Cleveland Indians: Redrafting First Round Picks from 2010-2016

The Pick

With the 17th pick in the 2015 MLB Draft, the Indians took notorious draft bust, Brady Aiken. Aiken was originally taken with the first overall pick in the 2014 Draft by the Houston Astros but did not sign with the team and did a postgraduate student year at Florida’s IMG Academy.

He was then taken by the Indians, where after struggling through parts of four minor league systems, he opted to step away from the game and take a break.

Today, it is unclear where Aiken stands or if he’s interested in returning to the Indians, but one thing is for sure, Cleveland would not have taken him in a re-draft.

Redraft

In a perfect world, the Indians would’ve landed another star to their rotation in the 2015 MLB Draft in Vanderbilt’s Walker Buehler.

Buehler has established himself as one of baseball’s top starting pitchers as in 2018 he helped guide the Dodgers to the World Series by finishing third in NL Rookie of the Year voting, was named an All-Star in 2019 and in 2020 was the Dodgers ace as they won their first title since 1988.

If Buehler, who fell to the 24th pick, was instead was taken by Cleveland, were to team up with Shane Bieber, it’s possible the Indians would have the best 1-2 starting rotation punch in recent MLB history.