Over the weekend I wrote about the best breweries in America. Now I’m thinking about the best Brewers in Major League Baseball. The reason for that is I recently caught myself thinking about how stacked the Brewers roster is, and then I started to realize how the majority of them were homegrown (drafted by Milwaukee). It’s amazing not only how many of their draftees they managed to keep, but how many became major contributors….
Prince Fielder – 1st round, 2002
Rickie Weeks – 1st round, 2003
Ryan Braun – 1st round, 2005
Corey Hart – 11th round, 2000
Yovani Gallardo – 2nd round, 2004
Jonathan Lucroy – 3rd round, 2007
Add to that, former draft picks Matt LaPorta and Michael Brantley were used to acquire CC Sabathia, and 2008 1st round pick Jake Odorizzi was used to get Zack Greinke. Talk about rebuilding through the draft. I challenge you to find a better draft record then the Brew Crew in all of baseball!
By
cali4dre
chappy81
dyslecix
mceezy
July 27th, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Gotta be the Braves
Chipper Jones (1st, 1990)
Brian McCann (2nd, 2002)
Nate McLouth (acquired with Charlie Morton, 3rd, 2002 and Jeff Locke 2nd, 2006)
Freddie Freeman (2nd, 2007)
Pretty Much the entire bullpen
Alex Gonzalez (acquired with Yunel Escobar, 2nd, 2005)
Jason Heyward (1st, 2007)
Tommy Hanson (22nd, 2005)
Kris Medlen (10th, 2006)
Jordan Schafer (3rd, 2005)
Plus the amateur free agents like Prado, Infante, Beachy, Moylan…..
I’ll bet if I looked at the Pirates they’d probably be up there as well.
July 27th, 2011 at 7:23 pm
Actually, it might be the Rays.
The entire rotation of Price, Shields, Hellickson, Davis, and Niemann, plus top prospect Matt Moore all came from the draft. Then BJ Upton, Longoria, Reid Brignac, Desmond Jennings…pretty good.
July 27th, 2011 at 11:18 pm
At first I was thinking Texas with Kinsler, Young, Feliz, Ogando, Andrus, and CJ, but those guys wouldn’t be as good if they didn’t have Cruz and Hamilton in the lineup, so I guess the Brew crew wins that match up.
The second team that immediately came to mind was SF as much as I hate to admit it. Lincy, Cain, Bumgarner, Wilson, Pablo, Posey, and Belt is a pretty impressive list as well, but I guess I’ll go with Classic’s first choice, the Braves.