Former Draft Flops: From Zeros to Heroes

We all like to think that the first round of the amateur draft is a can’t miss event, but more often than not picks in the first round have a fairly high failure – or at least disappointment – rate. A year ago, two such examples would have included Pittsburgh’s Neil Walker and Toronto’s David Purcey. In the past few months, though, both players have shown that they just might provide some value to the organizations that drafted them – albeit a few years later than projected.

Purcey was taken 16th overall in the 2004 draft and Toronto passed on the likes of Philip Hughes, Gio Gonzalez, Huston Street, Yovani Gallardo, and Dustin Pedroia. The Jays gave the hard-throwing lefty out of the University of Oklahoma $1.6 million to sign as a 22-year-old pitcher that was expected to move fairly quickly. However, Purcey hit a wall in double-A. His inconsistent command led to too many base runners via the walk and the hit. He was also known as a one-pitch pitcher who had little desire to improve his secondary pitches, which allowed even minor league hitters to time and jump all over his above-average heater.

The real break for Purcey came with the move to the bullpen at the beginning of 2010 – a move that had been talked about pretty much since he entered pro ball. He’s now all but abandoned his change-up and favors his fastball about 80% of the time, while mixing in the occasional slider and curveball to keep MLB hitters on their toes. Purcey has seen his fastball command improve significantly and has a positive pitch type value on his heater for the first time in the Majors (over parts of three seasons). He’s still an extreme flyball pitcher but his line-drive rate is down noticeably and batters are hitting just .169 against him (.200 BABIP). His 21 games at the MLB level in 2010 is obviously a small sample size but the 28-year-old hurler has finally started to move in the right direction to carve out a respectable MLB career as a reliever.

Walker was also taken in the 2004 draft – 11th overall out of a Pennsylvania high school, making him a marketing agent’s dream for the Pirates organization. Jered Weaver, Billy Butler and Stephen Drew were taken in the draft right after him. Unfortunately, Walker’s career was dealt a blow when the former catcher had to move out from behind the dish to third base when his defense failed to develop. Although he hit double-digit homers four times in his minor-league career, Walker lacked the prototypical power for third base and he seemed to wilt under the pressure of his new position by posting a .694 OPS at triple-A in 2008. He began to make improvements, though, when the organization switched him to a super-utility role where he played all over the diamond. His OPS jumped to .791 in ’09 and then to .951 in 2010 (43 games).

Called up to Pittsburgh in late May, Walker has continued his hot hitting. He currently has a triple-slash line of .302/.342/.453 in 225 at-bats while playing mostly second base. Walker is showing good pop for a second baseman with an ISO rate of .151. On the down side, his defense has been pretty mediocre, according to UZR, which has him at -7.2 at the keystone. The rating is due mostly to poor range, which is not surprising for a former-catcher-turned-third-baseman-turned-second-baseman. If Walker keeps hitting as well as he has (although it would be nice to see an improvement on the 5.3% walk rate), Pittsburgh may be willing to live with the defensive deficiencies. If not, though, Walker could end up back in a utility role.

It’s fairly clearly that neither Purcey nor Walker will ever perform well enough to justify their former draft slot but both players have MLB value. It’s also impressive that, in both cases, their original organizations held onto them long enough to reap some benefits. Perhaps both Purcey and Walker are examples that organizations now realize how much money they can save by developing and holding onto their own prospects.