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I believe it was 1998 when they drafted JD Drew with the #5 pick. The highest they have ever drafted is #3.
It’s a darn shame that extremely high draft picks in baseball don’t have remotely as much value as in football or basketball. (Well, maybe not such a shame from our point of view, since the Cards very rarely own such a pick.)
Anyway, here’s what I mean. Using the WAR totals available at Baseball-Reference, over the nearly 60 years since Rick Monday was the first player ever taken in the amateur draft, the average outcome for a #1 overall pick is a 20 WAR career. Same for the #2 overall pick, then there’s a meaningful dropoff.
So the average outcome for the very top pick is substantially short of stardom. A little deflating for those expecting some watershed moment in Cardinal history next draft. In fact, the position of the pick itself (likely #5 or #6) has less value in my opinion than the big boost in draft budget — let’s hope the Bird front office uses it creatively to land a very good player at that high slot, but with mucho dough left over to sign a high school star away from his college commitment with a much later pick.
The Reds did well in that first MLB draft, taking Bernie Carbo at 16 and Johnny Bench at 36.
The Cardinals took no one anyone had heard of unless you happen to be related to the guy, which in the case of pick #413, I am – sort of. We took lefty pitcher Dan McGinn, who was my dad’s sister’s nephew.
Dan elected to stay in school at Notre Dame, where he played football for Ara. He was then selected by the Reds and made the bigs with them in 1968. In ‘69 the Expos took him in the expansion draft. He has the distinction of hitting the first home run in Expos history, off Tom Seaver no less. A pitcher, he could hit a little too.
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