How Important Is The 4th Overall Pick?

The history of the fourth pick isn't great

It’s been 54 years since the Red Sox drafted Mike Garman from Caldwell High School in Caldwell, Idaho with the fourth overall pick. After just three seasons in the minor leagues, Garman got the call. Over four seasons with Boston, 1969, ‘71, ‘72, and ‘73, he threw 56 innings with a 4.95 ERA, 20 percent below average for the time. That was all for Mike Garman’s time with the Sox. As far as high draft picks go, his time in the major leagues was not impactful.

Garman is an irrelevant answer to a relevant question: when was the last time the Red Sox drafted as high as they will in the upcoming MLB draft? The Red Sox hope to do a bit better than Mike Garman when they pick fourth overall in next year’s draft.

There is a lot riding on this pick for the Red Sox for new-ish GM Chaim Bloom, and the scouting staff. That’s not untrue. Considering the last time the Sox picked this high was the Lyndon Johnson administration, this represents a rather unique opportunity for the organization. But, the truth is, teams mess up picks this high all the time. All the time!

In 2016 the Rockies used the fourth pick it the draft to take Riley Pint, a high school pitcher from Kansas. Pint had a fastball and was big and strong and oh brother you’d better believe he was here to dominate! That was just four years ago but Pint spent the 2019 season in A-ball putting up an 8.66 ERA while walking two batters for every inning he pitched. He went undrafted in the recently completed Rule 5 draft. His chances of making the majors at all don’t seem good.

In 2013 the Twins took Texas high school pitcher Kohl Stewart fourth. Stewart had a fastball and was big and strong and oh brother you’d better believe he was here to dominate! The Twins got 62 innings with a K/9 below 5.00 (that’s not good!) before letting him go.

The Rockies missed pretty big with Pint, taking him over Gavin Lux of the Dodgers, Matt Manning of the Tigers, and recent Rookie of the Year Kyle Lewis of the Mariners. It wasn’t good. The Twins, who missed just as big with Stewart, are coming off two straight AL Central Division championships. Having the fourth overall pick is an opportunity, but it’s not one that sends your organization hurtling to the bottom of a chasm never to be seen or heard from again should you fail to seize it.

The history of fourth overall draft picks is perhaps worse than you might think. Fourth is pretty high and the draft has been around since 1965, so you’d think there are probably a lot of really good players who were selected fourth in the draft. And there are! But not that many. The best is undoubtedly Hall of Fame shortstop Barry Larkin, taken by the Reds in the 1985 draft. Next best is should-be Hall of Fame starting pitcher Kevin Brown, who was taken the year after Larkin by the Rangers. Those are the only two players selected fourth who have any shot at a Hall of Fame career.

After that, the best players are (sorting by career WAR), Ryan Zimmerman, Alex Fernandez, Kerry Wood, and Gavin Floyd. Things peter out quickly. About as many fourth overall picks failed to make the majors as have had stand-out careers. Almost 30 percent of players picked fourth either didn’t make the majors or did and were worth negative career WAR. The average player selected in that draft spot has a career WAR of 8.5. That’s less than what Mookie Betts put up for the Red Sox in the 2018 season alone. Now pardon me while I take a quick moment to compose myself.

So that’s the horror story of the fourth overall draft slot. It’s a high pick, but most of the guys taken there are just dust in the wind, man. This also illustrates a point though, which is that the future of the Red Sox franchise is not riding on this pick. The Royals picked college shortstop Christian Colon fourth in 2010, got almost nothing from him, and won the World Series five years later anyway. The aforementioned Twins messed up the fourth pick in 2013 and they have been are are one of the best teams in the AL anyway. The Cubs took Kyle Schwarber whom they declined to offer a contract to last month. Schwarber had a few good seasons at the plate for Chicago (though he helped offset a good bit of that value with his work in the field) but he didn’t help at all in 2016 when the Cubs won the World Series. There are more stories like this. Messing up the fourth pick (or the third, or the fifth) is not a death sentence for a team’s chances in the future.

Of course it’s much better to nail the pick, get your Hall of Fame shortstop into the organization, and go on to many years of happy winning baseball. The Red Sox hope to follow that path. But the draft is a strange and finicky creature. The most amazing draft story ever in my opinion is that Mike Trout was picked 25th overall by the Angels in 2009. That means that almost every team (save the Red Sox and a few others who didn’t have picks before Trout was taken) had a chance to take the best player in the last 50 years and passed. That’s amazing in and of itself, but my favorite part is the team that actually picked Trout passed on him too! The Angels had the 24th and 25th picks in the first round and they took Randal Grichuk 24th before taking Trout at 25. Insanity. So the draft is weird-o pudding bananas.

I’ll discuss the draft in more detail as it gets closer, including some of the names the Red Sox might be interested in, some of the prospective best players available, and a bunch of other stuff. But when this is all going down remember, it’s going to be intense. It’s going to feel like the Red Sox have been handed a chance to change their entire franchise around. Listening to the talking heads, it's going to sound like every kid is so good that Boston can’t possibly get it wrong. So remember, it’s important, yes, and there will be good players available, but this pick will not define the future of the franchise. Many of the kids being discussed won’t make the majors and many that do won’t do much when they get there. That doesn’t make this any less exciting or important. In fact, it probably makes it more important. When most teams miss, nailing it becomes that much more of a differentiator. But when most teams miss, it becomes that much easier to be in with ‘most teams.’ This will be fun, and it will be exciting, and we will definitely talk more about it here, but if they screw it up? Eh. It’s happened before.