With the MLB draft right around the corner, let’s look back at the highs and lows from the draft from 10 years ago.
Remember 2008? While MLB teams were drafting amateur players from high schools and colleges in June of 2008, the Detroit Red Wings were beating the Pittsburgh Penguins to win the Stanley Cup. “Lollipop” by Li’l Wayne was at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Popular TV shows just starting that year included Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy. Not long after the MLB draft, Tiger Woods would win the U.S. Open despite battling knee pain after a recent operation.
Tangentially related to baseball was the Bernie Madoff scandal, which was not yet known to the public. A January headline proclaimed, “Bernard Madoff Claims $17 Bn in Assets with the SEC.” Behind the scenes, the Ponzi scheme was unraveling and would eventually affect the baseball world because the Mets owners, the Wilpons, were heavily invested with Madoff.
When the MLB draft came around, the Tampa Bay Rays were first on the clock for the second year in a row. They had switched from the name Devil Rays to Rays that year in an attempt to exorcise past demons. The team had never won more than 70 games in a season and had three 100-loss seasons in their first 10 years.
The 2008 draft was the second year in a row in which the Rays had the number one overall pick. The previous year, David Price was the top pick. Price was a polished left-handed starting pitcher out of Vanderbilt University. The year before that, the Rays had the third overall pick and took Cal-State third baseman Even Longoria. Drafting college players with their first pick was a pattern for the Rays. They hadn’t taken a high school player with their first pick since 2003, when Delmon Young was drafted out of Adolfo Camarillo High School in Camarillo, California.
With the 2008 draft, the Rays were about to dip back into the high school pool with the first overall pick. As is often the case, the number one overall pick turned out to not be the best pick of the first round. The best player from the first round of the 2008 draft was the fifth player chosen. Now that a decade has passed, let’s take a look back at the MLB draft of 2008.