Or at least we have, on many occasions.  This post has been percolating in the back of my mind for a while and the upcoming draft made me decide to post it now.  Back when we signed Kris Benson, people were talking about how the guy had to be good since he was a former #1 overall draft pick (?!?!).  I know that Josh Hamilton is also a former #1 and that got me wonder how many other #1 overall picks have passed through the Rangers over the years. So, I went back though all the previous drafts through 1965 and checked which players had played for the Rangers at some point during their careers.  I also looked up their WAR for the time they were here to get a rough idea of how much they were worth to the Rangers.

Ten #'1's have played for the Rangers. I'm not sure how that number compares to other teams.  If someone knows of a way to compile that information easily, I'd be very interested to know it.  Of the ten that played in Texas, six of them played at or below replacement level.  The total WAR for all the player in all the years they played for the Rangers is 35.9, but most of that is from A-Rod with his 24.6 Wins.  Josh is still here and we all hope that he will add to his total of 6.5 so far.  The Rangers have had the #1 pick twice, which is about you'd expect without looking at records with 30 teams and 44 drafts so far.  The Rangers have been historically bad, but not bad enough to get more than their share of #1 picks, unlike the Mets and Padres who have had five #1's each.

Notes for the data below.  Baines was aquired mid-season in '89 and traded mid-season '90.  He played 50 and 103 games for the Rangers in those season, respectively.  For Benson and Hamilton, their current WAR numbers come from fangraphs.com  All historical WAR, including Hamilton's '08 season come from baseballprojection.com.  FanGraphs and BaseballProjection have different number for Hamiltons '08 WAR (FG: 4.0, BP: 5.6), so they are calculating WAR differently. That makes Hamilton's total WAR number of 6.5 questionable since its adding apples and something similar, but different, to apples.

Player                  Drafted By      Year    With Rangers    Total WAR
Jeff Burroughs          Senators        1969    '72 - '76             8.1
Dave Roberts            Padres          1972    '79 - '80             0.0 (0.5, -0.5)
David Clyde             Rangers         1973    '73 - '75            -0.5
Floyd Bannister         Astros          1976    '92                  -0.7
Harold Baines           White Sox       1977    '89 - '90             0.9
Phil Nevin              Astros          1992    '05 - '06            -1.0
Alex Rodriguez          Mariners        1993    '01 - '03            24.6
Kris Benson             Pirates         1996    '09 - current        -0.3*
Josh Hamilton           Devil Rays      1999    '08 - current         6.5*
Adrian Gonzales         Marlins         2000    '04 - '05            -1.1