2013 MLB Draft: What Becomes of No. 1 Overall Picks After the Draft?

When the 2013 Major League Baseball draft comes next week, some lucky youngster will be the first overall pick. Then everyone will sit down and ponder what his future holds.

Here's a preemptive "Good luck with that." The history of the No. 1 overall pick in the MLB draft contains many tales but is light on patterns.

Baseball has been doing the draft ever since 1965, so the count is up to 48 No. 1 overall picks. We can disregard the two most recent ones, as 2011 No. 1 pick Gerrit Cole and 2012 No. 1 pick Carlos Correa are still in tadpole mode. We can also ignore the No. 1 overall pick of the 1971 draft, as Danny Goodwin decided he wanted to go to college rather than play for the Chicago White Sox. He was eventually picked No. 1 overall again in 1975 by the California Angels.

That leaves 45 picks' worth of history to sift through. Though the history of No. 1 picks can't provide definitive answers to too many questions, we start with one of the questions it can answer:

How long before the No. 1 picks usually arrive? 

Time to Arrival and Longevity

Because one must be supremely talented to be drafted No. 1 overall, you might be thinking that No. 1 picks must tend to arrive in the big leagues fairly quickly.

If so, your thinking box is working just fine. 

A total of 41 No. 1 picks—we'll get to the four who didn't in good time—went on to play in the major leagues, and the average time it took them to get there was about two years. But of the 41, there have been 18 who didn't even have to wait that long.

Six players made their major league debuts the same year they were drafted: Dave Roberts in 1972, David Clyde in 1973, Bill Almon in 1974, Danny Goodwin in 1975, Bob Horner in 1978 and Ben McDonald in 1989. Another 12 players made their major league debuts the year after they were drafted, including four active players: Alex Rodriguez in 1994, Luke Hochevar in 2007, David Price in 2008 and Stephen Strasburg in 2010.

Next to those 18 players are 19 players who made their major league debuts either two or three years after being drafted: eight for the two-year crowd and 11 for the three-year crowd. Three players needed four years in between being drafted and making their debuts, and one player took eight years to get to the majors.

That was Josh Hamilton. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays picked him No. 1 overall in 1999, but then Hollywood-worthy drama stalled his career until he finally broke through in 2007 with the Cincinnati Reds.

Now, is there a correlation between time to arrival and career success?

Yes and no, really.

If we exclude all active players with fewer than 10 years of major league service time—leaving only A-Rod, Adrian Gonzalez and Joe Mauer—the breakdown looks like this:

Category	0-1 Years	2-Plus Years
Count	15	19
Avg. Career Length (Seasons)	12.33	12.63
Avg. WAR*	22.62	24.94

*Baseball-Reference.com version.

So there's a minuscule difference between time of arrival and career success. The picture only changes if Rodriguez is removed from the equation, in which case the average career length for the one-or-less crowd drops to 11.86 years and the average WAR drops to 15.99.

A-Rod is thus a tricky figure for MLB executives to consider, as his career success A) goes to show that putting a No. 1 pick on the fast track to the majors can work out and B) is sort of the exception to the rule. At least until Price and Strasburg put a few more brilliant seasons under their belts.

And that's entirely possible, for they're well-established superstars. That's what teams are hoping for when they have the No. 1 overall pick, and the spot has yielded some good ones.

Those Who Became (and/or Still Are) Stars

As talented as No. 1 picks usually are, they're not very good at winning the Rookie of the Year Award. When Bryce Harper won the award last year, he was the first No. 1 pick to win the Rookie of the Year since Darryl Strawberry in 1980.

No. 1 overall picks aren't even that great at becoming All-Stars. Of the 45 players drafted No. 1 between 1965 and 2010, only 22 went on to make at least one All-Star appearance. 

The bright side, however, is that 14 of those 22 made more than one All-Star appearance:

*Green denotes active players.

This list should get a bit of shake-up come July. Mauer and Justin Upton are all but guaranteed to pick up another All-Star appearance for their respective collections, while Strasburg and Harper are each in line for a second All-Star appearance.

As it stands now, though, this is a solid collection of names. Also contained within that table are the only No. 1 overall picks to win MVP awards: A-Rod, Ken Griffey Jr., Chipper Jones, Mauer, Hamilton and Jeff Burroughs. It also contains the only No. 1 overall pick to win the Cy Young Award: David Price.

It's also appropriate that A-Rod, Griffey, Jones and Strawberry would occupy the top of the chart, as the four of them are the best No. 1 picks ever in the eyes of WAR. Rodriguez, Griffey and Jones all boast career WARs over 80, and Strawberry's 42.0 career WAR puts him just ahead of Mauer's 41.3 career WAR.

In case you've forgotten just how good Strawberry was in his prime, consider this: Though his career WAR is 42.0, Strawberry compiled a staggering 40.1 WAR before he turned 30.

Strawberry was at best a merely serviceable player once he got beyond the age of 30. To that extent, he became a lot like a number of other No. 1 picks.

An Ode to the Serviceable Guys

There's no set criteria that I know of, but I'd say a serviceable major leaguer is a guy who manages to hang around the league for a decade or so while being at least a little productive.

In the context of this discussion, let's define "serviceable" to mean at least 10 seasons in the bigs and a career WAR of 15.0 or better.

Most of the stars we looked at fit this description—with the lone non-active exception being Shawon Dunston, who only compiled an 11.5 career WAR despite his two All-Star nods—but there are nine other players who fit it as well:

Though he's not pictured here, Ben McDonald deserves an honorable mention. The top overall pick of the Baltimore Orioles in 1989, McDonald won 78 games and compiled a 3.91 ERA over nine seasons before injuries forced him out of the game.

Guys like McDonald and the others didn't pan out to be superstars, but they stuck around in the majors longer than your average scrub and had plenty of moments along the way.

The same can't be said of every No. 1 pick who managed to hang around in the majors for at least 10 seasons. Of the 24 who have done so, there are four who accomplished very little.

Tim Foli, the No. 1 pick of the New York Mets in 1968, played 16 seasons and compiled a WAR of 5.7. Mike Ivie, picked No. 1 by the San Diego Padres in 1970, lasted 11 seasons and compiled a 7.2 WAR. Dave Roberts, another Padres No. 1 pick in 1972, played 10 seasons and compiled a WAR of 0.4. Bill Almon, yet another Padres No. 1 pick in 1974, lasted 15 seasons and compiled a WAR of 4.7. 

I hesitate to label these guys as busts because, hey, at least they managed to hang around in the majors for longer than your average scrub. They may not have had considerable major league talent, but at least they had staying power.

That's not so bad in light of the guys up next.

The Biggest Busts of Them All

We've discussed stars, serviceable guys and not-quite-busts, and the good news, such as it is, is that these guys make up the majority of the population of No. 1 overall picks.

So why does it often feel like the history of No. 1 overall picks in the MLB draft is littered with busts?

Mainly because of guys like these:

The numbers are bad, but the stories aren't much better.

David Clyde went straight from high school to the major leagues after he was drafted by the Texas Rangers in 1973, who wanted to use him as a gimmick to sell tickets. The plan worked initially, but Clyde's career was effectively sabotaged. He threw his last pitch in 1979 at the age of 24.

Danny Goodwin, the only player in history good enough to be drafted No. 1 twice, didn't resurface in the majors until 1977 after debuting shortly after the draft in 1975. He never played in more than 59 games in seven seasons and topped out at five home runs.

Al Chambers was a can't-miss five-tool outfielder when the Seattle Mariners took him first overall in 1979, but he didn't make it to the majors until 1983 and ended up playing in only 57 career games. He hit two home runs. Total.

A scouting report for Kris Benson from 1993 compared him to Jack McDowell, who won the AL Cy Young that year on the strength of a 22-10 record. Benson never won more than 12 games in a season, and today is probably better remembered for his wife than for his pitching.

Not pictured in the above table are Luke Hochevar and Delmon Young, who, for all we know, might just be late bloomers. Maybe Hochevar is the next Ryan Vogelsong, while Young is the next Luis Gonzalez.

More likely, though, time is going to further cement Hochevar as the bust picked ahead of Evan Longoria, Clayton Kershaw and Tim Lincecum. As for Young, his claims to fame by the time he retires could be that one time he threw a bat at an umpire, that one time he was arrested for a hate crime and that one throw he made in the World Series.

But the biggest bust of all? You can take your pick between Steve Chilcott, Brien Taylor and Matt Bush. The three of them have one thing in common: They failed to go from being the No. 1 overall pick to playing in the major leagues.

Chilcott, a catcher, was the No. 1 overall pick of the Mets in 1966. He hit .248 over seven minor league seasons and battled injuries before calling it quits when he was still short of his 25th birthday.

The Yankees picked Taylor No. 1 overall in 1991. He tore up his shoulder in a fight in 1993 and went on to compile a mere 5.12 ERA in seven minor league seasons. He has since been sent to prison for crack cocaine distribution.

Bush was a shortstop when the Padres picked him No. 1 overall in 2004, but his already questionable hitting ability failed to develop in the minors. The Padres converted Bush into a pitcher in 2007, and he eventually pitched as high as the Double-A level in the Tampa Bay Rays organization in 2011.

Bush's baseball career is over now, though, as he was sentenced to several years in prison last December for nearly killing a man in a hit-and-run incident early last year.

Before long, there could be one more addition to the short list of No. 1 picks who never made it to the majors. Tim Beckham, the top pick of the Rays in 2008, is still toiling away at the Triple-A level. That's the last step before the majors, but both his offense and defense are still suspect.

That's the history of No. 1 draft busts in a nutshell. It's not too long, but it's longer than it should be.

The Final Frontier for No. 1 Picks

The No. 1 overall pick in the MLB draft has produced its share of stars, serviceable players and, regrettably, complete busts. 

But there's one thing the No. 1 overall pick hasn't produced yet: a Hall of Famer.

You'd think it would have happened by now, but nope. The best former No. 1 pick to get a shot at the Hall of Fame to this point was Darryl Strawberry in 2005, and he was booted off the ballot after receiving only 1.2 percent of the vote.

The smart money is on the first former No. 1 pick making it into Cooperstown in 2016, when Ken Griffey Jr. is slated to appear on the ballot for the first time. With 630 career homers to his name, he should be a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Eventually it will be Chipper Jones' turn, and Alex Rodriguez is likely going to end up in Cooperstown as well (though he'll probably have to wait a while). By the time their playing days are up, Joe Mauer, David Price, Justin Upton, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper could all be Cooperstown material.

So while it hasn't happened yet, it's going to happen soon. And then again and again and again.

In the meantime, the history of the No. 1 overall pick in the MLB draft will be getting brighter and brighter.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

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