San Francisco Giants draft history: Reviewing 2009

The draft is coming.

You know the drill. Months of hype. A guy with hair that makes him look like an extra from Dogboy. A week of post-draft grades and reactions to the grades. A total of 498 hours of programming on multiple netw …

Oh, right. Wrong draft. Still, this one’s kind of exciting.

Whatever. I’m writing about it anyway.

This week, we’ll look back at the last five drafts and see what’s worked and what hasn’t. Here’s 2009, which was the reward for being so awful in 2008. What did the Giants do?

First pick: Zack Wheeler (first round, #6 overall)

Aw, nuts.

Still, you can take some positive things away from this one. It would be much, much worse to look back and have the Giants totally blow the pick. Look at the Padres with Donovan Tate. The Orioles picked Matt Hobgood right before Wheeler, and he hasn’t done anything yet. The Giants identified talent and did well to pick and partially develop it. Those other teams would kill for two months worth of Carlos Beltran memories.

Sigh.

Best pick: Brandon Belt (fifth round, #147 overall)

There we go. If you get one Belt out of every draft, you’re the best drafter in history. That’s how hard it is to find even one above-average regular in the Rule 4 Draft, which is why Brandon Crawford would have made the 2008 Draft one of the better ones in team history without Buster Posey.

Here’s a question. Belt with another organization: better or worse? The Giants told him to do the knuckle thing earlier, apparently, so maybe he would have been mule-headed in the Braves or Red Sox organization, too. Or maybe a different coach would have gotten through quicker. Dunno. Fun to speculate, anyway.

Best name: Diego Seastrunk (31st round, #927 overall)

Austin Goolsby gets an honorable mention.

Other notable players

Tommy Joseph, he of the light-tower power, is doing well in Double-A for the Phillies this year. He had freaky concussion issues after the Giants traded him for Hunter Pence, so that’s good to see. Jake Dunning is on the 40-man roster and still has a future in middle relief. Chris Heston still might make a cameo one day, considering he’s bounced back nicely from his nightmare Triple-A season last year.

Breakdown

High school: 10
Four-year college: 35
Junior college: 5

The Giants like college players. I’m not going to argue with them.

I'm not a professional draftinator or even an amateur draftnik, but the Giants have to get something like an A or A-minus, just for the Belt pick. And, heck, Carlos Beltran gave the Giants more wins above replacement (one) than 35 of the players drafted in 2009 have given their teams so far, including Wheeler. Good draft, y'all.