Ever since 1965, the MLB has been having its annual amateur draft. Back when it first started, there were really three drafts every year—one in January for players who graduated in the winter, one in June for players who graduated in the spring and one in August for players who were committed to summer league amateur teams.
Every year since its inception, the draft has been surrounded by different storylines, and different chains of events unfold.
Every scout and general manager likes to think that the guys they are picking are “can’t miss,” that is, were put on this planet to do one thing—play baseball. The truth is, for every guy that is can’t miss, there are about 100 that do miss. It’s just the nature of the game.
There really is no way to accurately forecast which players will actually make it to the show some day. To be honest, a lot of it boils down to luck. In fact, it’s predominantly luck. However, nobody associated with the game will ever agree with that last statement.
Scouts will claim they have the secret formula to picking the needle out of the haystack, but the truth is, their formula is wrong nine times out of 10.
There is no secret formula when picking players out—just ask Mike Piazza or Albert Pujols.
Teams take leaps of faith and pay these young players fistfuls of money when they haven’t accomplished a single thing yet to justify it. They’re just a result of the secret formula. For fitting into the formula, they are sometimes made millionaires before ever stepping foot onto a professional baseball field.
It’s pretty crazy when you think about it.
However, in the crapshoot we call the MLB draft there are times when teams roll a seven or eleven and hit it big. Some drafts have had multiple All-Stars and Hall of Famers. Here is a list of the top five draft classes of all time.