Cleveland Indians: 5 worst first-round draft picks in club history

Today we take a look at five of the worst first-round draft picks in Cleveland Indians draft history.

Last week we took a look at the five best first-round picks in Cleveland Indians draft history. The picks ranged from the very first draft way back in 1965 with Ray Fosse to as recent as 2011 with Francisco Lindor along with some great picks in between.

However, things don’t always go as planned in a draft, and today we’ll take a look at the five worst first-round picks in Cleveland Indians draft history.

Unlike with the five-best pick list, this one was a lot tougher to narrow down to just five. The biggest issue is that of the 66 first-round picks the Indians have made since 1965, 30 of them never made the major leagues. Unlike in other sports, it’s a lot harder to predict how a player will do, since there are many levels of the minor leagues to go through.

To make things more interesting, instead of just focussing on all the guys that didn’t make it, I narrowed it down by eliminating all the high school draft picks the Indians made in the first-round that never made big leagues.

So you won’t see any guys like Michael Weaver, David Sloan, Glen Tufts, Phil Lansford, or Dan Denham on this list. All were terrible picks, some even top 10; however, it’s much more of a risk/reward with high school guys that I chose to omit them, especially the older picks when scouting and data collection wasn’t what it is today.

I’m also focussing on guys higher in the first-round for this list, which is why you won’t be seeing guys like Danny Peoples, David Miller, or David Huff, even those all turned out to be terrible picks.

Finally, as with the best-of list, I will not be looking at the five most recent drafts, since it’s far too soon to make any real determinations on those players. So keeping all that in mind here are my picks for the five worst first-round picks in Cleveland Indians history.