Miami Marlins draft retrospective: 2002

This is part of our draft series about previous drafts in Miami Marlins history. Today we’ll be looking at the 2002 draft. This draft took place two years from The Fish winning our second World Series, so let’s see how it went and if there were any missed opppttunities.

The Miami Marlins had a tough time at the 2002 MLB draft.

The Miami (“Florida” at the time) Marlins had the eleventh pick, but saw a couple of interesting players go before our first round pick. By the way this series largely focuses on first rounds. The Pittsburgh Pirates had the first pick and would probably like a do-over as they went with SP Bryan Bullington, the supposed ace who produced -0.2 WAR for his entire career.

SS B.J. Upton went second to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and was a much better pick, Upton accumulated 16.8 WAR for his career. The Kansas City Royals picked SP Zack Greinke eighth and he accumulated 75.5 WAR for his career. Maybe Pittsburgh should’ve picked him. Another notable pick before the Miami Marlins got anyone was 1B Prince Fielder, who went seventh to the Milwaukee Brewers and accumulated 23.8 WAR for his career.

The Miami Marlins picked eleventh and took RF Jeremy Hermida, who accumulated 2.7 WAR for his career. Wait what?! Yes that’s it. We could’ve had SP Cole Hamels who went seventeenth to the Philadelphia Phillies and accumulated 59.0 WAR for his career. SP Scott Kazmir would’ve been better too. He was worth 22.4 WAR for his career.

Yet another good SP was Matt Cain, who went twenty fifth to the San Francisco Giants and was worth 29.1 WAR in his career. Oh and we’re not done yet, SP Jon Lester was available too and went in the second round to the Boston Red Sox. There was a time the Miami Marlins could’ve had him and Josh Beckett in the same rotation instead of Boston. Lester was worth 43.4 WAR for his career.

The Miami Marlins had a lot of missed opportunities in this draft, and it’s sad to think about the pitching that we could’ve drafted. We did terribly in this draft.