Texas Rangers: The 7 Worst First Round Picks since 2000

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The 2023 MLB draft is two weeks away. This year's draft will take place July 9th in Seattle. The Rangers will be picking fourth in the draft. This will be the third straight draft they have had a top-five pick. The Rangers have not been so fortunate with first-round picks since 2000. I want to rehash seven of these misses and mention who was still on the board when they made these picks.

2000 Texas Rangers 1st Round Pick-Scott Heard

Lets go back to the last draft of the 20th century and the first one with a year that started with a two. The Rangers were coming off winning their third AL West crown in four seasons in 1999 and also their third first-round elimination at the hand of the Yankees. They had traded Juan Gonzalez in the offseason to the Detroit Tigers and were six months away from signing Alex Rodriguez.

The Rangers had the 25th pick in the first round. Adrian Gonzalez, future Ranger, went first overall. At pick 25 the Rangers chose catcher Scott Heard. The Rangers currently had Ivan Rodriguez catching, but I am guessing they hoped Heard would be ready in 3-4 seasons to take over for Pudge. Adam Wainwright, yes that Adam Wainwright, was taken four picks later by the Atlanta Braves. He would eventually become a legend for St. Louis.

Heard immediately showed potential at rookie ball. He hit .351, with two home runs, and 16 RBIs. He was then put through to Low-A ball to end the season and did not fare as well. Still a successful year in the Rangers' minds. Heard was sent back to Rookie Ball in 2001 and again had success this time a .298 batting average with five home runs. Then was again advanced to Low-A and his batting average there fell to .228, but he still did have five home runs with Pulaski.

In 2002 he spent the entire season at Low-A ball and he had a .213 batting average with eight home runs in 124 games played. In 2003 he was sent up to High-A ball and he increased his batting average to .243 and had four home runs in 79 games played. After that, his career was over.

Scott Heard now is involved in real estate. He has founded the Heard Development Group. According to their LinkedIn page they are "responsible for overseeing all investment and development operations as well as securing debt and equity for projects"

2006 Texas Rangers 1st Round Pick-Kasey Kiker

By 2006 the Rangers were in a rut. 2004 provided some hope as the team finished just outside of making the playoffs. The four seasons prior to 2004 were hopeless and 2005 was a return to form. The Rangers had the 12th pick in a pitching heavy draft. Unfortunately, Texas probably needed to be in the top 10 of this draft. They missed out on Clayton Kershaw at 7, Tim Lincecum at 10, and Max Scherzer at 11. They took Kasey Kiker with the 12th pick.

Kiker was an undersized left-hander who had good velocity and loved attacking hitters. For three seasons that style worked for Kiker. He did have some issues with walks, but he was regularly striking out over 100 batters every season. He peaked in 2009 with Frisco when he had 120 strikeouts in 126.0 innings pitched. He also had a 3.86 ERA. One downside of that season was that he set a career high in walks with 66.

In 2010 the bottom fell out for Kiker. He was removed from the rotation and into the bullpen. He had more walks than strikeouts. His ERA jumped up to 7.65. He went to winter ball in the offseason and lowered his ERA, but the walks were still high. In 2011 he was sent to High-A ball and the control issues persisted. Finally the Rangers chose to release him after the 2011 season.

2009 Texas Rangers 1st Round Pick- Matt Purke

2009 will always be known as the Mike Trout draft. That was the draft that saw Trout fall all the way to 24. The Rangers were picking 14 after going 79-83 in 2008. The Rangers after seeing such names as Stephen Strasburg, Mike Minor, and Zach Wheeler chose to go with Matt Purke, a high school pitcher out of Klein Collins High School in Springs, Texas. Purke was committed to TCU. So Texas would have to come up with a good offer to get him to sign.

Purke and Texas entered into negotiations and it did not go well. Purke had a number he wanted which was above slot. He wanted 6 million dollars. The Rangers came in with an offer of 4 million. In the end, Purke chose to attend TCU. It did not work out for either side. Purke went back into the draft in 2011 and was picked in the third round by the Nationals.

Purke had Tommy John surgery in 2014 and was released by Washington. He did end up recovering and did make a few appearances for the White Sox in 2016. He continued pitching in the minors through 2018 and in Independent League baseball in 2019.

2011 Texas Rangers First Round Picks- Kevin Matthews and Zach Cone

In 2011 that the Rangers were coming off their first World Series appearance in team history. They lost their own first-round pick because of the Adrian Beltre signing. They did have two compensation picks at the end of the first round. They had picks 33 and 37. They went with high school pitcher Kevin Matthews out of Georgia at 33. Then they picked University of Georgia outfielder Zach Cone with pick 37. They missed on both players.

The 2011 draft was deeper than experts initially thought. Trevor Story a local kid out of Irving was still on the board. Blake Snell was still available, Michael Fulmer. Joe Musgrove, Jackie Bradley Jr, Josh Bell, and Tyler Glasnow were all still on the board.

The Rangers went with Matthews and Cone. Matthews had good stretches, but never made it out of A-ball in his time in the Rangers' organization. After missing the 2013 season due to injuries he came back in 2014 and pitched in rookie ball, Low-A, and High-A and did not have an ERA below 6 at any of those stops. He pitched for Hickory in 2015 and had a 6.48 ERA and that was it. He was released .

Zach Cone was the other compensation pick and he is a little bit of different story, but the same result. Cone lasted in the organization until 2016. He did make it all the way to Double-A. He played two seasons for Frisco in 2015-2016. In 40 games in 2015 he hit. 257 with 3 home runs, and 20 RBIs. He came back in 2016 and hit. 208, with five home runs, and 26 RBIs in 36 games. After that he was released.

The Texas Rangers did make some good selections in this draft. The Dallas Morning News back in 2018 did a retrospective piece on the 2011 draft and looked at how many players did not play for the Rangers that the team drafted because they were not signed or were later traded.

They failed to sign their third-, fourth- and fifth-round picks, pitcher Brandon Woodruff, outfielder Derek Fisher and catcher Max Pentecost.They traded their eighth-round pick, Kyle Hendricks, their 15th-rounder Jerad Eickhoff and 48th-rounder C.J. Edwards.They rushed 18th-round selection Nick Martinez to the majors after a rash of injuries in spring training in 2014. The club chose not to tender him a contract in salary arbitration this winter. He opted to go to Japan.
Evan Grant

It was a big miss as that draft did have talent still on the board and the Rangers ended up with two players that did not get close to the major leagues. These misses did end up hurting the team in the post-Adrian Beltre era. The minor leagues did not have that infusion of young talent that the Rangers would need to sustain the level of winning that the organization had come to expect from 2010-2016.

2014 Texas Rangers First Round Pick Luis Ortiz

The Rangers in 2014 were coming off a semi-succesful season. They made it to a game 163 against the Tampa Bay Rays in 2013. They had to win their final seven games to get there and they did. Unfortunately they lost that night as David Price overcame his demons of pitching against the Rangers and shut the lineup down that night. The Rangers decided to shake things up trading for Prince Fielder and signing Shin Soo Choo.

The Rangers entered the draft with pick 30. Players such as Carlos Rodon, Kyle Schwarber, and Trea Turner had already been taken. At pick 30 the Rangers went with high school pitcher out of California Luis Ortiz. Three picks later the Boston Red Sox chose Texas high school pitcher Michael Kopech. If you were watching the game last Wednesday night you would see that it was Kopech who started against the Rangers.

Luis Ortiz was moved pretty quickly through the minor leagues. By 2016 he was pitching in Double-A for Frisco. He had a 4 ERA for the Roughriders. At the deadline the Rangers were needing bullpen help and help at catcher. They included Ortiz as a part of the trade that brought back Jonathan Lucroy and Jeremy Jeffress. It did work as the Rangers won the division, but they were swept in the first round.

Ortiz kept bouncing around between Milwaukee's organization, to Baltimore, to San Francisco, and now to Philadelphia. This season he is seemingly settled into pitching for the Phillies. He is a middle-relief and sometimes late inning relief for the Phillies.

2015 Texas Rangers First Round Pick Dillon Tate

The Texas Rangers came into the 2015 draft with the number 4 pick. It was the first time the Rangers were in the top 5 since 2001 when they drafted Mark Teixiera. That was a home run pick in that it gave them a productive first baseman and then they traded him for what would be some of the core pieces of the World Series teams in 2010 and 2011.

The Rangers finished the 2014 season much stronger than they should have. For most of the year, they had one of the worst records in baseball and looked like they were going to have a top 3 pick. Ron Washington resigned in September and Tim Bogar took over on September 5th. The team was 53-87 at that point in what had been a nightmare season of injuries. Bogar took over and the team went on a run. They finished the season 14-8 including a stretch that saw them win 13 of their last 16 games. That dropped them from picking two or three to picking four.

The top tier of the draft was 3 players as considered by all the draft experts. It was Dansby Swanson, Alex Bregman, and Brandon Rogers. The Rangers at pick four decided to go with Dillon Tate out of the University of California Santa Barbara. He was a right-handed pitcher who had a good draft season starting but was projected as a future reliever. Again this was not a good evaluation. Kyle Tucker was taken by the Astros with the next pick. They also could have had Ian Happ, Walker Buehler, or Ke'Bryan Hayes.

The Rangers did not miss just with that pick but with the draft as a whole. The Rangers took three players in that entire draft that have made a significant impact in the majors. They picked Dylan Moore in the 7th round, Pete Fairbanks in the 9th round, and Jeffrey Springs in the 30th round. Notice a common thread between those three. None of them made an impact with the Rangers. Dylan Moore was traded for international bonus slot money to the Braves. The Rangers were trying to acquire more money to sign Shohei Ohtani and sent Moore to the Braves. He eventually found his way to Seattle. Fairbanks and Springs now are both star pitchers for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Lets gets back to Tate. He did sign with the Rangers and pitched for both Low-A Spokane and High-A Hickory in 2015 and did very well. Then in 2016 he went back to Hickory and had a 5.12 ERA in 16 starts. The Rangers were so spooked by those numbers that they included him in the Carlos Beltran trade to the New York Yankees. Beltran was a flop in Texas as they were swept in the first round. Tate pitched two seasons in the Yankees organization and then was traded to Baltimore in the Zach Britton trade. Tate has now carved out a place in the Orioles bullpen. He pitched in 67 games for the Orioles last season and had a 3.05 ERA. He has been on the IL all season with a forearm injury and is now on a rehab assignment trying to work his way back.

The Rangers trading their first-round picks in 2014 and 2015 certainly did come back to bite them. Those 2017-2020 had very little homegrown talent. Nothing to call upon if players got injured. It forced the Rangers organization to reevaluate their draft strategy and overhaul it completely.

In two weeks the Rangers will be making another pick again at number four. They have a chance to really draft a difference maker for maybe the last time this decade. Kip Fagg and Chris Young are in the process of figuring out who that player will be. Lets hope come July 9th that the player they draft will never belong on this list of worst first round picks.