#30 – Colorado Rockies (A Look Back: 2006 Draft Recap)

01/05/2012

While fun to evaluate how well a team drafted in the months following, it takes a few years to get a true handle on how well an organization did for that year.  So with this in mind, we’re jumping back to 2006 and ranking all 30 teams on how well their drafts look with five full seasons of hindsight at our disposal.

Of course, we had to start somewhere. And that somewhere is at the bottom of the pile. It’s not pretty Rockies fans, you might want to look away…

Best Pick: Scraping the bottom of the barrel to start, but 16th round pick OF Anthony Jackson was the compensation in the Octavio Dotel trade after the 2010 trade deadline. Dotel was a disappointment for the Rockies in 2010, compiling a 5.06 ERA in 8 games over the final month and a half of the season while the Rockies fought for the wild card. And though Jackson never amounted to much and Dotel was a disappointment, the Rockies did gain a sandwich pick in last year’s draft when he signed with Toronto. Colorado used this pick on Trevor Story, who we ranked as the #8 prospect in the Rockies organization this offseason.

Others of note: RHP Will Harris (9th round)

Worst Pick: It’s tough meeting expectations as a high draft pick, but 2nd overall pick RHP Greg Reynolds certainly meets most of the qualifications of a bust. Good news: he’s at least seen major league action in parts of two seasons (2008, 2011). Bad news: The results were not pretty. In his two major league seasons, Reynolds posted a rather unflattering 7.47 ERA in 94.0 IP, with a 1.69 WHIP. His minor league numbers have fallen off the last two seasons as well, with a 6.10 ERA split over AA and AAA. Entering his age-26 season this year, it’s hard to imagine the second pick from 2006 ever seeing major league playing time again. And in a round where Longoria, Kershaw and Lincecum were selected after him, that’s not a good thing.

Others of note: OF Kevin Clark (6th round), RHP David Arnold (10th), C Austin Rauch (12th), INF Spence Nagy (13th)

Best Value Pick: Not much going on for the Rockies in this draft so we’ll go with Anthony Jackson in the 16th round as the best value pick of the draft (see above).

Other Notes: 4 of their 50 picks have reached the major leagues so far, but only two played for the Rockies, Reynolds (1st) and C Michael McHenry (7th).  McHenry was traded to the Red Sox for minor league reliever Daniel Turpen on March 29, 2011.

- Reynolds and McHenry have combined for -1.7 WAR for their major league careers.

- The other two picks with major league experience were Andrew Cashner (18th) and Scott Maine (23rd). The Rockies were unable to sign either pick, and both pitchers made their respective MLB debuts with the Cubs.

- Colorado traded 8th round pick Brandon Hynick in 2009 for veteran old man Jose Contreras. Hynick put up good numbers and was a highly regarded prospect at the time, but has since fizzled out, tallying 4.91 ERA over the last 3 years at AAA split between the White Sox and Reds. His control has fallen off as well, with a 3.68 K/BB ratio before the trade, but only 2.02 K/BB since.

After the jump, the complete list of the Rockies 2006 draft picks:

Round Overall Player Pos
1 2 Greg Reynolds RHP
2 46 David Christensen OF
3 78 Keith Weiser LHP
4 108 Craig Baker RHP
5 138 Helder Velazquez SS
6 168 Kevin Clark OF
7 198 Michael McKenry C
8 228 Brandon Hynick RHP
9 258 Will Harris RHP
10 288 David Arnold RHP
11 318 Aaron Miller OF
12 348 Austin Rauch C
13 378 Spence Nagy INF
14 408 Jeff Kindel OF
15 438 Victor Ferrante OF
16 468 Anthony Jackson OF
17 498 Michael Gibbs RHP
18 528 Andrew Cashner RHP
19 558 Zack Murry SS
20 588 Sean Jarrett RHP
21 618 Andy Graham RHP
22 648 Jay Cox OF
23 678 Scott Maine LHP
24 708 Shane Dyer RHP
25 738 Jeremy Jones OF
26 768 Devin Collis LHP
27 798 Matt Repec SS
28 828 Tommy Baumgardner LHP
29 858 Shane Lowe SS
30 888 Scott Robinson OF
31 918 Curtis Dupart OF
32 948 Miguel Valcarcel RHP
33 978 Drew Shetrone RHP
34 1008 Jamie Niley LHP
35 1038 Joshua Banda 1B
36 1068 Michael Diaz C
37 1098 Zachary Helton 2B
38 1128 Jon Hesketh LHP
39 1158 Jason Fuqua LHP
40 1188 David Luna C
41 1218 Jay Taylor RHP
42 1248 Sean Halton 1B
43 1277 Bryan Jaeger OF
44 1306 Scott Bachman LHP
45 1335 James Manning RHP
46 1364 Damion Carter OF
47 1392 Justin Miller RHP
48 1420 Jesus Cebollero RHP
49 1448 Paul Dickey RHP
50 1476 Jamie Johnson OF