Words of warning: Taking pitcher No. 1 overall a risky move
By Scott Miller | CBSSports.com Senior Writer Follow ScottSo Stephen Strasburg, you wanna be something more than just a footnote in history? Good luck. It ain't gonna be easy, even if your scouting report already is engraved on a 24-karat gold plate and encased in bulletproof glass under 24-hour armed guard.
Yes, life as the No. 1 overall pick in the draft is going to be way cool, even if some folks view being chosen by the Washington Nationals as the baseball equivalent of a future doing hard time at San Quentin.
Of course, that's completely silly. Your biggest challenge will not be pitching for the Nationals. Oh, no.
Your biggest challenge will be overcoming the overwhelming odds against a pitcher chosen first overall from developing into much more than a bucket of warm tobacco spit destined for afterthought-ness.
Since the advent of the major league amateur draft in 1965, there have been 13 previous pitchers chosen as the first overall pick. Of those, the Hall of Fame ordered plaques for -- nobody. None came close to winning 200 games in the majors. Just three won as many as 100: Mike Moore (161), Andy Benes (155) and Floyd Bannister (134).
The 13 No. 1 picks have combined for just two All-Star selections (Bannister and Benes, one each) and zero Cy Young Awards. Closest any of them have come to a Cy is two third places (Moore and Benes) and two sixth places (Benes and Belcher). Legacies? Mostly, those who preceded you as No. 1s, young Stephen, have left the trail littered with ghosts and tears, bar fights and shredded labrums, octopuses and slutty Mrs. Santa Claus suits.
• Strasburg goes No. 1 | Miller
Or, as Bruce Springsteen sings in the aching masterpiece The River, "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?" ...
David Clyde, Texas Rangers, 1973: The most famous No. 1 bust in history, the hype surrounding Clyde probably surpassed even that of Strasburg considering the intensity of the buzz for the Texas left-hander long before the age of Internet and cable television.
In his final two seasons of high school ball before the Rangers drafted and then egregiously mishandled him, Clyde went 35-2, including 18-0 as a senior with 14 shutouts and five no-hitters.
"Probably as good a high school career as anybody has ever had in this country," says Jim Callis, longtime draft expert and executive editor of Baseball America.
• Draft: Tracker | Player capsules | Talk!
The original Can't-Miss Kid. Except, the Rangers, who were attracting fewer customers at the time than local farms were flies, brought him straight to the majors at 18.
|
|
| After going No. 1, Strasburg has the pressure of a franchise on his shoulders. (Getty Images) |
The Rangers picked Clyde ahead of two future Hall of Famers, Dave Winfield and Robin Yount. Texas was averaging fewer than 9,000 fans a game in 1973, but when Clyde debuted on June 27 against Minnesota, Arlington Stadium was crammed with a sellout crowd of 35,698.
No wonder. Again, Shropshire, quoting Short at the time: "This Clyde ... you're getting to see ... is a gift from God. I mean, beyond what the baseball scouts say. Photogenic. Mature. Articulate. A natural for the media. I mean, he's like a ... Eagle Scout."
Instead, he was wild and the Rangers were negligent. He became wild in other ways, too: The fact that those Rangers were a hard-drinking, hard-partying club and Clyde was straight out of high school and attempting to fit in as best he could was a horrible mix. He would battle alcoholism and endure two failed marriages in addition to two arm operations.
Herzog was fired in September of '73, and despite the fact that Clyde started 3-0 in '74, Martin, locked in a power struggle with the front office, didn't pitch him for 30 days.
Clyde threw his last major league pitch in 1979 for Cleveland and finished his career with an 18-33 record. He lives in Texas today -- the Tomball area, just outside of Houston -- was working in the lumber business and, sadly, wound up 30 days short of eligibility for a major league pension, which would have paid him roughly $3,000 a month.
"He's a cautionary tale," Callis says. "So many things went wrong with him. Today, the Rangers would get killed [by the media and public] for rushing him to the big leagues. He's probably still the best left-handed prospect ever in the draft."
Floyd Bannister, Houston Astros, 1976: On this list, Bannister practically is a Hall of Fame candidate.
"He was outstanding," says one major league scout who saw Bannister pitch at Arizona State. "He had it all. Great stuff, great control, great mechanics. If you didn't get him early, you weren't going to get him."
Bannister debuted in the majors at 22 in 1977 and went 11-18 for the Astros before they shipped him to Seattle for infielder Craig Reynolds. He won double-digit games over seven consecutive seasons between 1982 and 1988 for the Mariners, White Sox and Royals.
Final big league record: 134-143.
Ongoing legacy: Floyd's son, Brian, currently is a member of the Royals' rotation.
Mike Moore, Seattle Mariners, 1981: Strasburg, here's your benchmark: Moore owns the most wins of any No. 1-overall pick in baseball history. He pitched for Seattle, Oakland and Detroit, appeared in two World Series (in '89 and '90, with the Athletics) and finished with a 161-176 career record.
|
|
| Tim Belcher, seen here with the Reds in 1992, went 146-140 in 14 seasons. (Getty Images) |
In '83, Belcher was one of the first clients of a young agent named -- (cue the James Bond voice) Boras, Scott Boras -- who advised him to hold out for a bigger signing bonus. The Twins were offering $110,000, same as the previous year's first pick, Shawon Dunston, had received. Belcher didn't sign, re-entered the draft the next year, was picked by the New York Yankees and went 146-140 in 14 seasons with seven big league clubs.
Andy Benes, San Diego Padres, 1988: Benes' distinction? Of the four No. 1 picks in history who have won more than 100 games, Benes -- a college pitcher out of the University of Evansville -- has the highest winning percentage (.527, 155-139).
Ben McDonald, Baltimore Orioles, 1989: A product of Skip Bertman's baseball machine at LSU, McDonald, also represented by Boras, received a then-record $350,000 signing bonus and a guaranteed salary of $950,000 with incentives that pushed the package to $1.1 million. But over nine big league seasons, McDonald spent six stints on the disabled list and underwent three rotator cuff surgeries. He finished 78-70 and lives on a six-acre spread with a fishing pond in Denham Springs, La.
Brien Taylor, New York Yankees, 1991: The saddest story of the mostly unlucky 13 pitchers on this list, Taylor is the only one who never reached the majors. Following two highly promising seasons in the minors, Taylor, who was drafted out of high school in tiny Beaufort, N.C., became embroiled in a fight defending his brother near his home in December, 1993, during which he landed on his pitching arm and tore his shoulder capsule and labrum.
Though he sat out the entire '94 season and then struggled in the minors for four years after that, Taylor's career, essentially, was finished. He had signed for $1.55 million and famously bought himself a black Mustang, which he still drives today back home in Beaufort, where he has a street named after him (Brien Taylor Lane) and works as a mason.
Paul Wilson, New York Mets, 1994: Part of the Mets' famous, mid-'90s trio of bright starting prospects that also included Jason Isringhausen and Bill Pulsipher, Wilson had a tremendous fastball and slider -- and a frustrating ability to break down. He underwent two shoulder surgeries, one elbow surgery and threw his final major league pitch in 2005, never having won more than 11 games in a season.
Joe McIlvaine, the Mets' general manager when they drafted Wilson, vividly recalls scouting him in '94 while pitching for a Florida State team that also included underclassmen J.D. Drew and Doug Mientkiewicz against a Georgia Tech team that included Jason Varitek, Nomar Garciaparra and Jay Payton.
"The only thing you objected to was his low arm angle," said McIlvaine, now a special assistant to Minnesota GM Bill Smith. "But every pitcher at Florida State dropped down because the park was a bandbox.
"He threw a hard slider, a change-up ... his fastball moved and was 95 and it was unhittable when it was upstairs."
The gap between Wilson and everyone else in the draft that year was as large as the divide between Strasburg and others this year. Oakland wound up taking outfielder Ben Grieve second and San Diego took pitcher Dustin Hermanson third.
"I saw all three and, to me, he was head and shoulders above everybody else, just like Strasburg," McIlvaine says. "He was the clear No. 1."
But he broke down almost immediately.
"You look at his innings pitched in the minor leagues with the Mets -- nobody would let their pitchers throw that many innings in the minors today," Callis says. "Guys were in love with him and will tell you he was as good a prospect as there ever was."
The year after he was drafted, Wilson, then 22, worked 186 2/3 innings in the minor leagues. Too much?
"It might have been too much," McIlvaine says now. "He was hurt half the time in the minors. It was tough to get him out there."
|
|
| Kris Benson's wife, Anna, has made more headlines than the pitcher. (Getty Images) |
As Kris struggled to get a firm footing in the majors, wife Anna penned a piece for Penthouse with salacious details of the couple's sex life. Then, after Benson signed with the Mets as a free agent, the couple appeared at a charity Christmas function as the Clauses. Kris made a fine Santa, while Anna, as a trampy Mrs. Claus with a plunging neckline in her red satin top, was a smash in the New York tabloids.
By the time she ripped the club for acquiring Carlos Delgado (his refusal to stand for the national anthem after the Iraq invasion angered her) and threatened to sleep with every Mets player if she ever caught Kris cheating on her, the club decided it was time to cut bait with her hubby.
The final chapter hasn't been written on Benson because he's currently in Texas' bullpen. But with a career mark of 69-74 after stints in Pittsburgh, New York (Mets), Baltimore and, now, Texas, it's pretty clear he'll never excite the masses nearly as much as Anna.
Matt Anderson, Detroit, 1997: Chosen ahead of J.D. Drew, Troy Glaus and Vernon Wells, Anderson holds the dubious distinction of being the first relief pitcher picked as a No. 1 overall. His biggest contribution to the game probably was to serve as a warning to other clubs not to make the same mistake the Tigers did.
Anderson was similar to Strasburg in that he could crack 100 mph on the radar gun. But he finished his career in 2005 with 15 wins, 22 saves and one fishy story. Anderson was a participant in an octopus-throwing contest in conjunction with a Detroit Red Wings playoff appearance. A few hours later, he hurt his arm while warming up in the bullpen. It came so close on the heels of the octopus throwing that legend has it that that's how he injured himself.
He never threw more than 90 mph again. But he did have an excruciatingly pimped-out truck with crazy wheels that made the vehicle lift up. Oh, what a sight it was in the parking lot of the Tigers' hotel one night in Anaheim, Calif., watching that on display. He once said he wanted to be a sheriff, and on another occasion he said he wanted to own his own trucking company.
Judging by that tricked-out truck, he might be qualified to do both.
Bryan Bullington, Pittsburgh Pirates, 2002: Still too soon to call, but Bullington has a real chance to become the biggest bust of all by the time his nondescript career is finished. Currently, he's toiling on the farm in the Toronto Blue Jays system. Despite a $4 million signing bonus, Bullington still is in search of his first big league win.
"The thing I'll never forget about Bryan is that after the Pirates picked him, [then-GM] David Littlefield saying, "We think he'll be a good No. 3 starter," Baseball America's Callis says. "I remember thinking, 'That's not exactly what you want in a No. 1.'
"In fairness to Dave, he probably was trying to take some of the pressure off of Bryan."
Yeah, and given the underwhelming achievements of an overwhelming number of pitchers on this list, who would blame him?
Luke Hochevar, Kansas City Royals, 2006: Why, as a former first-overall pick, Hochevar is fitting in quite nicely this season as -- the fifth starter in Kansas City's rotation. Or, maybe not so nicely: He's 1-2 with a 7.85 in four starts.
David Price, Tampa Bay Rays, 2007: One of the keys during Tampa Bay's exhilarating stretch-run drive last summer toward the franchise's first World Series appearance, Price was recalled from the minors and installed in the Rays' rotation in late May. He's still young enough to live up to all of those Empire State Building-high expectations, and promising enough to elude the most sensible warning No. 1 overall pitchers -- and that includes you, Stephen -- can hear at this point:
Beware.
