Reevaluating Minnesota’s Draft Picks: 2005-2009

These were fairly solid choices whose careers included some decent runs. Parmalee was the only disappointment really. The Twins should have held onto Garza and Hicks. Trout? Who would expect a player from New Jersey to be any good?

I agree with tony&rodney that these weren't horrible picks as even Parmalee has a little time in the bigs.  Revere is a strange pick as he was so limited both defensively and offensively.  His arm was so bad that even with his speed and coverage in CF, he was a defensive liability.  Offensively, he had no power whatsoever.  The other three picks were good but not great.

This is an interesting set of picks. No busts in here, really; Parmelee is the worst of the bunch and still made the majors and considering they took him 20th it's not exactly a terrible result: 11 of the 44 1st round picks in 2006 (including supplemental picks) didn't make the majors at all and another 15 accumulated a career bWAR of 1.0 or less (including Parmelee at 0.0). He's the reminder not to take September stats too seriously; I got super-excited about him when he came up and crushed it and should have known better.

Hicks is the one that should make Twins fans a little crazy: we gave up on him too soon/mismanaged his development in MLB and he's played well in NY. He's also been injured as heck: over the last three seasons he's played less than Byron Buxton. But the pick was sound for the Twins: we just didn't realize the value. You had a HoF player in Posey up at the top, two pitchers that developed in Cole & Lynn at the bottom, a couple of guys (Lawrie, Miley) that have been a bit better than Hicks (Hosmer has more bWAR, but he's really just been healthier than Hicks) and then there's Hicks and a handful of other guys that are all sitting around 12 bWAR.

Passing on Trout would sting more if we'd drafted a bust: we didn't. Gibson has been as good as any other player taken in the first round after him NOT named Mike Trout. (YMMV on whether Paxton is better than Gibson, but of the remaining 27 first round picks, the best guys are Trout (duh) then Gibson/Paxton and no one else is close).

I think what we see in this set of 1st round picks is no big errors...but no big wins either. None of these players became a star for the Twins and when you go 5 years without drafting a star player with your first round pick you really need to find and develop guys in later rounds and those odds can get a little rough. And it's much worse when some of those first round picks hit their peaks with other teams.

It is always easy to be the Monday morning quarterback and look back 10-15 years and say that other players should have been drafted. What I don't care for is cherry-picking the best player that the Twins could have selected. This case could be made for every MLB team every year. 

All and all this isn't a terrible group of draft picks.  The two that I remember that I was disappointed in were Revere and Gibson.  Revere for the obvious reasons that he was a two tool player.  Hit and speed.  That's it.  Not someone that should've been a first rounder.  Gibson because If I remember right this was during the "pitch to contact" years and that's who he was.  But I wanted a pitcher for the Twins that could get an out himself if needed.  Whoever the twins had in the rotation at that time when he was drafted I felt like he fit the mold but I wanted to see the Twins get someone outside of the mold.  

It's unfortunate Hicks and Garza had better years after they left the twins.  We dealt Hicks for some back up catcher.  IF I remember right, in 2010 the Twins could've had Cliff Lee for their playoff push if they would have gave up hicks.  Instead a year or so later we trade him for a catcher whose name is irrelevant.  

Gibson was projected to go top 5 in that draft.  There was concern of him needing Tommy John surgery which he did.  That is why he fell in the draft.  We were ecstatic to get him.

Agreed, not bad picks overall. Garza and Hicks were terrible trades, that's beyond question.

This is leagues better than the 2010-15 classes - no matter what the Twins did with the players, they drafted and developed some quality prospects.

This group of players were not busts. Even Parm and Revere had their uses. If you want a cry fest, do an article about the 40 man, and the guys the Twins lost to Rule 5. Plenty of regret on that topic.

Or an article (maybe a giant book?) about all the guys whose careers were snuffed early by injuries in the minors or majors. "If Not for Injuries" could be a major league compendium of alternate universe superstars. Even Ted Williams fits the "If not for..." category. If not for WWII and Korea, Williams might have broken Ruth's home run record in the 1950's. 

9 hours ago, Danchat said:

This is leagues better than the 2010-15 classes - no matter what the Twins did with the players, they drafted and developed some quality prospects.

And with later round picks too.

On 3/11/2022 at 12:05 PM, Danchat said:

This is leagues better than the 2010-15 classes - no matter what the Twins did with the players, they drafted and developed some quality prospects.

Especially when you consider draft order.  The highest the Twins picked in that stretch was 14 (Hicks in 2008).  
 

2010-2015 gave us Buxton, three guys with ,2  career WAR each (Gordon and Stewart could still add on, but probably not much.) In that time, they had pick 21, 30, 2, 4, 5, and 6.  

 

2011 - Twins drafted Levi Michael #30 - there were 6 hits and 24 misses in the next 30. Jackie Bradley or Trevor Story would have been nice, but there were a lot of options on the table that would have been equal busts. 

2012 - 60 matching player(s). 40 played in the majors (66%). Total of 264.3 WAR, or 6.6 per major leaguer. (Twins got Buxton at 2 plus Berrios in the supplemental (#32) - 27 WAR and counting between them. Two hits in a deep draft) 

2013 - 39 matching player(s). 30 played in the majors (76%). Total of 141.0 WAR, or 4.7 per major leaguer.  (39.7 WAR in picks 1-3)   Twins left a lot of opportunity on the table.

2014 - 41 matching player(s). 28 played in the majors (68%). Total of 139.2 WAR, or 5.0 per major leaguer.  (20.5 WAR in picks 1-4)  Weird draft - #1 and #2 didn't make it past A ball, #6 has a career OPS+ of 27.   Nola (7), Turner (13), and Chapman (25 ) were more than half the WAR for the class.  This was the 2nd year in a row the Astros selected #1 and got nothing (Appel, Aiken).  It doesn't matter where you hit, as long as you hit somewhere.

2015 -  42 matching player(s). 31 played in the majors (73%). Total of 100.8 WAR, or 3.3 per major leaguer. (46.1 WAR in picks 1-5)  Weak draft overall, Benintendi was next, but there were a lot of busts. The 2011 (edit - I meant 2012) supplemental (31-60) was probably equal to the top 30 in this draft. 
 

I'm not sure there was to this other than the draft is a crapshoot and you need to get one or two of the 10+ WAR guys for it to be a success. 

With the added tool pf hindsight people can be so much smarter

Always fun to armchair quarterback a draft from more than 10 years ago.  However a couple of thoughts.  Yes a couple of guys in each draft out performed the Twins pick.  But my question is, how many guys that were picked before these guys did worse than the Twins pick.  Also, I really hope I'm wrong, but after seeing teams like Cleveland and Tampa Bay develop so many decent young players who come through their system, I really wonder how a guy like Lance Lynn or Josh Donaldson would have turned out had they ended up in the Twins organization?  I would hope just as good, but maybe these guys just had some guru help them out with something in like A ball that made the difference?  Maybe the teams they were on had that magic opening that allowed them the extra playing time to hone their craft?  Who knows, but seems like the Twins picks did ok, and who was responsible for those drafts?