The power of one draft

The Royals passed on Carl Crawford four times in the 1999 MLB Draft. AP

We're going to use the Kansas City Royals as an example, but you can obviously do the following with any team. The Royals are just a good example because they've been lousy for 15 years. They're a good example because even after those 15 years, general manager Dayton Moore feels forced to run around and take big-money chances on Jose Guillen and Gil Meche and fill gaps with players like Mike Jacobs, Willie Bloomquist, Horacio Ramirez, Kyle Farnsworth and so on.

But what if they'd had one perfect draft? Just one. I realize the perfect draft concept is mythical ... there's no such thing because we don't know what would happen in the alternate universe. We would only be guessing, for instance, if, say, the Royals had drafted Tim Lincecum with the No. 1 overall pick in 2006 instead of Luke Hochevar. Sure, in retrospect, Lincecum would SEEM to be a much better pick. But who knows? Maybe the Royals, in an effort to rush him to the big leagues, would have made him a closer. The Royals brass, I recall vividly, thought Lincecum profiled more as a bullpen guy than a starter.* Or maybe they wouldn't push him to the big leagues quickly the way the Giants did, and he would have hurt his arm in the minor leagues. Or maybe he just wouldn't develop the same way in Kansas City. Who knows, really?

*And with the way they have handled Joakim Soria, you can see the Royals making Lincecum a closer. You know, I've been thinking a lot about the Royals and Soria. When the Royals drafted him as a Rule 5 pick before the 2007 season, he was 22 years old, and he had very limited minor league pitching experience. But he WAS a starter -- he famously (at least around Kansas City) threw a perfect game in the Mexican League just after the Royals drafted him.

The Royals, wisely, wanted to ease him in by throwing him now and then in the bullpen. But he was so good right away -- he didn't give up a run in his first five appearances, struck out a batter an inning, allowed one hit -- that they expanded his role in the pen. And he STAYED good -- didn't give up his first homer until late July -- so then they made him the setup guy, and then the closer and he just continued to be really, really good.

And here you can make comparisons between Soria and another brilliant Rule 5 pick ... Johan Santana. Their paths were different , even though they were both taken in the Rule 5. The Twins drafted Santana in 2000, and they kept him on the roster all year, though he was actually pretty miserable. He did not have anything resembling Soria's early success (though it should be noted that he was two years younger). He had a 6.49 ERA his rookie year, gave up 102 hits in 86 innings, had a 64-54 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Not good. In 2001 he was some sort of starter/reliever blend, and then he hurt his elbow and more or less missed the second half of the season. This is an important fact, and we'll get back to it in a minute.

In 2002 Santana went to the minor leagues to work on his changeup. This reminds me of the Charlie Parker story, where supposedly he was just a mediocre sax guy who got laughed at in clubs. Then he went away for a couple of months and, according to legend, came back as this force of musical nature. In jazz they call this "woodshedding" -- when a musician sequesters himself for a long while and reinvents himself/herself. Santana went baseball woodshedding, and when he came back in late May he was a wholly new pitcher with this devastating changeup. He was a starter first, and he was good, sometimes great. Then the Twins put him in the bullpen in September and he was flat electrifying, nine appearances, 26 strikeouts in 18 innings, a 1.50 ERA, a .206 batting average against, brilliant.

At this point the Twins seemed unsure of what to do with him. He began 2003 in the bullpen, and he was really good again ... 77 strikeouts in 66 bullpen innings (with three spot starts mixed in), a .215 batting average against. The Twins had the good fortune of having an excellent closer then in Everyday Eddie Guardado, and so they were freed up to make Santana a starter. He went 8-2 down the stretch, was dominant, and that November the Twins traded for Joe Nathan to be the closer, and they made Santana a permanent starter. He won the Cy Young Award in 2004, again in 2006, and could have won it again in 2008.

Soria's tale is altogether different and simpler. He was so good in the bullpen in 2007 that the Royals made him the closer for 2008 and he dominated the whole year, Mariano style. That's it. That's the whole story. They never experimented with him. They never stretched him out. They never took any chances at all with him. And I am NOT saying this is wrong -- Soria is a remarkable Royals success story and everyone involved with scouting and developing him should be very proud and should get a nice bonus.

No, what I'm saying is, the Royals wrote Soria's destiny. They did this for good reasons. They did this because they didn't want to mess with success -- the Royals have not had that many success stories over the last 15 years. They did this because they did not have an Everyday Eddie or Joe Nathan to be the closer in his absence. They did this because the guy was SO DAMNED GOOD as a closer. And most significantly: They did this because, while nobody freaked out when Santana got hurt in 2001 -- he wasn't good enough to freak out about yet -- EVERYONE would have freaked out if the Royals messed with Soria's role and he hurt his elbow. It was a whole different thing. Soria's early success meant everyone was watching. And when everyone's watching, people generally play it safe. That's human nature.

That's how things happen in baseball. Yes, there are good reasons to believe that if the Royals made Soria a starter, he would be really good, maybe even great, maybe even on the level of Santana or Lincecum. But we don't know, and we probably never will know, and that's the point.

So, yes this is an imperfect exercise ... BUT, one perfect draft. In 1998 the Kansas City Royals finished 72-89. They were a mess -- they did not have an owner, and they were trying to make the team somewhat more appealing to buy, and they were trying to keep the record artificially better with old guys like Jeff King, Jeff Conine, Shane Mack, Hal Morris, Terry Pendleton, Tim Belcher and so on and so on.

But there was quite a bit of big-league ready talent in the organization. As 1999 began, Mike Sweeney was moved from catcher to first, and he was crushing the ball. Johnny Damon was in left field and he was coming into his own. Carlos Beltran was a rookie center fielder, Jermaine Dye was 25 and he was beginning to live up to his promise, 23-year-old second baseman Carlos Febles looked like a future Gold Glove winner to management, and the Royals had three 24-year-old starters -- Jose Rosado, Jeff Suppan and Glendon Rusch -- who showed a little bit of something.

Everyone understood that the 1999 draft was hugely important ... the Royals had four of the first 43 picks.

Here's what was ... and what might have been:

• Royals' first pick (No. 7 overall): Pitcher Kyle Snyder
• Could have been: Pitcher Barry Zito OR Pitcher Ben Sheets

Comment: There were, best I can tell, three college starters who stood out in that draft, and the Royals took the wrong one, they took Snyder, and he got hurt. Royals scouts will tell you that if Snyder could have stayed healthy he would have been a dominant pitcher in the big leagues, better than the other two. I have no reason to doubt that. But let's imagine that the Royals took Ben Sheets here. I think the Royals should try to SIGN Ben Sheets now -- it looks like he might go for a good price. But that's another story.