Draft Review: 2008

[calsnowskier]

Last week, I looked at the 2007 draft. (Draft Review: 2007) Today, let's look at the 2008 draft...

2008 San Francisco Giants Picks in the MLB June Amateur Draft | Baseball-Reference.com

Significant non-Giants drafted...

Eric Hosmer (1-3)
Jason Castro (1-10)
Brett Lawrie (1-16)
Gerrit Cole (1-28 DNS)
Lance Lynn (1-39)
Logan Forsythe (1-49)
Craig Kimbrel (3-19)
Jason Kipnis (4-23 DNS)
Alex Avila (5-21)
Josh Harrington (6-19)
Tanner Roark (25-11)
Sonny Gray (27-19 DNS)

Giants picks...

1-5 Buster Posey MLB Debut 9/11/2009

2010 ROY
2012 MVP
2012 Batting Champion
3-time Silver Slugger
3-time NL All-star
3-time top 10 MVP voting
Caught 2 No-hitters and 1 Perfect game

Posey is arguably the face of MLB. He is the modern-day Jeter. He was able to anchor the likes of Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Sanchez, Hudson, and Zito in leading the organization to 3 World Series Championships in 5 years. He is generally considered the best catcher in the game today. He has accrued the most WAR of any player in this draft to this point.

1-37 Conor Gillaspie MLB Debut 9/9/2008

A useful MLB journeyman 3B, he is currently filling in admirably for the injured Matt Duffy for the Giants.

3-82 Roger Kieschnick MLB Debut 4/31/2013

He is currently out of affiliated ball, playing in the Mexican League. Hard to call a third rounder who actually made the show a bust, but, bust?

4-117 Brandon Crawford MLB Debut 5/27/2011

2015 All-star
2015 Gold Glove
2015 Silver Slugger

Crawford was the second cap-stone superstar taken by the Giants in this draft. He is currently in the discussion for top 3 or 4 SS in all of baseball, and certainly the best in the NL. His story adds to his value.

6-177 Eric Surkamp MLB Debut 8/27/2011

Journeyman #5 pitcher. Not a horrible value for a 6th rounder.

8-237 Scott Barnes MLB Debut 5/30/2012

He was one of Giants top prospects when he was traded to the Indians for Ryan Garko in 2009. Neither team won that trade.

9-267 Ryan Verdugo MLB Debut 4/17/2012

Part of the Melky trade before the '12 season. He never amounted to much and is now out of affiliated ball.

13-387 Juan Carlos Perez MLB Debut 4/9/2013

A bit player, for sure, but JCP will always be a good Giant (even if he does hand out heart-attacks like candy on Holloween during World Series game 7s). He is currently in AAA for the Cubs.

The Giants got two Face-of-the-Franchise type players in a single draft. By any metric, this draft rates as an A+. There is no other way to look at it.

 

[SFGRTB]

I remember leading up to this draft there was A LOT of Justin Smoak hype out of the Giants' camp. He was getting Mark Teixeira comps. Posey was expected to be gone before the Giants were up, but even if he was there, I remember how I was still leaning towards Smoak because POWER!!!

Glad that one worked out.

 

[LHG]

What I find interesting about this draft is the contrast between the 1st 10 rounds and the rest of the picks. No one lower than Juan Perez (13th round) made it to the big leagues and only of them is still playing ball (30th round pick Vladimir Frias has been floating around independent ball for the past few years). Not much depth, but, wow, the quality they got in the first few rounds is amazing! Only the 5th, 7th and 10th round picks didn't make it to the big leagues and the 10th round guy never even signed.

 

[calsnowskier]

What I find interesting about this draft is the contrast between the 1st 10 rounds and the rest of the picks. No one lower than Juan Perez (13th round) made it to the big leagues and only of them is still playing ball (30th round pick Vladimir Frias has been floating around independent ball for the past few years). Not much depth, but, wow, the quality they got in the first few rounds is amazing! Only the 5th, 7th and 10th round picks didn't make it to the big leagues and the 10th round guy never even signed.

I noticed that as well. The Giants tend to do well getting at least a cuppo out of the 20+ rounds, but not this draft. After JCP, who was actually a rather high-profile pick due to his prodigious power in JC ball (WTH happened to that power, btw?), I hardly even recognize many of those names.

But it doesn't matter. They drafted 5 guys who have already had at least moderate success in the majors, including 2 superstars. I will take that every year.

 

[calsnowskier]

2008 BA top 10 prospects...

1) Jay Bruce - Decent bat, but no D. Even his bat now is rather one-dimensional.
2) Evan Longoria - Top 3B
3) Joba Chamberlain - Journeyman bully arm.
4) Clay Buckholz - If he werent with Boston, no one would know who he was.
5) Colby Rasmus - Decent player, but nothing special
6) Cameron Maybin - Never matched promise
7) Clayton Kershaw - All-time pitcher.
8) Franklin Morales - Who??
9) Homer Bailey - Giant-killer
10) David Price - Elite, legit Ace.

Giants / Future Giants

33) Angel Villalona - bust
34) Johnny Cueto
75) Tyler Colvin - bust
84) Tim Alderson - bust

Other Significant prospects...

13) Jacoby Ellsbury
14) Andrew McCutchen
28) Jason Heyward
44) Joey Votto
66) Max Scherzer

This top 10 list was a bit more spot on than the '07 list. Re-ranked...

1) Kershaw (7)
2) Price (10)
3) Scherzer (66)
4) McCutchen (14)
5) Votto (44)

 

[calsnowskier]

Like I did with the 2017 draft, let's look at the draft as a whole...

Coming into today, based on BBRef WAR...

1) Giants (53.6)

Buster Posey (36.2)
Brandon Crawford (18.7)
Conor Gillaspie (1.3)
Juan Carlos Perez (0.3)
Scott Barnes (0.1)
Ryan Verdugo (-0.3)
Roger Kieschnick (-1.0)
Eric Surcamp (-1.7)

2) Brewers (23.6)

Brett Laurie (15.2)
Jake Odorizi (8.1)
Logan Schafer (0.7)
Lucas Luetge (0.1)
Rob Wooten (-0.2)
Erik Komatsu (-0.3)

3) Cubs (20.4)

Josh Harrison (12.8)
Andrew Cashner (5.8)
Ryan Flaherty (1.7)
Tony Campana (1.4)
Jeff Beliveau (0.4)
Chris Carpenter (0.0)
Jay Jackson (0.0)
Erik Hamden (-0.1)
Logan Watkins (-0.8)
Casey Coleman (-0.8)

4) Diamondbacks (20.4)

Wade Miley (9.3)
Bryan Shaw (6.5)
Collin Cowgill (4.0)
Ryan Cook (3.2)
Daniel Schlereth (0.0)
Jake Elmore (-2.6)

5) Braves (19.8)

Craig Kimbrel (16.7)
Bret Oberholtzer (3.1)
JJ Hoover (1.4)
Zeke Spruill (-0.4)
Paul Clemens (-1.0)


So, yeah. This was a pretty crappy draft. Except for the Giants. And oh boy, was this a GREAT draft for the Giants. The Giants got 2 of the 3 best players in Posey (alone he is better than all other entire draft classes) and Crawford (alone he is better than all but obout 6 classes).

Given the overall draft, this Giants class might just be the greatest draft class in the history of the draft. And I am not exaggerating.

 

[calsnowskier]

All this draft review talk reminded me of my favorite draft…

Team WAR
Giants 74.5
Cards 37.3
Brewers. 30.2
Cubs 29.1
Pirates 27.7

Posey ended his career with 44.8 WAR (still more than any other team’s entire class). Craw’s 29.9 career WAR is good for #3 overall in the whole draft (only counting players who signed)

This was a very shallow draft. Only 12 players currently have more than 15 WAR, and Giants got 2 of them. Only 196 signed picks even made it to the Show, and of those, only 104 have a positive career WAR.

 

[LHG]

All this draft review talk reminded me of my favorite draft…

Team WAR
Giants 74.5
Cards 37.3
Brewers. 30.2
Cubs 29.1
Pirates 27.7

Posey ended his career with 44.8 WAR (still more than any other team’s entire class). Craw’s 29.9 career WAR is good for #3 overall in the whole draft (only counting players who signed)

This was a very shallow draft. Only 12 players currently have more than 15 WAR, and Giants got 2 of them. Only 196 signed picks even made it to the Show, and of those, only 104 have a positive career WAR.

Interesting to see the team shuffles under the Giants. The Cards came out of nowhere (well, at least outside of top 5) but the Giants still widened the gap between them and the 2nd spot on this draft. And Lance Lynn (I forgot he started with the Cards' organization) is completely carrying their 2008 draft so even if Crawford is done and Lynn pitches another year or two, they won't get close to the Giants.

 

[calsnowskier]

Interesting to see the team shuffles under the Giants. The Cards came out of nowhere (well, at least outside of top 5) but the Giants still widened the gap between them and the 2nd spot on this draft. And Lance Lynn (I forgot he started with the Cards' organization) is completely carrying their 2008 draft so even if Crawford is done and Lynn pitches another year or two, they won't get close to the Giants.

I rave about this draft BECAUSE it is so sorry as a whole. The #2 player in the draft is Lance fucking Lynn! How pitiful is that? And the Giants came away with TWO franchise level players in this draft.

Absolute ownage.