Right now, Reggie Jackson is the most successful No. 2 overall pick in draft history, with 74 career WAR — putting him 74 career WAR ahead of the guy picked ahead of him, catcher Steve Chilcott, who never made the major leagues. The second-most successful No. 2 overall pick may end up passing Jackson, though, as Justin Verlander is still pitching and already at 71.6 WAR — putting him 69 WAR ahead of the player picked ahead of him, Matt Bush.
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The Padres had that No. 1 overall pick in 2004, and GM Kevin Towers and his scouting staff were focused on three college players as the draft approached: Verlander, Jered Weaver and Stephen Drew. When things started to go south and the Padres’ owner at the time, John Moores, didn’t want to spend what it would take to sign any of those players, Moores made his baseball people pivot to take Bush, a local high school two-way prospect who was a top 10 talent in the draft but not 1-1 good. That pick ensured the Tigers would get their top choice, Verlander, at pick No. 2 — a sequence that altered the histories of both franchises. What if Moores hadn’t mucked things up, and Verlander had gone No. 1 overall instead?
For one thing, the Tigers don’t get the ace of their staff for the next decade. Verlander was in the Tigers’ rotation by 2006, with a 4.0 WAR season as Detroit won the AL pennant, and finished in the top 10 in the AL in WAR five times before the Tigers traded him to Houston in 2017. Detroit reached the postseason four more times with Verlander in their rotation, winning a second pennant in 2012.
The 2006 Tigers won the wild-card spot in the American League by five games over the White Sox, and they may have done the same without Verlander, but his presence on the roster made the Tigers regular contenders for 11 seasons, encouraging GM Dave Dombrowski to continue to add to the major-league club to keep them atop the AL Central. Do the Tigers still trade for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis after the 2007 season if they don’t have the emerging ace already in Verlander? We know Miggy wasn’t long for south Florida, but perhaps he would have been traded to the Angels instead — and then they never sign Albert Pujols — or to the Dodgers, who were asked to give up Matt Kemp or Clayton Kershaw (among five possible names) in the deal.
The Tigers’ second pennant in the Verlander years absolutely rested in part on his shoulders, as they only won 88 games in 2012 and took the division by just three games in a year when Verlander was worth 8 WAR all by himself.
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If the Tigers don’t get Verlander, who might they have taken? Greg Smith was their scouting director at the time, and he recalled knowing they’d get Verlander before the draft after talking to the Padres’ scouting director that year, Bill “Chief” Gayton, and finding out San Diego was going in a different direction. “We spent a lot of time on the Rice guys, (Jeff) Niemann and (Phil) Humber,” Smith says, speaking of the pitchers who would end up going fourth and third overall, respectively, but whose pro careers were curtailed by injuries. “There was the dynamic with (Stephen) Drew, and the one outlier, Homer Bailey, for a higher-end guy.” Drew was expected to demand a bonus over the slot value wherever he was picked, while Bailey was the only high school player Smith mentioned in the Tigers’ mix from that year.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that while the Tigers wanted Verlander, they did consider those other players throughout the spring. “I think his first start of the year was in Charleston, South Carolina,” Smith says. “There were a lot of us there, and he was 99 right out of the gate, just firing rockets, it’s like, whoa, maybe this is better than what we thought going in.” Smith recalls seeing Gayton and Jack Bowen, then the scouting director for the Mets, who picked third, everywhere that spring, since they were all scouting the same small pool of the draft’s most elite players.
“There were other pitchers on our radar that were more polished or advanced, and had fewer questions. With Justin, there was some raw or crude in there, but two things I kept coming back to were that there was an extra gear that guys don’t have, and there was more in there that hadn’t been harnessed yet. We felt like there was untapped potential. Let’s shoot for the stars here and we might hit. If Justin settles and doesn’t get those things checked off, he’ll still be a good pitcher, still a legitimate major-league starter. Dave (Dombrowski) loves impact, the top of the top, and Justin fit.”
The Padres had trouble with Bush right away, suspending him that same year after he got in a fight outside a bar — at age 18 — near their spring training complex in Peoria, Ariz. He never saw the majors with the team, converting from shortstop to the mound, blowing out his elbow, and ending up in prison for three years before getting another opportunity in pro ball with the Rangers. Yet San Diego had some success even with zero return on that first overall pick, making the “loss” of Verlander even more hurtful in hindsight.
In 2006, the Padres won the division with an 88-74 record, but were knocked out by the Cardinals in four games in the first round. In 2007, they missed the playoffs by just one game, losing on the final day of the season to the Rockies; Verlander was worth 4.2 WAR that year, and easily could have been the difference between them finishing third and winning two more games to finish first. After two years below .500, they won 90 games in 2010, finishing second in the division and missing the playoffs by two games. Verlander was worth 7.3 WAR that year, more than four wins more than any Padres starter was worth. The Padres haven’t come within 15 games of first place since then and haven’t been to the playoffs since 2006. It’s not hard to envision Verlander alone making the difference in one of those two seasons, pushing the team into a playoff spot, before we consider what else the team might have done to support him — or what the Padres might have gotten had they traded him in 2011, when they lost 91 games (without him).
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The Padres’ scouting staff wasn’t off base in their evaluations, either; Verlander has had the best career of any first-rounder in that draft, Weaver the second-best and Drew fifth-best. They identified the right players, but ownership didn’t want to spend what Scott Boras allegedly wanted for Weaver, who (in my recollection) was universally seen as the most polished college arm in the draft; or for Drew, who benefited somewhat from his brother J.D.’s success in the draft, but who was seen more as a good regular rather than a potential star. With Bush, they got a completely different animal — a raw high school player with makeup questions, someone who’d take four or five years to see the majors even if things had worked out with him, and nobody who’d help the team as quickly as Verlander helped the Tigers.
The what-ifs go on forever in this scenario. If the Padres have Verlander in 2008, maybe they don’t lose 99 games, and end up picking later than third overall, so someone else takes Donavan Tate, who never sniffed the majors? If the Tigers don’t have Justin Verlander, do they still take Jacob Turner in the first round in 2009 — and do they develop him more slowly, allowing him to have a more successful major-league career? Do they still take a closer with their first-round pick in 2008, a pick that didn’t work out (Ryan Perry, 0.2 career WAR), or do they draft higher and get a better player? What happens to the White Sox if they take the AL Central in 2012, or to the Rockies if the Padres keep them out of the playoffs in 2007? And is Houston still looking for its first World Championship in the alternate universe where the Padres took Justin Verlander instead of Matt Bush 13 years before the title they won in this universe? I suppose only the late scout Hugh Everett III would know.
Check out the complete Do Over series on this topic page
(Photo of Verlander in 2006: Otto Greule Jr. / Getty Images)
