FanPost

History Lesson #1: Taking Pitchers High in the Draft - The 2000 Draft

Most people will say that they have their best thoughts in the shower; where they stand alone in complete isolation while the warm water runs over them, but I beg to differ. I - instead - collect my best thoughts as I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling. "If shorts are called shorts, then why aren't pants called longs?"..."If your dog has a puppy, are you a grand-master?"..."What does history dictate as the most likely outcome of selecting a collegiate pitcher with a top 5 pick in the MLB Draft?" I wrote the third thought down (as well as the second), but I'll mainly stick to the third thought as I take you through my findings.

The Criteria:

I will be looking at every draft from the year 2000 - 2010, and every collegiate pitcher that was taken within the first five overall picks of each draft will be listed under their respective draft class.

The point of this is to see how highly drafted collegiate pitchers have fared in the past as we are inching closer and closer to the 2021 MLB Draft where the Rangers boast the 2nd overall pick. The current draft class is littered with premier pitching talent that includes the likes of Jack Leiter, Kumar Rocker, and Gunnar Hoglund, all of which are in serious consideration for the #2 spot in the draft, so I'd like to reflect on how premier college pitchers in the past have fared and see if there may be any correlation between their outcome and that of the aforementioned bunch.

I'll be starting with 2000, and I'll work my way to the present. This may end up being a fairly long entry, so I may have to split it in half and save another part for a second entry. We'll see.

Edit: This diary entry got way too long, so it's going to have to be a series.

(The pitchers will be shown in the order of: Player; Draft team; Player's college; Pick number)

Collegiate Pitchers Taken Top 5 in 2000:

Adam Johnson; Minnesota Twins; Cal State Fullerton; 1.2

Justin Wayne; Montreal Expos; Stanford University; 1.5

Johnson and Wayne contributed to one of the weakest drafts of the 2000's, and despite the term "bust" being used incessantly while referring to each them; they were taken under completely different circumstances. One was seen as a safe, high floor pick, and the other was seen as bargain pick straight from the clearance aisle. Despite their different circumstances, they did have one thing in common... they were both terrible.

Justin Wayne Overview:

Wayne was unanimously known as the "safest" pick in the draft when the 2000 MLB Draft came around. He gained traction as a pitcher with high quality off-speed and breaking pitches, and an average MLB fastball that sat between 88-92 during his final college season. The combination of high quality stuff and good results lead to the Expos taking Wayne with the 5th pick of the draft in 2000. Though it wasn't long after in which they realized their mistake.

At Stanford, Wayne pitched 81 innings as a reliever during his freshman season, logging an ERA of 3.78 and eight saves. Stanford deemed that performance the basis of a promotion, so in 1999 they moved him to their starting rotation. In the 1999 season, Wayne logged 118 innings of 4.94 ERA ball though with a 10.27 SO/9 and a 0.76 HR/9 that tickled Stanford's fancy once again, so they left him in the rotation once 2000 rolled around.

College baseball has long been criticized for it's unhealthy management of pitchers, and in the 2000 season Wayne would experience that same mismanagement. Over his span of 20 games in 2000, Wayne pitched 143 innings of 3.21 ERA ball with a 9.63 SO/9 and a 0.76 HR/9. To put it into perspective, if Wayne had pitched a full 32 game slate in 2000, he was on track to accrue 228 innings. That is a monstrous number compared to how current college baseball is managed. Now your biggest and best stars like Kumar Rocker don't even amass 100 innings, and if you calculate how many innings he would've thrown over a 32 game slate this season, it doesn't come particularly close 228 either (194). Wayne was worn out, and it would go to show in his future endeavors.

Immediately after the Expos selected Wayne in the draft, they threw him onto their high-A roster, and he compiled an additional 26.1 innings over 5 appearances. Altogether, Wayne took on way more of a workload than he was accustomed to in 2000, and after the season he complained of having a "tired arm".

Melancholic - there's not a much better way to describe the rest of this story. Wayne would spend another season and a half in the Expos' organization before being included in a package deal to the Florida Marlins for Cliff Floyd in 2002. He went on to make his first major league appearance in 2002 though that also marked the first season in which his velocity began to fluctuate. It rose slightly in his brief MLB stint in 2002 though it tumbled soon thereafter, and by the 2004 season his 4-seamer sat in the mid-80's. 2004 would mark his last MLB appearance, and he finished his career with a grand total of 26 games played in the majors from 2002-2004.

Miraculously, Wayne's career didn't end by injuries, but it did end by a slow, dull, and enduring onslaught of inability that eventually cast him into it's net and pulled him into mediocrity.

Adam Johnson Overview:

With the second pick of the 2000 MLB Draft, the Twins selected the Great Value brand, Adam Johnson, over the various other name brand prospects ranked above him on draft boards. Choosing Johnson allowed the Twins to save quite a bit of money as he was projected to go in the mid-1st round, in fact; it wouldn't be until the 6th pick that there was a cheaper player selected (Twins' current manager, Rocco Baldelli).

Despite Johnson being a bargain pick, he still displayed three advanced, power offerings that allowed him to bogart his way to the top of the draft. In addition, Johnson dripped with energy anywhere he went and especially when he was competing. In Johnson, the Twins saw an opportunity to not only save some money, but to also take a guy that they saw as a high octane pitcher, and his college stats reflected that.

Though before we delve into his impressive college stats, it's worth noting that he was shoved into the same, harmful college baseball pitching management as Wayne, and maybe to an even worse degree. In his freshman season, he compiled 38.1 IP over 25 games as a reliever; maybe it was his 3.05 ERA, maybe it was his 14.79 SO/9, maybe it was his 0.70 HR/9, but whatever it was caught Cal State's attention and in the following season they moved him to a starting role.

Johnson's sophomore season marked one of the three key pieces to his eventual demise: An overbearing workload. In his first season as a starter at Cal State, Johnson started 17 games and threw 116.2 IP. He was effective, but his effectiveness was the fruits of Cal State's short-term labor rather than of Johnson's long-term labor. Had he pitched a full 32 game slate in his sophomore season, he was on track to compile 218 IP; that's a far cry from the 107.1 IP he would've amassed had he appeared in 70 games in his freshman season (I say 70 games because that's a solid reliever workload and he was in a true reliever role that season).

Cal State kept beating the same drum in his final collegiate season, this time pushing him to 119.1 IP over 17 games. Though as they kept pushing, Johnson never broke. In fact, in his 2000 season with the Titans he easily had the best season of his career (collegiate or professional). Over 17 games he had an ERA of 2.72, a BB/9 of 2.11, a HR/9 of 0.75, and a SO/9 of 12.52. Johnson was by far qualified to be taken at the top of the draft based on his performance at Cal State, so even though it's easily to retrospectively slam the Twins for drafting him 2nd overall; I understand their thought process at the time, and I bet I would've seen it as a good move at the time had I existed.

After drafting Johnson in the summer of 2000, the Twins assigned him to the Fort Myer Miracle's high-A roster which may be the most ironic thing about this story. With the Miracles he pitched an additional 69.1 innings in 2000 (not nice), and over that span he added on to his great junior season with Cal State. A 2.47 ERA, 0.26 HR/9, and 11.94 SO/9 would sadly mark the peak of his career, but in the following season he would see an immediate promotion to double-A.

Despite me saying that 2000 was the peak of his career, that's not to say that he was bad in 2001. He put up solid numbers in AA with a 3.82 ERA over 113 IP in 17 games with the Rock Cats. Though while his ERA stayed within a solid realm, his peripherals saw a pretty sharp decline across the board with the starkest being to his H/9 which rose almost 3 full hits per nine to 8.36 in 2001.

While it wasn't a great season per se, the Twins saw Johnson's AA stint as the basis of a promotion, and later that season they promoted him to AAA. This is where the second of the three key pieces of Johnson's demise comes into play: He was rushed. See, the Twins had a history of selecting control pitchers out of the draft for every year before 2000, and it was the 2000 draft in which they first decided to dabble with the idea of a "power pitcher". They saw him as a guy who could fly through the system quickly, and I suspect they got too caught up in that notion and slightly ignored Johnson's development in the process.

Johnson's AAA stint in 2001 was nothing short of bad. He pitched to the tune of a 5.70 ERA, a 1.23 WHIP, and a 3.80 BB/9, though he also managed to have no home runs and a 9.51 SO/9 over that 23.2 inning stretch as well. He would be promoted to the bigs in September of 2001, and he was unspeakably horrible in his small MLB stint. In just over a year's time, Johnson went from one of the best pitching prospects in the country to a September call-up gasping for air at the highest level. He had made it, but the taste wasn't sweet.

The third key piece to Johnson's demise occurred in the 2002 pre-season where... well... Aaron Gleeman can explain it better than I can:

Johnson failed to make the team out of spring training in 2002, famously ripping up his assignment paperwork and storming out of first-year manager Ron Gardenhire's office. Talk of Johnson being "emotional and aggressive" suddenly wasn't such a good thing.

Johnson had reached his breaking point. 2002 would be the worst season of his career thus far, and he spent it all in AAA wallowing in his own failure.

He would undergo hernia surgery prior to the 2003 season, and after yet another poor Spring Training he was stationed in AAA to begin the season. Once the 2003 season went underway, another injury went underway as well. This time it was a shoulder injury, but luckily it was minor enough to allow him to pitch that season. He tossed 114.1 innings of 5.35 ERA ball in 2003 with utterly horrible peripherals to go along with it.

Fast approaching his drift into mediocrity, the Twins decided to call him up one last time as a sort of Hail Mary for his career. Saying he failed in his final opportunity would be an understatement. He finished his major league career with nine appearances over the 2001 and 2003 seasons and a stat line of 26.1 IP, a 10.25 ERA, a 7.38 FIP, and a 45 ERA+.

For the following five seasons, Johnson would bounce around minor league and independent ball before finally calling it quits in 2009. Adam Johnson's story is a true cautionary tale of bad pitching management, and how vital the people behind the players are, not just the players themselves. I believe that had Adam Johnson been in better organizations throughout his career, he could've been a good MLB player and I wouldn't be writing about him being a bust at 3.27 a.m on a Tuesday.

Final Thoughts:

While I don't think the 2000 MLB draft is comparable to the 2021 MLB draft, it does make for an interesting story of how poor circumstances in the past can put somebody behind greatly in the future. What if Wayne was handled differently in college? What if Johnson wasn't rushed by the Twins? Where would they be now? Nobody will ever know the answers to those questions, but that doesn't mean we can't learn from the questions even if we don't know the answers.