athletics. He would go on to play nearly 2000 games in the big leagues and be worth 33.1 WAR, per Baseball-Reference. That was a solid pick by the A’s. It wouldn’t be until 1977 that a number one overall pick would be chosen who would amass more career value than Monday (Harold Baines, White Sox, 1977).
As the 2017 MLB Amateur draft continues this week, let’s look back at the five best players chosen first overall in the draft going back to its beginnings in 1965. We’ll go in reverse order.
Darryl Strawberry is the fifth-best player ever taken with the first overall pick. He was chosen by the Mets in 1980, which was not a particularly impressive year for first round picks. Strawberry towers over the other 25 first round picks in value that year, with 42.0 WAR (Baseball-Reference). The next-best player in the round was Kelly Gruber (16.4). Seven 1980 first-rounders never made the major leagues, including three of the first five picks.
As a junior in high school, Strawberry played with Chris Brown, who was a senior. Brown would be drafted in the second round of the 1979 draft and play six years in the major leagues. In the Los Angeles city championship game, Strawberry and Brown faced a team from Granada Hills that had future NFL Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway. Elway started the game playing third base, but moved to the pitcher’s mound and shut down Crenshaw to win the city championship.
Strawberry’s senior year at Crenshaw was full of hope and hype. He was featured in Sports Illustrated as one of the top amateur talents in the game and his tall, thin body and beautiful swing was compared to Ted Williams. After the Mets took him with the first overall pick, they sent him to play for the Kingsport Mets in the Appalachian League. Many of the players in the league were two or three years older than the 18-year-old Strawberry, including future big leaguer and Kingsport teammate Lloyd McClendon.
The 1982 season saw Strawberry come into his own as a minor league player. He hit 34 home runs and had 97 RBI for the Double-A Jackson Mets. He started the 1983 season with the Tidewater Tides, but a .333/.465/.596 batting line in his first 16 games earned him a quick promotion to the Mets. He hit 26 home runs in 122 games for the Mets and was named NL Rookie of the Year. It was a quick start to a fast-rising career.
Strawberry was an all-star in each of his next seven seasons with the Mets. He never hit fewer than 26 home runs in a season for them and twice hit 39 long balls. In three of his final four seasons in Queens, he finished in the top six in NL MVP voting. He’s still the franchise leader in home runs, with 252. When he was on his game, his sweet swing was a thing of beauty.
The Mets granted free agency to Strawberry after the 1990 season and he signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He had one good year in L.A. before his career went off the rails. Drug abuse was a big part of his downfall. After averaging 31 homers and 92 RBI in 139 games per season from 1983-1991, Strawberry averaged just 7 homers and 21 RBI in 42 games per season over his final eight years in the big leagues.
Despite the way his career petered out, Darryl Strawberry was a very good major league player. The Mets got the best years of Strawberry and he was a very worthy first overall pick.
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.
The Mariners had the number one overall pick in 1987 despite not having finished with the worst record in baseball in 1986. The worst team in 1986 was the Pittsburgh Pirates. The rules at the time required the leagues to alternate the number one pick and the NL had the number one pick in 1986.
When draft day came around, the Mariners picked first and the Pirates picked second. According to this article from the New York Times, the Mariners almost passed on Griffey with the top pick. Mariners owner George Argyros wanted to draft pitcher Mike Harkey out of Cal State Fullerton. The M’s even told Harkey he would be their pick three days before the left. Fortunately for Mariners fans, the M’s scouting staff convinced Argyros to take Griffey.
The Pirates then drafted Mark Merchant, a high school outfielder out of Florida. Merchant was highly-regarded at the time, but he never spent a day in the major leagues. He played 11 seasons in the minor leagues, including three in Triple-A. Harkey went with the fourth pick of the draft to the Chicago Cubs.
In the ultimate baseball question of “What Might Have Been?”, imagine if the Mariners had taken Harkey and the Pirates took Griffey. The Pirates already had Barry Bonds in left field. Griffey would reach the major leagues in 1989 and Bonds would leave the Pirates after the 1992 season, so they could have played at least four seasons together. The Pirates lost the NLCS three years in a row from 1990 to 1992, twice in seven games. Those teams might have won a World Series or two with Griffey playing center and Bonds in left. As it was, neither player ever won a World Series.
After being drafted with the first overall pick in 1987, Griffey was sent to Low-A Bellingham in the Northwest league. He destroyed the competition there, then continued to batter minor league pitching in 1988. By 1989, at the age of 19, he was a major league regular, finishing third in AL Rookie of the Year voting (behind pitchers Gregg Olson and Tom “Flash” Gordon).
In the history of baseball, only 15 players had more WAR through the age of 30 than Ken Griffey, Jr. (per FanGraphs). He was a tremendous player until he hit the age of 30. From that point on, he was a shadow of his former self. He could still hit home runs, but injuries and poor defense greatly cut into his value. Griffey had 91% of his career WAR in the first 12 years of his career and the other 9% in the last 10. Still, he was the third best number one overall pick in MLB history.
When Chipper Jones was eligible for the draft in 1990, a scout named Luke Wrenn worked for the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners had the sixth overall pick that year and Wrenn wanted them to take Jones if he fell that far. In his scouting report on Jones, Wrenn wrote, “This boy is a super kid that wants to play pro ball. Excellent make-up and work habits. Fields like a player that has been in pro ball 3 or 4 years.”
Wrenn’s scouting report included an Overall Future Potential grade of 64. The scouting scale goes from 20 to 80, with 50 being average. A 60 grade is an all-star; a 70 grade is a potential Hall of Famer. To put a 64 on a high school kid is a risky move. Wrenn is now in the Scouts Hall of Fame. Chipper Jones will likely be in the Baseball Hall of Fame sometime in the next few years. That 64 was a good assessment by Luke Wrenn.
The same year Jones was drafted by the Braves, pitcher Mike Mussina was taken by the Baltimore Orioles. According to Baseball-Reference WAR, they are both 80-plus WAR players. The next best player taken that year was Alex Fernandez.
Jones didn’t hit much in his first minor league season, but showed how good he could be the next year. As a 19-year-old in A ball, he hit .326/.407/.518. He played at two different minor league levels in 1992, followed by a full season in Triple-A in 1993. He also got a cup of coffee with the Braves at the end of the 1993 season.
In a spring training game in 1994, Jones suffered an ugly UCL tear in his left knee that caused him to miss the entire season. He came back to play 140 games in the 144-game shortened 1995 season and played well enough to finish second in NL Rookie of the Year voting (behind Hideo Nomo).
Jones had his first of many great seasons in 1996. He became a perennial all-star and regular top-10 finisher in MVP voting. He won the 1999 NL MVP Award when he set a career high with 45 home runs and hit .319/.441/.633. Jones was a mainstay of the Atlanta Braves teams that went to the playoffs every year from 1995 to 2005. He’s a worthy choice for the second best first overall draft pick in MLB history.
Legend has it that the Mariners almost passed on Alex Rodriguez with the first overall pick six years after almost passing on Ken Griffey, Jr. with the first overall pick. The Mariners were in the midst of only the second winning season in franchise history in 1993 and manager Lou Piniella reportedly wanted the team to draft college pitcher Darren Dreifort out of Wichita State. Dreifort was a nearly-ready prospect. He would pitch in the big leagues the following season and could have potentially helped the Mariners out of the bullpen the year he was drafted.
While Piniella liked Dreifort, the M’s scouting staff, led by Roger Jongewaard, knew how special A-Rod was. For his part, Rodriguez didn’t know if he wanted to go pro right out of high school or play baseball and football in college. He talks about being drafted in this video.
In an interesting twist of fate, the Mariners got the number one pick in 1993 because of the rule that the leagues swapped first picks. The Dodgers lost more games than the Mariners in 1992, which would have given them the first pick if not for the alternating picks between leagues rule. This same rule allowed the Mariners to draft Ken Griffey, Jr. first overall in 1987. They didn’t have the leagues worst record the year before that draft either.
The scouring report on the young A-Rod shows future grades of 6 or 7 in eight different scouting categories. These scores are the equivalent to 60 or 70 on the 20 to 80 scouting scale, with a 6 (or 60) being an all-star player and a 7 (or 70) being a potential Hall of Famer. A-Rod was given 7s across-the-board for fielding, including arm strength and accuracy. He also earned 7s in hitting ability and hitting for power. The two 6s were in running speed and base running.
In the “player’s strengths” section, the scout wrote, “Better at 17 now than all the superstars in baseball were when they were seniors in high school.” He also compared A-Rod to Derek Jeter, who had been drafted the year before, writing, “Similar to Jeter only bigger and better.” Another scout compared him to Cal Ripken, Jr.
After being the number one overall pick, A-Rod went on to play 22 years in the major leagues and hit 696 career home runs, fourth on the all-time list. He was a 14-time all-star and three-time MVP. According to Baseball-Reference WAR, he’s the 16th-best player of all-time. He’s also the absolute best number one overall pick in MLB history.
