Law: Redrafting the 2013 MLB Draft Aaron Judge salvages a weak class

Publish date: 2024-06-08

I wrote last year that the 2012 MLB Draft class was bad, but after redrafting 2013, I might want to redraft that opinion too, because this class was awful, salvaged primarily by a guy who was the second pick just by the team that drafted him. The first round itself has to be among the least productive in the past 20 years, with only two of the top 10 picks even reaching 10 career WAR in the majors in the decade since they signed, and three-fourths of the first-round picks failing to pan out enough to make this redraft. Sometimes a mediocre draft class will surprise us over time with more good players than we realized were there on draft day. This ain’t one of them.

This is a “redraft,” in which I try to reselect the top 30 picks based on what we know of the last 10 years and what I think these players might do for the remainder of their careers. I don’t include players who didn’t sign, and I don’t think about service time considerations (when you draft a player, you only control the first six-plus years of his career). I’m just going big picture here, and while I cite players’ Wins Above Replacement figures throughout (using Baseball-Reference), I didn’t just rank the players by their WAR totals; a few times I deviated quite a bit from those rankings. The gap between the oldest player on this list (Mike Yastrzemski) and the youngest (Cody Bellinger) is nearly five years, so I have higher expectations going forward for someone like J.P. Crawford, still just 28, than I do for someone like Jeff McNeil, who’s 31.

I’ll follow up with a column on the “misses” of the first round, which, I will warn you now, is a very, very long list.

1. Aaron Judge

Career WAR to date: 39.3
Actual pick: First round, 32nd overall, New York Yankees

It seems like forever ago that Judge was a controversial first-round pick, but there were a ton of people across the industry who questioned whether Judge would continue to hit in pro ball like he had in college. It wasn’t a question of his ability to hit quality pitching, as he hit well against pretty hard throwers and future high picks like Mark Appel and Braden Shipley, but his ability to make enough contact overall given his 6-foot-7 frame and relatively high strikeout rates in college. He was 17th on my last Big Board at ESPN, but slid to the 32nd overall pick, the Yankees’ second first-round pick that year, and didn’t debut for over three years, which is on the longer side for a four-year college player drafted this high. It’s worked out, though, with Judge at 39 WAR and counting in his age-31 season, and his best year coming last year at age 30, so he should have several more years of above-average production ahead of him — although no hitter 6-7 or taller has been an average regular past age 33.

2. Kris Bryant

Career WAR to date: 28.8
Actual pick: First round, second overall, Chicago Cubs

Bryant was in the majors less than two years after the Cubs took him second overall, winning the NL Rookie of the Year honor in 2015 and MVP the next year. After three seasons in the majors, he’d generated 18.3 rWAR; in five-plus seasons since, he’s barely cleared 10 more around injuries and a big dropoff in his selectivity at the plate. At age 25, he looked like he’d be a middle-of-the-order bat for championship clubs for 10 more years, but he hasn’t been that guy since. It has obscured just how good of a player he was as an amateur — I ranked him as a first-round talent out of high school in Las Vegas because of his huge power, but he didn’t sign and spent three years mashing for the University of San Diego, including 31 homers in 2013, leading Division I and setting a new record since the NCAA changed to lower-powered BBCOR bats.

Kris Bryant after his first major-league at-bat on April 17, 2015. (Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)

3. Cody Bellinger

Career WAR to date: 19.3
Actual pick: Fourth round, 124th overall, Los Angeles Dodgers

If I’d done this a year ago, Bellinger wouldn’t be way up in the redraft, because even as recently as this offseason it looked like he might just be done as a regular, maybe a platoon guy who could hang around for his defense but who’d just managed a .272 OBP when he actually did have the platoon advantage. He’s already having his best season since his 2019 MVP-winning campaign, and since he had shoulder surgery at the end of 2020 that some Dodgers folks thought was responsible for his career-worst performance the season right afterward. Bellinger was pretty well known as an amateur, with a dad who played in the big leagues and plenty of time on scouts’ teams in Arizona, but there was at least a strong belief that he’d more likely head to college than sign — and that he needed it, with a lot of swing and miss for a high school first baseman. Of course, he got into pro ball and immediately showed a much better approach at the plate, while also demonstrating that he could play elite defense at first or play above-average defense in center. With the adjustments the Cubs have helped Bellinger make, he looks like he’s going to have a whole second act.

4. Tim Anderson

Career WAR to date: 17.9
Actual pick: First round, 17th overall, Chicago White Sox

Anderson might be past his peak at this point, even acknowledging that he’s been unlucky on balls hit in play this year, as he’s not the defensive shortstop he once was and has lost a little power since 2021. That said, the top junior college player in the 2013 draft class has been a huge success for the White Sox, who bet big on his athleticism and aptitude overcoming his relative lack of experience with the sport, which he picked back up as a high school junior after dropping the sport after Little League. He’ll never be much for the unintentional walk, with a career high of 28 in any professional season, but he’s still a high-contact hitter who can handle short and could probably spend the rest of his career at second or third if a move is necessary.

5. J.P. Crawford

Career WAR to date: 12.3
Actual pick: First round, 16th overall, Philadelphia Phillies

Crawford was one of the best players in a strong Southern California high school class in 2013, but his path to the majors turned out to be a slow one, with a debut in 2017 and his first 2-WAR season in 2021, eight years after he was drafted and three years after the Phillies gave up on him and traded him for Jean Segura. (My comment on him from before the draft in 2013: “In a draft with few true shortstops, Crawford stands out as the most likely to stay at the position, also bringing some feel to hit but looking like a long-term prospect who might be five years out.”) He showed good feel for the strike zone from day one in the minors, but his body and strength had to catch up, and the Phillies weren’t willing to wait after two partial seasons in the majors where he struggled even on defense. He’s a good example of the need for patience with high school players, and how prospects don’t necessarily develop on the team’s timetable. Because of that defensive value and his age, just 28 this year, he should more than double that WAR total before he retires.

6. Jeff McNeil

Career WAR to date: 18.0
Actual pick: 12th round, 356th pick, New York Mets

Only two players drafted after the 10 round in 2013 have accumulated at least 10 WAR in the majors, both of whom appear on this list, with McNeil, the 356th overall selection, the leader among all players drafted after round four. McNeil was on the showcase circuit in high school but went undrafted, then spent three years at Long Beach State where he hit a total of zero homers, never walked more than 5 percent of the time, and didn’t even hit for average until his junior year. He spent a few years in the Mets’ system doing the same stuff, making contact without power, dealing with some injuries, before he suddenly got much stronger, hitting 19 homers at age 26 in Double and Triple A, more than double his career total prior to that. That added contact quality has stuck, as his swing really isn’t that different, but he’s consistently hit the ball harder ever since that breakout year, with one season in the majors of real power (23 homers in 2019) but mostly just a ton of hard-hit singles and doubles with very low strikeout rates. He’s showing some modest signs of decline in his age-31 season, which is concerning because if his contact quality stays lower, he doesn’t have a second skill to fall back on (power, patience, defense). I do think the contact skill will keep him around at least another five years, even if by the end of that time he’s a bench player.

7. Ryan McMahon

Career WAR to date: 11.4
Actual pick: Second round, 42nd overall, Colorado Rockies

McMahon, like Crawford, took some time to find his footing in pro ball, in his case because he was a multi-sport guy without a ton of baseball experience. Since the start of 2021, he’s at nearly 9 total rWAR produced through a combination of stellar defense at third base and average offense (accounting for his home park), a formula I think he can sustain for quite a few more years. I still think there’s more power in here, too, and so far this year that’s been apparent in his batting line and batted-ball metrics, with the highest average exit velocity and hard-hit rate of his career so far. If that holds, then he’s entering his real peak, and could end up as high as third overall in the class by the time everyone’s done playing.

8. Jon Gray

Career WAR to date: 13.9
Actual pick: First round, third overall, Colorado Rockies

Colorado’s 2013 draft class produced eight big leaguers, with McMahon, Gray, Mike Tauchman (10th round), Sam Moll (fourth), and four others who at least got a cup of coffee but were replacement-level or worse. Gray was dinged right before the draft for testing positive for a banned stimulant, although I don’t think it ended up affecting his draft stock, since Colorado was always kind of likely to take whichever of the top three guys — Bryant, Gray, and Mark Appel — got to them. Gray came out hot to open his junior year and never really let up, showing two plus pitches and much-improved conditioning versus the year prior. The Rockies tried to change parts of his delivery when he was in the minors, but we can see now that he’s in Texas that at least some of his inconsistency came from the challenge of pitching at altitude.

9. Adam Frazier

Career WAR to date: 13.3
Actual pick: Sixth round, 179th overall, Pittsburgh Pirates

Frazier had a nice little run as a high-contact guy with just enough punch to be an everyday guy at second base, but with a .302 OBP since the start of last year and very soft contact quality, he might find himself out of a job sooner rather than later. Still, 13+ rWAR is tremendous for a sixth-round pick who didn’t hit a single homer in three years for Mississippi State.

10. Hunter Renfroe

Career WAR to date: 10.9
Actual pick: First round, 13th overall, San Diego Padres

Renfroe has had a hell of a career given his limitations — he’s almost entirely a lefty-masher, with a career. 280 OBP against right-handers. He was an unusually toolsy college position player, with a tremendous arm, above-average defense in a corner, and huge power, but even in college you’d see some flashes of trouble with good breaking stuff, and he hadn’t performed at all before his draft year. The Padres took a shot at his upside, as it was easy to look at his size and strength and project 30-homer seasons, which he’s done twice already even with his platoon limitations. He’s actually third among all 2013 draftees in MLB home runs right now, behind only Judge and Bryant, although Bellinger will eventually pass him.

11. Danny Jansen

Career WAR to date: 6.8
Actual pick: 16th round, 475th overall, Toronto Blue Jays

Jansen has still never played a full season in the majors, or even reached 400 PA, but he’s at 6.3 career WAR and will probably have a job for another 10 years if he wants it, because he is the perfect backup/part-time catcher, and there are never enough of those guys to go around. He was my sleeper prospect for the Jays heading into 2015, but even then I noted that he had some injury woes, and that’s been the story for him ever since. If you thought he could hold up for 500 PA, he’d be a starter, and a good one.

12. Mike Yastrzemski

Career WAR to date: 10.6
Actual pick: 14th round, 429th overall, Baltimore Orioles

Yaz — known as Yazoo in the UK — was drafted three times, including the year before this one in the 30th round, but chose to finish out his four years at Vanderbilt. He never projected as anything more than a good organizational outfielder, playing well at every stop but never well enough to overcome the fact that he was old for every level. People I know with the Orioles at the time say that Buck Showalter had no use for him, even as a bench guy, so the O’s traded him to the Giants for minor-league pitcher Tyler Herb. (Next thing you know, there’ll be a Herb Junior … Junior!) San Francisco had him in the majors that year and he’s produced 10 WAR since then despite very low OBPs thanks to a combination of above-average power and slightly above-average defense.

13. Tyler O’Neill

Career WAR to date: 9.4
Actual pick: Third round, 85th overall, Seattle Mariners

O’Neill’s big-league production nearly all came in one season, 2021, when he was worth 6.1 WAR, more than he’s generated in all of his other seasons combined. He was extremely strong as an amateur, unsurprising since his father was once a bodybuilder, and showed big pull power, but he didn’t have great feel to hit and he was trying to catch. The Mariners took the Canadian in the third round and immediately got him out from behind the plate, eventually trading him for fellow 2013 draftee Marco Gonzales in July of 2017.

14. Marco Gonzales

Career WAR to date: 8.5
Actual pick: First round, 19th overall, St. Louis Cardinals

Traded to Seattle for Tyler O’Neill in 2017 in a deal that has worked out for both teams, Gonzales had a four-year run as a league-average starter for the Mariners before slipping last year. He hasn’t lost his stuff, so I’m not ready to throw in the towel on him yet; he’s that sort of so-called crafty lefty who often pitches years beyond when you’d think hitters would have ended his career. Gonzales always had a fringy fastball but worked with a 70 changeup and above-average curveball even in college, and he threw a ton of strikes, and was a decent athlete who showed some pop at the plate as an amateur. When anyone complains about how every pitcher today just throws hard and no one knows how to pitch and there are too many states so please eliminate three, the pitcher they should be rooting for is Gonzales.

15. Tyler Mahle

Career WAR to date: 9.1
Actual pick: Seventh round, 225th overall, Cincinnati Reds

Mahle was a long-term development guy who really took off after adding a splitter to his arsenal in 2019, as prior to that he was a solid command guy with a lot of 55s on the scouting report but no 60. The splitter gave him an out pitch and helped his high-spin four-seamer play up even further; he was an above-average starter in each of the last three seasons, which also saw him traded to the Twins last summer. Unfortunately Mahle is out for the year after having Tommy John surgery, and we probably won’t see him in the majors again until next summer.

16. Michael Lorenzen

Career WAR to date: 8.4
Actual pick: Supplemental round, 38th overall, Cincinnati Reds

Lorenzen was a center fielder/closer for Cal State Fullerton who had huge velocity and offered plus defense, but didn’t have a great approach as a hitter and lacked the arsenal to be a starter. Most of his major-league value (6.7 WAR) has come on the mound, where he’s developed enough of a three-pitch mix to be a credible starter the last two years as an Angel and a Tiger, adding to the above-average work he provided as a reliever for the Reds. He’s hit well enough for a pitcher, with just 96 innings in the outfield in the majors, none in the last two seasons, so I think it’s fair to assume going forward that he’s a starting pitcher and that’s it.

17. Jonah Heim

Career WAR to date: 4.1
Actual pick: Fourth round, 129th overall, Baltimore Orioles

Heim is an outlier on this list, as he was at 0 career WAR heading into 2022 and only emerged as a regular that year, becoming the Rangers’ primary catcher en route to a 2.5 WAR season. Heim was drafted out of a high school in upstate New York, didn’t hit in parts of four seasons in the Orioles’ system, then hit the trade carousel, going to Tampa Bay for Steve Pearce, to the A’s for Joey Wendle, and eventually to Texas with Khris Davis for Elvis Andrus and Aramis Garcia. The one thing I can say in Heim’s favor is that even when he wasn’t hitting, he made a lot of contact. There’s also the old axiom about catchers taking longer to develop, one to which I happen to subscribe.

18. Devin Williams

Career WAR to date: 6.4
Actual pick: Second round, 54th overall, Milwaukee Brewers

I had Williams as a first-round talent in this draft class, although I thought he’d make it as a starter, not as one of the game’s best short relievers. Williams was very athletic with arm strength and a good delivery, but didn’t throw enough strikes or miss enough bats as a starter in the low minors before missing 2017 due to Tommy John surgery. He returned as a reliever and you probably know the rest.

19. Isiah Kiner-Falefa

Career WAR to date: 10.0
Actual pick: Fourth round, 130th overall, Texas Rangers

WAR has plenty of limitations, and one place I think it struggles is with players whose value is so lopsided — Kiner-Falefa is an elite defensive shortstop who the Rangers tried to convert to catching, so he has racked up a lot of WAR value from his positions alone. He’s the worst hitter on this list and has been worth 50 runs below average in about three and a half seasons’ worth of playing time, as he makes weak contact and doesn’t do anything else. There is real value in being able to play short, and catcher, and in the case of shortstop to play it as well as IKF does.

20. Matt Boyd

Career WAR to date: 9.0
Actual pick: Sixth round, 175th overall, Toronto Blue Jays

Boyd was a command guy with fringy stuff who became predictably homer-prone in the majors, but tinkered with his pitches, adding a sinker at one point, then tweaked his slider to make it harder to distinguish from his four-seamer, and despite remaining homer-prone (1.6 homers per 9 innings) he’s managed to make a career as a fourth/fifth starter.

21. Kendall Graveman

Career WAR to date: 8.9
Actual pick: Eighth round, 235th overall pick, Toronto Blue Jays

Graveman was a sinker/slider guy at Mississippi State who didn’t miss enough bats to be a higher pick. He went to the A’s in the Josh Donaldson trade and had a decent three-year run as a starter in Oakland, in a ballpark that was extremely favorable for him, then came back after 2018 Tommy John surgery to have a second act as a reliever for several clubs, striking out a man an inning since his return in 2020. I think his signing bonus of just $5,000 is the lowest of anyone’s on this list.

22. Trevor Williams

Career WAR to date: 6.9
Actual pick: Second round, 44th overall, Miami Marlins

I had Williams as a second-rounder on my Big Board, and according to my own notes I saw him pitch that spring, but I have no memory of any of this and if you’d asked me I might have said I hadn’t ranked him at all. Anyway, Williams pitched at Arizona State and ended up reaching the majors with the Pirates, where he turned in two solid years as a starter, one year barely above replacement level, and then hit the journeyman circuit, turning in some decent work as a swingman for the Mets the last two years. Perhaps the most interesting note about his career is that the Marlins traded him to the Pirates for a DSL pitcher who never even threw an inning for Miami, because the real purpose of the deal was to compensate the Pirates for the Marlins hiring Jim Benedict away to serve as their VP of Player Development.

23. Sean Manaea

Career WAR to date: 10.9
Actual pick: First round, 34th overall, Kansas City Royals

Manaea was the talk of the Cape Cod League in 2012, with No. 1 overall type buzz, but had a sore hip all spring in 2013 and never quite pitched up to expectations, with reduced stuff and results, landing at No. 10 on my last Big Board. The Royals took Hunter Dozier with their first pick at No. 8, going under slot with him to nab Manaea with their second pick at 34. Thirteen months and change later, they traded Manaea to get Ben Zobrist, who helped them win the World Series that fall. Manaea’s career has been marred by injuries, unfortunately, leaving him as one of the great what-ifs of the class, and he’s been below replacement level so far this year and all of last year.

24. Chad Green

Career WAR to date: 8.1
Actual pick: 11th round, 336th overall, Detroit Tigers

The Tigers found gold with Green in the 11th round, but traded him and Luis Cessa to the Yankees for Justin Wilson in 2015, after which Green found his niche as a multi-inning reliever who misses a ton of bats with his four-seamer. He’s almost back from 2022 Tommy John surgery, so he should be able to add to this WAR total for a few more years. He’s also the all-time WAR leader for pitchers drafted from the University of Louisville.

25. Nestor Cortes

Career WAR to date: 5.9
Actual pick: 36th round, 1,094th overall, New York Yankees

Cortes was born in Cuba and attended high school in Hialeah, Fla., making him eligible for the draft rather than for international free agency, and was committed to junior college when the Yankees drafted him near the end of Day 3 and offered him $85,000 to go pro instead. His path to major-league success was as nonlinear as it gets, as the Yankees lost him to Baltimore in the Rule 5 draft, got him back a few weeks into that season, traded him for some guy named Future Considerations a year and a half later, then re-signed him as a free agent 11 months after that. He racked up 7.1 WAR over 2021-22 before a tough start this year that now has him on the IL with a shoulder issue.

26. Brad Keller

Career WAR to date: 9.4
Actual pick: Eighth round, 240th overall, Arizona Diamondbacks

The D-backs took Keller in 2013 but didn’t protect him from the 2017 Rule 5 draft, when the Reds picked him and traded him immediately to Kansas City. He’s become one of that draft’s big success stories of the last 10 years, giving the Royals three solid seasons in the rotation before falling off in 2021; he’s currently on the IL, and walked 40 guys in 43 innings before that. The Royals took Keller because they thought his stuff should have gotten better results than it had in the minors, and his sinker and cutter/slider were both extremely effective for him in his first three years in the majors.

27. Trey Mancini

Career WAR to date: 8.7
Actual pick: Eighth round, 249th overall, Baltimore Orioles

Mancini was a great eighth-round pick, coming off a solid but unspectacular career at Notre Dame, but also might have been even better had cancer not derailed his career. That he has come back to play three more seasons after treatment is a testament to his drive and to modern medicine, but it’s hard not to think of what he lost on the field. Mancini had a 3.7 WAR season right before his diagnosis, with 35 homers and a .364 OBP, at age 27, and it looked like Baltimore had their first baseman for at least the next four or five years. He’s someone I’ll always root for, but he just hasn’t been the same player the last few seasons; otherwise, he’d be higher on this list, and I’d have more hope for a few more strong seasons from him.

28. Mitch Garver

Career WAR to date: 8.0
Actual pick: Ninth round, 260th overall, Minnesota Twins

Garver was teammates with D.J. Peterson, who was the Mariners’ first-round pick but never reached the majors, at the University of New Mexico, but never hit for much power despite playing home games at a mile above sea level. He started to show more power in pro ball, peaking with a 31-homer (and 4.1 rWAR) season in 2019, although he’s now the backup catcher and DH for the Rangers and has lost that positional value he had with the Twins. He’s a poor pitch framer, so FanGraphs’ WAR has him over a win lower at 6.9.

29. Austin Meadows

Career WAR to date: 6.4
Actual pick: First round, Ninth overall, Pittsburgh Pirates

I was a big Meadows fan, preferring him to his fellow Georgia prep outfielder Clint Frazier, as Meadows looked like he might stay in center field and had a broader mix of tools, including speed and long-term power. Meadows struggled with injuries early in his minor-league career, then went to the Rays in the ill-fated Chris Archer trade, delivering 6.1 of that career WAR total for Tampa Bay. He’s currently on the 60-day IL for Detroit as he deals with anxiety; as a sufferer of general anxiety disorder myself, I feel for him and hope he can get the right treatment, whether or not it ever allows him to return to the field.

30. Nick Pivetta

Career WAR to date: 6.0
Actual pick: Fourth round, 136th overall, Washington Nationals

Pivetta’s turned in three solid seasons as a league-average starter, one for the Phillies and then two for the Red Sox, which is enough to put a player into the first round in this redraft. The Canadian native went to a junior college in New Mexico, from which the Nats drafted him, and later went to the Phils in a 2015 trade for Jonathan Papelbon.

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Photos: Thearon W. Henderson, Jennifer Stewart, Ron Vesely and Brace Hemmelgarn / Getty Images)

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