If you're a fan of the Seattle Mariners, please note that the rest of this article has to do with indoor lacrosse. You don't need to be in here.
Andrew McCutchen, Cameron Maybin, And The 2005 Draft
Two center fielders received shiny new extensions over the weekend, and they were taken in back-to-back picks in what could be the greatest first round in draft history.
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Good, they're gone. There's no reason to rub the collective nose of Mariners fans in the 2005 draft anymore. They get it. Jeff Clement wasn't a franchise catcher. He wasn't a serviceable first baseman. There were at least four or five franchise players taken after Clement in what will likely be remembered as the the greatest first round in the history of the draft. Let those wounds heal.
But the 2005 draft will always be fascinating to look at, and over the weekend it was a tangential part of the news because of two first-round center fielders: Andrew McCutchen and Cameron Maybin, who both signed extensions with their current teams. Both took different paths to their extensions, and both decided to commit to their current small-market teams.
The Pittsburgh Pirates have had 22 first-round picks since selecting Jason Kendall in 1992. First-round picks are dream tokens for downtrodden franchises and their fans. The first round is where teams can dream about the perennial All-Star who will help turn the organization around. Paul Maholm has been a useful player, but he isn't what teams like the Pirates -- who are almost always picking within the first ten picks of the draft -- are dreaming about with their high draft picks.
McCutchen is. In two decades, with 12 different top-ten picks, McCutchen is the first player from the Pirates’ drafting efforts that they can reasonably call a franchise player. He’s the name that will be on the jerseys that Pirates fans will still wear 40 years from now. If he had followed the neo-traditional Pirates path -- play for four or five years, then get traded for a gaggle of questionable prospects -- the cycle of failure would have spun around unfettered. Another two decades of misery wouldn’t have seemed out of the question if McCutchen slipped away.
Instead, he made a deliberate decision to stay with the Pirates and have the team build around him. It’s about ten years too early to make grand proclamations about what this means for the Pirates, but it sure seems like a move that could be referred to by future historians when talking about a Pirates turnaround. “There was Before McCutchen and After Extension.”
Maybin is already with his third franchise, and his path wasn’t so clean after being picked #10 overall, just one spot ahead of McCutchen. He isn’t the player that McCutchen is yet, and their respective paydays reflect that, but he had one of the more underrated breakout seasons of 2011. His .264/.323/.393 line doesn’t look impressive at all until you remember that half of his at-bats came in Petco National Park, and it was good for a 103 OPS+, which put him up in the upper half of center fielders. Maybin will turn 25 in April, and even if he’s already plateaued, he’ll still be a steal at five years, $25 million.
I'd wager that the Padres, though, are thinking he'll get better. He still has the physical tools that made him one of the centerpieces of the Miguel Cabrera deal. There's no explanation as to why the Marlins gave up on him (for a couple relievers, no less) before he turned 24, but the Padres should get his best years for a low price. The Padres have nine of the top prospects in baseball, but none of them project to be center fielders. This is a perfect fit of player and organizational need.
The first round of the 2005 draft has already led to three different deals worth over $100 million (Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki, and Ryan Zimmerman). It could get another one with Jacoby Ellsbury. That draft has lead to division titles for the Diamondbacks, Reds, and Brewers, and it's led to a pennant for the Rockies.
With players like Alex Gordon and Ricky Romero still getting better, the 2005 draft isn't necessarily through producing playoff teams. And McCutchen and Maybin are hoping to join the list of individual players from that draft who contributed to a team's playoff run, and they'll both be doing it after making a huge commitment to a small-market team. The 2005 draft is the gift that never stopped giving.
Except, for, you know, a couple of teams that we don’t want to pick on. Maybe one specifically. This isn’t about them. This is about the 2005 draft, which is still a kingmaker and extension generator seven years later, and it doesn’t show signs of letting up.
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