In the major league rookie draft, the first round selection is an honor given only to the elite. The halo of ‘first round’ continues for a long time, such as a huge down payment, special management by the club after joining, and an early big league debut.
However,메이저사이트 not everyone walks only on the ‘flower road’. There are players who are as great as expected, and there are not a few cases where they disappear from memory lonely, full of disappointment. Literally, ‘grades are not in order of nomination’. 10 years ago, in 2013, the rookie first round nominations are typical.
The Dallas Morning News, a daily newspaper in Texas, USA, reported on the 26th (Korean time) that ‘Texas is releasing outfielder Clint Frazier (29), who was a member of the club’s minor league Triple A, under mutual agreement’. Before being released, Frazier played in 15 Triple-A games this season, hitting 0.250 with one home run and four RBIs. He had a combined on-base percentage and slugging average OPS of 0.792.
According to the media, Frazier and his agent decided that there was no opportunity to return to the major leagues within the Texas club, so they plan to knock on other clubs after obtaining FA (free agent) qualifications after being released.
Frazier was a promising prospect selected by Cleveland in the first round (fifth overall) of the 2013 Major League Baseball Draft. Tim Anderson (30, Chicago White Sox), who was nominated in the same year, was number 17 overall, and Aaron Judge (31, New York Yankees) was number 32, so the expectations Fraser received were enormous.
However, now that 10 years have passed, the contrast between them has been sharply divided. While Anderson and Judge grew into superstars representing the league, Frazier was degraded to being released from the minor leagues, let alone the major leagues. After playing for the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs, Frazier played in 247 major league games, hitting 0.238 with 29 homers and 98 RBIs.
The situation for Austin Meadows (28, Detroit), who was from the same region (Georgia) as Fraser and was nominated in the first round (9th overall) in the same year, was also in good shape during high school.
Meadows, who made his major league debut in a Pittsburgh uniform in 2018, blossomed in the big leagues after being traded to Tampa Bay in the same year. He hit 33 homers in 2019 and set a career high. In 2020, which was a shortened season due to Corona 19, he only hit 4 homers, but in 2021 he hit 27 homers again and became a star. He was also voted an All-Star. But it was just there.
After moving to Detroit ahead of the 2022 season, he played only 36 games that year, suffering from injuries and sluggishness. His performance was also the lowest since his major league debut, with a batting average of 0.250 and 11 RBI. Although he did his best ahead of this season to make up for his sluggishness, Meadows is on the verge of missing the season due to injury after playing only six games.
In some cases, more so than Fraser and Meadows. Such is the case with pitcher Mark Appel (32), who was selected by Houston with the first overall pick in the first round of the draft in the same year. At the time, the contract he received was a whopping 6.35 million dollars (approximately 8.4963 billion won). However, after that, things went completely different than expected.
Houston traded Appel to Philadelphia in 2016 after he showed slower-than-expected growth. He moved teams, but showed no sign of improvement. It was only in 2022 that he was able to debut in the big leagues, but he was released after the season with an average ERA of 1.74 in 10⅓ innings pitched in 6 games as a midfielder.
Ahead of this season, he signed a minor league contract with Philadelphia and tried to return to the big leagues, but suffered a sluggish ERA of 11.12 in spring training and was released again in mid-March. Since then, he has not been able to find a team so far.