MLB draft: The all-time team of players who switched positions after being drafted

Everyone in the majors was a pitcher, shortstop, outfielder, or catcher when they were in high school. Give or take. If you’re playing first base in high school, that means you’re probably not as good of an athlete as the kids playing center, short, and catcher. And right. And probably second and third base. If you’re playing with five different teenagers who are better athletes than you, that probably means you’ll need to be the best hitter on the planet if you want to star in the majors.

You’re not the best hitter on the planet.

Sorry.

That’s why the MLB draft is littered with position changes because usually the best athletes rise to the top. It’s why before Amos Otis and Hal McRae were two-thirds of a pennant-winning outfield for the Royals, they were high school shortstops drafted in 1965. It’s why Trevor Hoffman will make the Hall of Fame, even though he was an awful shortstop.

Our job today is to make the best possible team from all the position changes in draft history. And by “best,” I mean “most amusing to me, a horrible person who needs chaos to survive.” I’m not trying to make the best team. I’m trying to make the funniest team that would have a chance to score 1,000 runs.

That team would go like this:

Like I wrote up there, there are a lot of high school catchers who were drafted and moved immediately. They were the best athletes on their team, but the scouts didn’t like them behind the plate long term. Murray was one of those.

He was also one of the most exciting prospects of the ‘70s. He was drafted as a 17-year-old, and he didn’t stop hitting until he was 40, reaching the majors when he was 21, and methodically swatting his way to 500 homers. He was a fine first baseman.

What this article presupposes is that he stayed behind the plate. So I’m a gonna lop off 150 home runs from that career total, just because of the aches, pains, wear, and tear. I’m also going to change him from a consistent 30-homer guy to a consistent 20-homer player for the same reason. Shave some points from his batting average and on-base percentage ... give him fewer 160-game seasons ... heck, we know that he isn’t going to steal 110 bases in this alternate reality.

I ... I think I just described Matt Wieters.

Catching is the worst.

But for this team I have a powerful switch-hitting catcher. I’ll assume he would have been fine defensively because he would have been in catcher boot camp since he was a teenager, and he was a pretty good athlete. He just wouldn’t have been a Hall of Famer.

Honorable mention:

Dave Parker, Dale Murphy, Paul Konerko, Jayson Werth, Justin Morneau, Joey Votto, and Josh Donaldson

I almost went with Tim Wakefield. It wouldn’t have been the best choice offensively, but in my alternate reality he still learns the knuckleball, and he would have been like the Shohei Otani of long relief.

Which didn’t seem as exciting when I typed it out. So we get Piazza.

All of those demerits for Murray’s career? We get to add home runs and batting average. Instead of a .308 career average, I’m going to make him a .318 hitter. Instead of 427 homers, he has 600. And instead of an iffy defensive catcher, he’s going to be a super-iffy defensive first baseman.

I guess we could swap Murray and Piazza, but ... no, no, this is far more fun.

Honorable mention:

Rick Honeycutt, Tim Wallach, Luis Gonzalez, Tim Wakefield, Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich

There just aren’t a lot of good players who were drafted with a listed position of second base. Chase Utley was the most notable, but for the most part, it’s an uphill battle for kids who weren’t athletic enough to wrest control of the shortstop position at Iona College.

Crisp gives this team some speed and slashing. Looking at his stats and remembering his defensive prowess, someone, somewhere, made a very good decision about his career. That .912 fielding percentage at second base with 24 errors in Rookie League probably helped the decision make itself.

Honorable mention:

Buddy Bell, Danny Tartabull, Russell Martin

NOW WE GET TO THE GOOD STUFF. It’s hard to remember Jim Thome as a third baseman because we’re so used to his years as a first baseman. But he played third for six years, and he was generally OK. Just not as good as Matt Williams.

Imagine an 18-year-old Thome, hitting .237/.314/.296 while making 15 errors at shortstop for the Gulf Coast League Indians. He must have been so skinny, so spindly. There’s no way he could have been America’s Baseball Dad back then, even if he was clearly America’s Baseball Dad before he turned 30. He was moved to third base the next year.

In this scenario, Thome sticks at shortstop.

HARGROVE: Alright, Jimmy. You’re my starting shortstop. And Omar, you’re at first.

VIZQUEL: Skip, I appreciate you thinking outside the box, but I have a minor suggestion. What if ...

HARGROVE: I’m the manager, and I’m not going to repeat myself. Now get out there.

THOME: lol owned

HARGROVE:

There were a lot of contenders for this spot, and I was tempted to go with Tim Raines. Heck, I wonder if Chet Lemon becomes a Hall of Fame candidate if he sticks at short, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Mike Schmidt could have handed the position, too. But I think we’ll all agree that Thome is the funniest choice.

Honorable mention:

Gene Tenace, Amos Otis, Hal McRae, Bobby Grich, Mike Schmidt, George Brett, Willie Randolph, Chet Lemon, Wade Boggs, Paul Molitor, Tim Raines, Eric Davis, Bret Saberhagen, Jeff Kent, Chipper Jones, Jorge Posada, Adam Jones, Ian Kinsler, Dustin Pedroia, Justin Upton, Mookie Betts

As a single tear rolls down my cheek, I proclaim this to be the most beautiful vision I have ever seen. Imagine the 1995 Indians, scoring 1,000 runs and allowing 1,000 unearned runs in the same season, with Thome at short and Manny at third. We deserve this alternate reality.

Alas, while he was drafted as a third baseman out of a New York high school, he never played an inning of infield in the minor leagues. We’ll just have to close our eyes and imagine what it would have been like.

JOE WEST: Now just how in the hell did you break the base clean in half like that?

RAMIREZ: [shrugs]

Come back, alternate reality. Come back!

Honorable mention:

Dwight Evans, Lou Whitaker, Cal Ripken, Devon White, Jose Canseco, Mike Greenwell, Jeff Bagwell, Jason Giambi, Matt Holliday, Pat Burrell, Mark Teixeira

Here we find one of the strangest truisms of the MLB draft: When you’re drafted as an outfielder, you stay in the outfield. Apparently, there just aren’t a lot of opportunities for kids to show off their infield prowess when they’re drafted as an outfielder.

My methodology went like this: I searched the Baseball-Reference database for players drafted at each position. I would sort by WAR to get the major leaguers at the top, look for players out of position, and then move on to the next year.

I did this twice for outfielders because I was absolutely certain that I had missed someone. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t, which means that outfielders almost always stay in the outfield. Infielders might move out, but it’s very rare for outfielders to move in. Huh. That’s a draft tidbit that I didn’t know about, and I’m giving it to you because I’m not sure what to do with it.

If you can find a flaw in this search, please, let me know in the comments and give me a better out-of-position outfield. As is, it’s pretty athletic, I guess, and Helton has that quarterback’s arm in right.

Honorable mention: Dave Stieb, Jason Kipnis

I had to cheat a little with this one, taking some players who were drafted as pitchers out of high school but didn’t sign. When you have a player like John Olerud who could be drafted legitimately at either position, the team announces their decision when they draft him, and that’s generally the end of that. There are exceptions, such as Winfield, who was announced as a pitcher, only to make the majors two weeks later as an outfielder. For the most part, though, when a two-way threat gets one of those ways amputated, it doesn’t grow back.

McGwire went to USC instead of the Expos, where he would have pitched. Posey would have been pitching with the Angels, probably in relief. Jack Clark walked 19 batters in 15 innings while hitting .321 with power, and the Giants figured that one out pretty quickly. Trumbo was drafted in the 18th round of the 2004 draft as a pitcher, but he appeared in his first pro game in 2005, as a first baseman. I’m guessing either instructional league wasn’t very kind to his pitching, or the Angels knew where he was playing all along.

I do want a simulation that lets us see how well these players would have hit if they were full-time pitchers. They would have been awful, probably, because even the best-hitting pitchers are awful. The best comparison for what would have happened is probably Ken Brett, who is one of baseball’s all-time best what-if stories. He was a great hitter for a pitcher, but he could have been a great hitter for a hitter if someone, somewhere, pushed him down a much different career path.

Honorable mention:

Brandon Belt, Ryan Klesko, Charlie Blackmon, Jermaine Dye, Brad Wilkerson, Bake McBride, Adam LaRoche, Nick Markakis, Howard Johnson, Dave Kingman

Would this team have been one of the best ever? It would have the funniest infield defense ever, I’m pretty sure. And they would probably sock a few dingers, especially when the #9 spot came up. My idea of heaven is a place with a computer that can run these simulations, and it would take me about 200 years to get sick of it.

COMPUTER, tell me what Dave Winfield’s career would have been like if he pitched.

As is, we’ll just have to guess.

Pretty sure we were robbed of Manny at third base, though. Pretty sure someone needs to pay for their crimes against baseball.