The 2011 MLB Draft’s first round had plenty of true misses, which I’ll go through here … but there were also a lot of just-fine picks, more than usual, I think. Cory Spangenberg (9th overall, 4.7 WAR), Tyler Anderson (20th overall, 6.7 WAR), Joe Ross (25th overall, 3.4 WAR), and Joe Panik (29th overall, 6.7 WAR) didn’t make my top 30 in my redraft, but they reached the majors and produced enough value that I wouldn’t call them “misses,” even if those drafting teams were hoping for more. My 2011 redraft, which looks back at who should have gone in the first round given what we know now about these players, is here.
Pick No. 2: Danny Hultzen, LHP
Team: Seattle
Status: 0.2 career WAR
Hultzen was worked reasonably hard at the University of Virginia, and despite good command for a college guy, he had a tough delivery that put pressure on his shoulder, which ultimately broke down and ended his career in 2016. His comeback and eventual major-league debut in 2019 is a testament to his perseverance, but it doesn’t change how badly this pick derailed the Mariners’ rebuilding efforts.
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Pick No. 5: Bubba Starling, OF
Team: Kansas City
Status: -1.8 career WAR
I know everyone wants to blame the Royals for taking Starling, the local kid, over some bona fide superstars taken right after him, but in their defense, they wanted any of the four pitchers who went ahead of their pick (Gerrit Cole, Hultzen, Trevor Bauer, Dylan Bundy), and Starling, currently in Triple A, did offer tremendous upside as a two-way baseball player who also had a commitment to play quarterback at Nebraska. It wasn’t an irrational choice. Starling’s swing changed approximately 87 times before he even reached Triple A, and he’s never found himself as a hitter in pro ball.
Pick No. 12: Taylor Jungmann, RHP
Team: Milwaukee
Status: 1.2 career WAR
Jungmann’s delivery wasn’t pretty, but he wasn’t undone by injuries in pro ball. It was a lack of command and control, never a problem at the University of Texas but an issue for him the moment he reached Double A.
Pick No. 15: Jed Bradley, LHP
Team: Milwaukee
Status: 0.0 career WAR
The Brewers picked twice in the first round, with this selection coming as compensation for Dylan Covey’s decision not to sign with Milwaukee in 2010. That meant that this pick was “unprotected,” so the Brewers wouldn’t get another pick in 2012 if they failed to sign the player they took here, and they had to reach a little bit for someone they were sure would sign. Bradley could never get right-handers out enough to be more than a lefty specialist in pro ball, and eventually wasn’t even good enough against lefties to stick around. He retired in 2017, but returned to pitch in independent ball in 2019.
Pick No.16: Chris Reed, LHP
Team: LA Dodgers
Status: 0.0 career WAR
This was during the dark times that marked the end of the McCourt Jester era of Dodgers ownership, when the team’s draft budget was limited to whatever Logan White found in the couch cushions around the office. They went under slot here, taking the Stanford lefty Reed — who was born in England, allowing him to pitch for the World team in the Futures Game — and didn’t give anyone else more than $500,000. Of the Dodgers’ entire 2011 draft class, only sixth-rounder Scott Barlow (2.5 career WAR) has been above replacement level, and none of that came until after he left the Dodgers as a minor-league free agent. Anyway, Reed was probably a second-round talent whom many scouts pegged as a future reliever, but he was more than willing to take the Dodgers’ bonus in the first. He retired before the 2017 season, but is attempting a comeback this year with the independent Long Island Ducks.
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Pick No. 21: Tyler Beede, RHP
Team: Toronto
Status: Did not sign
The story, more or less, is that Beede’s representatives thought they had a deal in place with some team below the Jays, and told Toronto not to take him, but they took him anyway because this is a draft and that’s how that works, right or wrong. The two sides never came close, but the Jays used their unspent budget on Daniel Norris and Rowdy Tellez. The next year, the Jays took Marcus Stroman with their compensation pick, while Beede went to Vanderbilt and was the 14th overall pick in 2014, taking a bonus that exceeded what the Jays reportedly offered in 2011. He’s currently in the Giants organization, rehabbing from Tommy John surgery he had in 2020.
Pick No. 23: Alex Meyer, RHP
Team: Washington
Status: 0.8 career WAR
Meyer nearly signed out of high school — Red Sox officials flew to his house in Indiana to try to get him to accept their offer of nearly $2 million — but went to the University of Kentucky, where he showed elite velocity from an arm angle that was extremely tough on right-handed batters. Meyer hit 100 mph in pro ball, but he had trouble staying healthy, never throwing more than 130 innings in a season; after 2014, he battled injuries, eventually blowing out his shoulder badly enough after 2017 that his career ended.
Pick No. 24: Taylor Guerrieri, RHP
Team: Tampa Bay
Status: 0.2 career WAR
Guerrieri, currently pitching in Triple A with the Mariners, couldn’t rival the Oklahoma boys for stuff or reputation, but he might have been the best of the rest of the high school class. He had off-field questions before the draft, and tested positive multiple times in the minors for a substance of abuse (cannabis, which, of course, is now legal for more than half the U.S. population), but his bigger problem has been that his velocity and his curveball never came all the way back after Tommy John surgery.
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Pick No. 26: Blake Swihart, C
Team: Boston
Status: -0.3 career WAR
Whew. Swihart, currently in Triple with Washington, might be one of my biggest misses ever in terms of a prospect I thought would be good who just wasn’t. Swihart was an older high school senior, 19 and two months on draft day, and faced awful competition in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, but he had bat speed, arm strength, athleticism, and, at least up through Double A, plate discipline. There’s no one clear answer to what went wrong with Swihart, but it’s clear that the Red Sox lost faith in his ability to catch. They moved him to left field, only to have him run into the wall at Fenway in early June 2016, spraining his ankle badly enough to require season-ending surgery. By the next year, the Red Sox were trying him all over the diamond, and his bat was never the same.
Pick No. 27: Robert Stephenson, RHP
Team: Cincinnati
Status: -1.1 career WAR
Stephenson had a great arm in high school, with mid-90s velocity, touching higher, and a power curveball, but he had some real head-violence in his delivery that made strikes a problem. The Reds did clean his delivery up somewhat, but he’s never had average command nor has he settled on a consistent pitch mix. Also, I suppose this means that my longtime goal of making the nickname “The Lighthouse” stick for Stephenson — because Robert Louis Stephenson’s family built most of the lighthouses around the British Isles, and he’s reasonably tall — isn’t going anywhere. He’s currently pitching with the Rockies out of the bullpen.
Pick No. 28: Sean Gilmartin, LHP
Team: Atlanta
Current status: 1.2 WAR
This was a bad pick from the get-go — Gilmartin had a fringy fastball and slow curveball in college, succeeding with a good but not elite changeup and above-average control. His stuff got a tick worse in pro ball, and he had one passable year in the Mets’ bullpen in 2015 before becoming an up-and-down emergency arm. He’s under contract with the Long Island Ducks but is currently on their reserve list.
Pick No. 30: Levi Michael, 2B
Team: Minnesota
Current status: Has not played in majors, free agent
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Michael is the only player taken in the top 30 picks in 2011 who never saw the majors, although five of the next nine selections also failed to reach the big leagues. He came close, playing 109 games in Triple A, but suffered a broken foot and broken ankle in separate injuries, and never hit for any power or even much hard contact when healthy.
The 2011 supplemental round, by the way, was nowhere near as successful as the first round.
The Rangers’ first two picks in the draft were 33 and 37, lefty Kevin Matthews and outfielder Zach Cone, with the two players combining for exactly one game above Double A. Pick No. 38 was shortstop Brandon Martin, taken by the Rays, who was convicted of first-degree homicide in November for killing three people, which his attorneys say was the result of untreated paranoid schizophrenia. The Phillies’ first pick was No. 41, and they took Georgia prep left fielder (and probable DH) Larry Greene, who hit .203/.293/.295 in two seasons in Low A and abruptly retired at age 22. The White Sox’ first pick was No. 47, where they took Arizona JUCO outfielder Keenyn Walker, a fifth-round talent to whom someone in the Chicago brass took a shine in a quick look, even though no area scouts thought he was this caliber of player. And the Yankees’ first pick, at No. 51, was Dante Bichette, Jr., Bo’s older brother, who had big power but a dead-pull approach and massive back-side collapse; he had a tremendous pro debut in the GCL that summer but never hit for average or power afterwards.
(Photo of Starling: Rob Leiter / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
