Drafts are hard. The MLB Draft moreso. The tricky part about MLB’s draft is that prospects have a longer maturation time than, say, football or basketball. The draft, or the version we came to know, came into
existence in 1965, replacing the Bonus Baby
In today’s baseball, a high draft pick from the MLB draft is not generally seen in The Show for a few years, unless the organization involved is being highly (and potentially recklessly) aggressive. In the past 60 years of the Draft, only 24 players have gone directly from being drafted to the majors.
In this bunch, there has been only one Hall of Famer, Dave Winfield, and one Rookie of the Year, Bob Horner of the Atlanta Braves (1978). The Dodgers have pulled this stunt only once, in 1994, with the constantly-injured Darren Dreifort.
Accordingly, it is worth revisiting MLB drafts at least five to ten years later to see what could have gone better, what went right, and what went hilariously wrong or otherwise.
As with my idea of revisiting the 1955 World Series, someone beat me to it. YouTuber Wilytics published an excellent video essay in which he analyzed the first round and conducted a hypothetical redraft based on the performances of everyone in the draft.
The 2016 Draft was notoriously thin in the first round with a gamut of unknowns, busts, and failed lottery tickets. Mickey Moniak was the number one pick by the Philadelphia Phillies, who ultimately traded him to the Anaheim Angels for Noah Syndergaard at the 2022 trade deadline. Moniak currently plays for the Colorado Rockies.
One team did fairly well in the first round, prompting this essay: the Dodgers.
Even for the Dodgers’ prodigious revenue and spending, it is easy for the uninitiated to forget that the organization has a history of drafting well. This fact remains true, even though the Dodgers typically pick in the rear of the first round. Even Andrew Friedman admits that baseball is designed for the Dodgers to have the worst farm system in baseball — on paper.
The Dodgers had three picks in the first 41 of the 2016 first round: 20th, 32nd, and 36th.
The 32nd pick was a compensation pick in exchange for soon-to-be Hall of Famer Zack Greinke signing with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The 36th pick was a compensation pick for failing to sign the 2015 35th pick, Kyle Funkhouser, who instead returned to Louisville, who was himself a compensation pick for the Boston Red Sox signing Hanley Ramirez.
One pick was an absolute home run. One pick was solid before an injury and eventual departure. The 36th pick was a bust, as Jordan Sheffield now coaches at Vanderbilt.
At Pick 20: Gavin Lux
Jim Callis of MLB.com had the following to say about the Dodgers drafting of Lux:
With Delvin Perez reportedly failing a pre-Draft PED test, Lux became the top shortstop in a Draft that’s very weak at the position. He took a significant step forward this spring, making improvements with his swing, strength, speed and arm. He grew up around the game as the nephew of former No. 2 overall pick Augie Schmidt, now the coach of Division III Carthage (Wisc.), and his instincts stand out as well.
Lest anyone forget, after cups of coffee in 2019 and the COVID Cup year of 2020, Lux was solid. in 2021 and 2022. Over these two full seasons, Lux had a slash line of .261/.338/.384, a rWAR of 4.2, and a fWAR of 4.1 over 231 games.
Accordingly, the Dodgers saw Lux as the successor at shortstop after Corey Seager and Trea Turner departed. Unfortunately for Lux, disaster struck when he tore his anterior cruciate ligament and strained his right lateral collateral ligament at the start of 2023’s Spring Training.
While Lux did return and rebound with a 2.1 rWAR / 1.4 fWAR / .251/.320/.383 10-home run season in 2024, Lux could not handle throws from shortstop and largely played at second base.
Lux was ultimately dealt to the Cincinnati Reds before the start of the 2025 season for prospects (hello Mike Sirota!) and is now on his third organization in two years.
At Pick 32: Will Smith
Jim Callis of MLB.com had the following to say about the Dodgers drafting of Smith:
There was buzz he was going to go at the end of the first round or early in the supplemental first round, so this makes sense. He might hit .260-.270, give you a little bit of power, be a good receiver and give you a good arm behind the plate. I had one scout give me a plus run time on him.
Talk about an undersell.
The Dodgers ended up with a stalwart, foundational backstop who took over primary catching duties in 2019 and did not let go. Over the past seven seasons, Smith has racked up 23 rWAR / 22.4 fWAR with a combined slash line of .264/.358/.476 and 128 home runs. Smith has averaged 132 wRC+ over seven seasons, never dipping below 109 (2024).
Smith will be a Dodger through 2034, earning a 10-year, $140 million extension in 2024 doing taciturn, yeoman’s work, likely en route to the Hall of Pretty Good with the occasional postseason heroics, most recently the final run of the 2025 season.
At this point, Dodgers fans can giggle over the fact that two catchers were picked before Smith, and most of the league, including the Dodgers themselves, passed on Smith until pick 32 of the Draft.
Jim Callis did a redraft essay for the 2015 MLB Draft and will probably do one for this subject draft, too. If Smith does not go first or second in this hypothetical, what are we doing here?
And the rest of the Dodgers’ haul
Now, as alluded to before, the Dodgers did better than most teams in this draft. But they still whiffed in places as most teams do, with Sheffield, outfielder and fourth-round pick D.J. Peters, outfielder and seventh-round pick Luke Raley, pitcher and twenty-third round pick Bailey Ober (did not sign), and pitcher and thirty-eighth round overslot pick Kevin Malisheski (signed for $248,500 and only got as high as a cup of coffee in Double-A Tulsa), to name a few.
The Dodgers signed plenty of familiar names in the later rounds of this draft.
- Second Round, Pick 65 – Pitcher Mitch White
- Third Round, Pick 101 – Pitcher Dustin May
- Ninth Round, Pick 281 – Pitcher Tony Gonsolin
- Fourteenth Round, Pick 431 – Pitcher Dean Kremer (traded, in part, for Manny Machado in 2018)
- Thirty-third Round, Pick 1001 – Shortstop Zach McKinstry
If what the Dodgers were doing was easy, other teams would or should do it. However, other organizations are publicly cutting scouting staff, which is far cheaper than spending top dollar on the free-agent market. Moreover, in situations like the signing of Roki Sasaki in 2025, all of the teams were generally forced into the same or similar financial constraints.
And Sasaki still came to Los Angeles, regardless of Toronto acquiring Myles Straw in a last-ditch effort to increase the size of the financial pot. The Dodgers are currently thriving in the current system, finding overlooked value that every team has access to.
Fun with Ben Rortvedt
Fan favorite and current resident of the New York Mets’ system, Ben Rortvedt, was selected in the second round with Pick 56 by the Minnesota Twins. With no disrespect to Rortvedt, here are some notable Major Leaguers picked afterwards, just on the first day of the Draft.
- Pick 59 – San Francisco Giants – Outfielder Bryan Reynolds
- Pick 60 – Anaheim Angels – Outfielder Brandon Marsh
- Pick 64 – New York Mets – First Baseman Pete Alonso
- Pick 66 (immediately after the Dodgers picked Mitch White) – Toronto Blue Jays – Shortstop Bo Bichette
Yes, that Bo Bichette, who now plays third base for the Mets, after they allowed Alonso to depart in the 2025 offseason. Baseball! Bichette was Wilytics’ pick for the number one pick of a hypothetical 2016 redraft.
Sometimes these picks work out, and sometimes they do not. The Dodgers did get value and depth out of Mitch White before trading him to Toronto in 2022. And other times, picks are absolute disasters that do not bear terrible fruit until much later.
To conclude this brief retrospective, we return to two picks after Gavin Lux in the first round, where the Pittsburgh Pirates selected Third Baseman Will Craig. A Dodgers fan could be forgiven for not instantly recognizing that name without the prompting of the greatest (or most infamous) baseball blooper in the twenty-first century so far.
Javier Baez of the Cubs hit a weak ground ball to third base in the second inning with two outs against the Pirates on May 27, 2021, in Pittsburgh. Then absolute insanity broke out, leading to the unlikeliest and most unearned two-run rally in recent memory, with Baez ultimately scoring later in the inning and providing the ultimate margin of victory.
Why Craig did not touch first is one of the unanswerable questions of our time.
