2015 MLB Draft Results: Grades for Overall Team-by-Team Results

The three-day Major League Baseball draft has come to an end after 40 rounds and more than 1,200 player selections. It's an arduous process, as a lot of players will be used to fill out the rosters for minor league teams, but the potential reward is huge for all 30 teams. 

Even though MLB teams don't get immediate results from their picks like in the NBA or NFL, the draft is still vital in building a championship club. The San Francisco Giants, for example, have won three World Series in the last five years on the back of draftees like Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum, Joe Panik and Brandon Belt.

Because it takes time to properly evaluate an MLB draft, not to mention the fact teams don't draft for a need until the later rounds, grades are based on value and likelihood that key players (mostly in the top 10 rounds) will sign.

With that explanation out of the way, here's how things shook out for all 30 clubs in the 2015 draft.

Team	Grade
Arizona Diamondbacks	B+
Atlanta Braves	A-
Baltimore Orioles	C+
Boston Red Sox	B-
Chicago Cubs	B
Chicago White Sox	C
Cincinnati Reds	B+
Cleveland Indians	A
Colorado Rockies	A-
Detroit Tigers	B
Houston Astros	A
Kansas City Royals	B
Los Angeles Angels	C-
Los Angeles Dodgers	B+
Miami Marlins	B
Milwaukee Brewers	B+
Minnesota Twins	C+
New York Mets	C+
New York Yankees	B
Oakland Athletics	B-
Philadelphia Phillies	C+
Pittsburgh Pirates	A-
San Diego Padres	B+
San Francisco Giants	B
Seattle Mariners	D+
St. Louis Cardinals	B+
Tampa Bay Rays	B-
Texas Rangers	B
Toronto Blue Jays	B+
Washington Nationals	B-

Draft Results

Full results can be found at MLB.com

Best Draft: Houston Astros

Pat Sullivan/Associated Press

No team has done a better job of playing the slot bonus game than the Houston Astros under general manager Jeff Luhnow. They did it in 2012 with Carlos Correa, signing him to an under-slot $4.8 million deal that allowed them to open up their wallet for later picks like Lance McCullers and Rio Ruiz. 

This year, it was easier for the Astros to simply go for players regardless of potential bonus demands because they had a record $17.3 million for their first 10 rounds, thanks in large part to having two of the first five picks. 

But instead of going after the big bonus baby right out of the gate, Luhnow and Co. opted to let things fall into place. They got one of the best pure hitters in the class with Alex Bregman out of LSU at No. 2 and one of the best high school hitters in Kyle Tucker at No. 5. 

Those picks were wholly justified and set up the main event as Daz Cameron kept waiting to hear his name called. Houston finally ended the young prospect's wait at No. 37, leading to speculation about whether he would sign. 

Daz's father, former All-Star Mike Cameron, told Evan Drellich of  the Houston Chronicle that things couldn't have worked out better:

"

It's just about pride and where he comes from and those kinds of things. As it turned out, (it worked out) even better. He's going to get pretty much whatever he wanted to get in the first place if he would have been (pick number) two, three, four, five, six anyway.

"

It sounds strange that falling can benefit a player, but it's accurate in this case because the Astros have so much money to play with and can try working out an under-slot deal with Bregman to have even more. 

As ESPN.com's Keith Law said, the Astros were able to use their resources in exactly the way that a team with so much to spend should have.

"The Astros got more value out of this draft than any other team, which makes sense considering they had the most money to spend thanks to having two picks among the first five," Law wrote. 

There may not be one superstar in the class. Bregman is a tremendous hitter with fringe-average power; Tucker has a great swing and raw power, but a long development road ahead of him; Cameron has the name brand, but is more solid in every facet of the game than great at any individual component. 

Because the Astros will likely have to commit a lot of money to get Tucker and Cameron, they played things fairly conservative later with college pitchers like Thomas Eshelman and Riley Ferrell. 

Yet, just in terms of overall value, likelihood of signing key players from the class and potential future impact, no one had a better draft than the Astros. 

Worst Draft: Seattle Mariners

Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

The Seattle Mariners were at a disadvantage before the draft started because they didn't have a pick until No. 60 as a result of signing Nelson Cruz. Yet when they did finally make a selection, high school right-hander Nick Neidert was a good one, as this GIF from Lookout Landing's Colin O'Keefe shows:

After Neidert, the Mariners didn't seem to be interested in adding players who project as potential big leaguers. 

Oregon State right-hander Andrew Moore, who was taken 72nd overall, is listed at 5'11" and 185 pounds on MLB.com. That's not the kind of frame that's going to support starting in the big leagues, with Baseball Prospectus' Chris Crawford noting his stuff also doesn't project well into pro ball:

"

The Mariners like to go the local route, but in doing so, they've made a pretty substantial reach. Moore has no plus pitches, and while he has above-average command of all four, asking him to be more than a fifth starter is asking too much for me. I'm not taking a potential five starter with the 72nd pick.

"

The Mariners mostly stayed on the West Coast in the first five rounds, as Moore, Braden Bishop (Washington) and Drew Jackson (Stanford) were all taken in the top 155. Bishop is a good defensive center fielder who hit under .300 as a junior in college. 

Jackson was a better performer in terms of average at Stanford, hitting .320, but he had the same number of home runs this year as I did (zero). If you can't hit the ball over the fence in college with those aluminum bats, wood is going to eat you alive at every level. 

Dylan Thompson, a right-hander taken in the fourth round, has size at 6'2" and 180 pounds with a solid arsenal that makes him look like a back-end starter more than anything else. 

Neidert is the only player Seattle took with a good ceiling, while Thompson probably has the highest floor. The fact that both are high school players doesn't speak well to what the Mariners found from the college crop, or the likelihood that they get much impact from this class.

Boom-or-Bust Draft: Cleveland Indians

There was a time in the mid-2000s when Cleveland was as vanilla as any team in the draft. It had turned into a problem, as ESPN.com's Dan Szymborski noted they have been among the worst drafting teams through 2012:

Being bad at the draft doesn't have to cripple a team, as the Giants are also on that list and have been pretty good as a franchise for the last few years, but a small-market team like Cleveland has to hit on the draft. 

Sometimes, a scouting department decides to just go for it and throws caution to the wind. That was evident right away when the Indians took Brady Aiken—who was Houston's top pick last year before failing to sign and undergoing Tommy John surgery earlier this year—at No. 17 overall. 

MLB.com's Jim Callis wrote about the Aiken selection by calling it a "high-risk, high-reward pick" because of where he would have gone if the injury hadn't occurred:

"

I say this every time I get asked about injured pitchers: We don't know who is going to take them. Cleveland laid low and got the guy who was clearly the top prospect in last year's Draft and would have perhaps been the top prospect in this year's Draft had he not needed Tommy John surgery. It's a high-risk, high-reward pick, but it could really pay off.

"

In a draft class that wasn't loaded with high-impact talent, the Indians clearly felt like Aiken's medicals were not a big concern and believed the gamble to potentially get a top-of-the-rotation left-hander was too great to pass on. 

Cleveland scouting director Brad Grant told MLB.com's Jordan Bastian the team spent a lot of time going over Aiken the past two years. 

"Our scouts did a really good job and spent a lot of time evaluating Brady over the past two years," Grant said. "We're very excited to have the opportunity to select a player as talented as Brady, with the character of Brady as well."

While Aiken was the main story of the draft, the Indians went to the projectable high school pitching well, taking Triston McKenzie and Juan Hillman with their next two picks. Third-round pick Mark Mathias is a contact hitter who can play second base. 

The success or failure of Cleveland's draft rests especially on Aiken's left arm, but also if McKenzie and Hillman can turn their raw projection into future performance. It's a fascinating, gutsy draft class that can explode in two years, or turn into a colossal failure. 

Right now, optimism should prevail because that's what a draft is for. 

Stats via NCAA.com.