Five years ago this July, the Pittsburgh Pirates walked up to the podium at Bellco Theatre in Denver and took Henry Davis with the first overall pick in the 2021 MLB Draft. Twenty-six teams later, with the lights mostly dim and the broadcast largely moved on, the San Diego Padres turned in their card.
Jackson Merrill. Severna Park, Maryland. High school shortstop.
One of those two names is now a middle-of-the-order bat on a perennial playoff team, an All-Star, a Silver Slugger, and the man who finished second to Paul Skenes in the 2024 NL Rookie of the Year vote. The other is a career .187 hitter who's spent three seasons fighting for at-bats in a city that drafted him with the expectation that he'd be the face of the franchise.
This, my friends, is why we do the draft review five years later and not five months later.
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