Behind the scenes story of the 2011 MLB Draft -- which could be the best ever

Six seasons into his major league career, Francisco Lindor is on a track that gives him a solid chance of someday being elected to the Hall of Fame.

Whether such an honor comes as a Met remains to be seen, pending a potential long-term contract extension to stay in Queens, but whatever his choice of caps should it happen, Lindor would go in with another special designation.

That is, as the eighth player selected in the 2011 MLB Draft, he is part of a class that has a chance to be regarded someday as the best and most decorated in the 56-year history of the draft.

At the time, it was also an intriguing draft from a New York perspective, the first for Sandy Alderson’s regime with the Mets. And while his selection of Brandon Nimmo in the No. 13 spot turned out to be a solid pick, some of the players the Mets either just missed getting or passed on turned out to be more memorable.

In particular, the Mets went into that draft believing/hoping there was “a 50-50 chance,” as then special-assignment scout Tommy Tanous recalls, that Javier Baez, a player they coveted, would be there for them at pick No. 13.

As it turned out, Baez went eighth to the Chicago Cubs, but the surprise was that George Springer nearly slipped to them after something of a subpar junior season at UConn, though the consensus from people who were there is that the Mets would have taken Nimmo over Springer anyway.

More on that to come, while for the Yankees that draft was a bitter reminder of the failed gamble they took in selecting Gerrit Cole out of high school three years earlier, only to see him in 2011 get selected out of UCLA as the No. 1 overall pick by the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Above and beyond the New York storylines, however, it was a draft whose star power, 10 years later, is already beginning to create quite a legacy.

Consider some of the players who were taken among the first 14 picks: Cole, Trevor Bauer, Anthony Rendon, Lindor, Baez, Springer, Nimmo, and the late Jose Fernandez.

Throw in Trevor Story and Blake Snell, who were taken as supplemental first-rounders at No. 45 and 52, respectively, and that adds up to a dazzling array of All-Star talent and potential Hall of Fame immortality.

Finally, here’s the kicker: Arguably the best player of all from that draft was one Mookie Betts, so overlooked as a high school player out of Tennessee that he wasn’t taken until the fifth round -- 172^nd overall -- by the Red Sox.

Betts aside, much was expected at the time from those draftees. Jim Callis, the MLBpipeline.com analyst who has specialized in covering the event for two decades, recalls how much buzz surrounded the draft year.

“Going into it, everyone was saying it was going to be a once-in-a-decade draft,” Callis says. “When everyone is that excited, it usually proves to be true, and this one did. Now, when you look at what some of those players are doing, it’s very possible that in 10 or 15 years we might look back at that draft as the best ever.”

Other drafts that have been cited over the last two decades as especially bountiful were 2005 edition, which included Justin Upton, Alex Gordon, Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki, and Andrew McCutchen, and the one in 2010 that featured Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Chris Sale, Christian Yelich, and J.T. Realmuto.

But the best of all, certainly in terms of producing all-time greats, was probably the 1985 draft, which included Barry Bonds, Will Clark, Barry Larkin, and Rafael Palmeiro in the first round, Randy Johnson in the second round, and, remarkably, John Smoltz in the 22^nd round.

That’s quite a haul, and with that in mind, the 2011 class has a chance to top it but only if many of the big names sustain their high-level play for several more years. Certainly Cole, Rendon, Lindor, and Betts seem to be on a path to Cooperstown, while Springer, Story, and Baez have done enough in the first several years of their careers to at least have a chance at reaching The Hall.

In addition, the legacy of the 2011 class will always include the late Fernandez, already a superstar pitcher at age 24 for the Marlins when he died in a boat crash in Miami.

So let’s dive into the intrigue of how the first round played out:

For starters, Rendon was considered by many scouts to be the expected No 1 pick in the months ahead of the draft, but injuries marred his final season at Rice University, resulting in his slide to sixth overall, where he was taken by the Washington Nationals.

That made Cole, starring at the time at UCLA along with Bauer, the consensus No. 1 pick, leaving Yankees scouting director Damon Oppenheimer with decidedly mixed feelings, three years after he had selected him out of high school with the 18^th pick in 2008.

“It was kind of hard for us but there was some satisfaction knowing you were right about him, seeing him become the No. 1 pick,” Oppenheimer recalled recently. “And I still think it was the right decision to take him.

“It was known that he wasn’t going to be easy to sign, but we thought we were the one club that had a shot at getting it done. It was a calculated gamble.”

Part of that thinking was knowing Cole had grown up in Southern California as a big Yankee fan, something all of New York came to know when he finally did become a Yankee in December of 2019, showing up at his press conference with the pinstriped poster he’d been photographed displaying in 2001 when he attended the World Series in Arizona.

But as it turned out, Cole stuck to his intention of going to UCLA, to the point where Oppenheimer says he never got to make a formal offer. And while he was the No. 1 pick in 2011, the Yankees had no first-round pick, having forfeited it due to the signing of free agent reliever Rafael Soriano.

The Mets, meanwhile, were much more invested.

As Tanous, now the Mets’ scouting director, recalls, there were so many high-ceiling players that there was a constant shifting in trying to rank them in the weeks before the draft in June.

Bauer, in particular, “was flying up the board,” Tanous says. “Cole was considered the top guy, but Bauer had the better season that spring, and every time you’d go see UCLA, you’d come away thinking, ‘I’m not sure that Bauer’s not the better prospect.”

Ten years later, Cole has proven to be the better pick, but not by much. And, in fact, Bauer, who went No. 3 to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the draft, has the only Cy Young Award between them.

In any case, the Mets knew they had no shot at Bauer. The same went for Lindor, then a high school shortstop in Florida who was taken by the Indians with the No. 8 pick.

“We were surprised he even got that close to us,” Tanous says. “Everybody knew how good he was. He was a slick fielder with a high baseball IQ and a very good hit tool. The only thing I don’t think anyone predicted was the power he has developed.”

Likewise, Callis recalls that “Everybody loved Lindor. His agent didn’t think he’d get past the top five.”

That he did was at least partly because teams were seduced by high-end pitching. Cole and Bauer aside, the Seattle Mariners took U. of Virginia lefty Danny Hultzen at No. 2, only to see his career derailed by injuries, and the Baltimore Orioles selected Dylan Bundy, something of a legendary high school pitcher in Oklahoma.

As J.P. Ricciardi, then the Mets assistant GM, recalls, “I remember going to see Bundy that spring and thinking he was the best high school pitcher I’d ever seen. Usually you won’t see high school pitchers go that high because there’s so much risk, but he was just phenomenal.”

As it turned out, the risk prevailed, as arm injuries reduced Bundy from phenom to struggling starter with the Orioles before something of a turnaround season with the Angels in 2020, offering hope that at age 28 the best might still be ahead for him.

So it was all pitching at the top of that draft, and then there was the one bust unrelated to injury among the top picks, when the Kansas City Royals, at No. 5, fell in love with Bubba Starling, a high school outfielder from Kansas who was an All-State athlete in three sports, and gave him a $7.5 million bonus (second-highest to Cole) to keep him from going to play quarterback at Nebraska.

“Unbelievable athlete,” Callis recalls. “But he had struggled some against good pitching in the summer showcase circuit, so some teams were wary. The Royals really wanted one of those four top pitchers, and probably didn’t think they’d all be gone.”

Starling struggled for years in the minors before finally making it to the big leagues in 2019 and 2020, but he hit only .215 and .169 with the Royals, and doesn’t seem to have much of a big league future.

From there it was Rendon, Archie Bradley, and Lindor at picks No. 6, 7, and 8, and by that time the Mets were crossing their fingers that Baez would fall to them at 13.

“Baez would chase out of the zone a lot more than Lindor,” Tanous recalls. “The questions about his plate discipline made us think we had a shot at him. And we were hoping. At the time he had the best bat speed I’ve seen in 20 years of scouting -- he reminded me of Gary Sheffield. And defensively you weren’t sure he’d stay at shortstop but his hands were elite.

“We worked him out before the draft and it was one of the most fun workouts I’ve ever been to. The talent was something to see.”

However, the Cubs broke the Mets’ hearts by taking Baez at No. 9, and he has blossomed into an All-Star shortstop, second in the 2018 NL MVP voting when he hit 34 home runs, while becoming a flashy defender who won his first Gold Glove award last season.

With Baez gone, the Mets were surprised that Springer was still on the board, and even more so when the San Diego Padres at No. 10 took Cory Spangenberg, a junior college infielder who has had a solid big league career as a utility player with the Padres and Milwaukee Brewers.

Springer at one point had been considered a surefire Top 10 pick, but then he struggled some his junior year at UConn.

“He was swinging and missing a lot,’’ recalls Oppenheimer, “and it got to the point where there was a lot of scout talk: ‘Hey, this guy’s starting to tumble (on draft boards).”

As the first round unfolded, then, some in the Mets’ front office began to salivate.

“I’d seen him a bunch of times, and I loved him,” Ricciardi recalls. “But I’m kind of glad he didn’t get to us because as a group I don’t think we liked him as much as we should have.”

Indeed, it was well-known that then-scouting director Chad MacDonald loved Nimmo, while then-VP of baseball operations Paul DePodesta, who was overseeing the draft, thought that philosophically it was best to take a high school position player as the Mets began a long-term rebuild of their farm system.

As it turned out, The Astros took Springer at No. 11, and then the Brewers selected high school pitcher Taylor Jungmann, leaving Nimmo, the high school outfielder from Wyoming, for the Mets.

“There was some risk because his high school didn’t have a baseball team,” Tanous recalls, “but he’d played on the summer circuit and his plate discipline and athleticism really stood out. He knew the strike zone better than just (about) anyone I’d ever seen at that level.

“And he’s turned out to be a good pick for us.”

Nevertheless, the Mets could have taken Jose Fernandez, who went to the Miami Marlins with the next pick. Tanous recalls that a few of the Mets’ scouts saw him pitch a week before the draft and that he was "tremendous".

"Everybody knew about him but it’s always so risky taking high school pitchers, and even if they stay healthy you’re usually looking at five years before they’re in the big leagues,” Tanous said.

Fernandez proved the exception, bursting onto the scene with the Marlins at age 20, winning Rookie of the Year honors and looking like a future Hall-of-Famer for most of his four seasons before the tragic boating accident.

In any case, the Mets passed on Fernandez at least partly because they were convinced they could get similarly-skilled high school righthander Michael Fulmer at No. 44, a supplemental pick they owned because they’d lost reliever Pedro Feliciano to free agency.

As one former Mets executive who preferred not to be quoted by name recalled, “I remember when there was talk about Fernandez, Chad saying he had Fulmer locked and loaded at No. 44 and we should take Nimmo at 13. He was convinced nobody would take Fulmer before that, and it turned out to be a great pick.”

Fulmer never pitched for the Mets, of course, but he famously helped them get to the 2015 World Series as one of the players Alderson traded to the Detroit Tigers for Yoenis Cespedes. Fulmer went on to win AL Rookie of the Year honors in 2016 before injuries, including Tommy John surgery, have somewhat derailed his career, to the point where he pitched to an 8.78 ERA last season.

In any case, that’s how those first 14 picks unfolded, and yet arguably the best player of all in that draft was still 158 picks away from being chosen. In fact, Betts was so under the radar that Tanous, who seemingly remembers every player the Mets have ever scouted, confesses that he has no recollection of seeing him or talking about him going into that draft.

Callis, meanwhile, says that “only a few teams were in on Betts. He was a smaller kid from Tennessee playing shortstop and nobody saw him as a player who would hit for power. But a Red Sox scout saw him make a standout defensive play in a showcase game and made a point of pushing for him.

“The Red Sox wound up really liking him, so much that their scouting director at the time told me years later they should have taken him in the second round. They were convinced nobody else was going to take him but I remember him saying, 'We had a sense of how good he could be after working him out. We could have really blown it by waiting that long.'"

Instead Sox fans no doubt would say their team blew it by trading Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers a year ago, but in any case, the Mookie anecdote adds a fitting final piece of intrigue to a draft that has a chance to be remembered as the best of all time.

The 2011 draft is also one that fans in New York hope to remember one day as the draft that produced a Hall of Fame shortstop sporting a Mets cap on his bust in Cooperstown.