The Ones That Got Away: American League West

by
June 3, 2010

Los Angeles of Anaheim

Meet the megaton of getaways. Here’s a list:

Aaron Hill (2000: Round 7, Pick 200)
Bobby Crosby (1998: Round 34, Pick 1,021)
David Murphy (2000: Round 50, Pick 1,439)
Rich Hill (2001: Round 7, Pick 209)
Brian Matusz (2005: Round 4, Pick 133)
Buster Posey (2005: Round 50, Pick 1,496)

2010 draft connection: Matt Harvey (2007: Round 3, Pick 118), who went to the University of North Carolina and should be a first round pick.

Oakland

Best positional player: Justin Smoak (2005: Round: 16, Pick 491). Undoubtedly mentioned every time Smoak hits a homer against the Athletics.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

Best pitcher: Jonathan Papelbon (2002: Round 40, Pick 1,208)

Honorable mention: Daniel Schlereth (2007: Round 8, Pick 270)

Seattle

Best positional player: Juan Pierre (1995, 1996: Rounds 30 and 48, Picks 818 and 1,406) was drafted twice by the M’s, although later in the second year which is counterintuitive, and signed neither time. He’d wind up in Colorado instead.

Best pitcher: Barry Zito (1996: Round 59, Pick 1,587). Undoubtedly mentioned every time Zito pitched a gem against Seattle throughout his Oakland career.

Honorable mention: Rich Harden (1999: Round 38, Pick 1,145)

Texas

Barry Zito is a nice fellow, I’m sure, but he’s not interesting enough to write about twice. Instead, let’s focus on the Rangers’ two 2010 draft ties.. In the 2007 draft the Rangers really went to work in the 16th round, selecting Anthony Ranaudo and Drew Pomeranz. For those living under a rock for the last several months, Ranaudo and Pomeranz are two of the top three or four college arms in this year’s draft and will go in the first round.





 

8 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Adam
15 years ago

BTW, Ranaudo never gave the Rangers a chance to sign him. He really wanted to play for LSU and Pomeranz backed out of a deal at the very last minute on deadline day.

1