2014 Perfect Game 2014 MLB Draft preview content
50 Signature
Developments in 50 Years of Drafting
Major League Baseball is conducting its
50th first-year player draft next week, and we thought it
would be a Golden Opportunity to take a 50-year retrospective on the
baseball draft as part of our general preview coverage of this year’s
proceedings.
Naturally, we’ve enlisted our
resident draft historian, Allan Simpson, to take a look back at some
of the highlights—and lowlights—of the draft through the years,
and shed some of his own perspective on how the draft has evolved,
and the impact it has had on the game.
Allan has done so by randomly selecting
50 signature moments, developments, topics or trends in draft
history, beginning with the first draft in 1965. He’ll focus on
some of the best or worst picks ever made, drafts that changed the
fortunes of franchises—positively or negatively—for years to
come, the success and failure rates of select draft picks, changing
demographics and the impact escalating signing bonuses have had on
the process. He’ll also slip in a few draft trivia items that even
some of the more-knowledgeable observers of the draft may never have
been aware of.
We’ll run our 50/50 special over a
two-day period, with the first 25 items scheduled for Monday and the
other 25 on Tuesday—in plenty of time to digest a little draft
history before the 50th draft kicks off with a bang on
Thursday.