Toronto Blue Jays: The 10 worst first-round picks since 2000

Over the years, when it comes to making the right selection at the annual MLB draft, teams would have scouts, analysts, and others to help them decide who potentially are the best prospects to choose and develop from the draft. Despite extensive work put into each draft by team personnel, more often than not, getting the right prospect choice is a difficult task, with often a little luck coming into play as well. Nevertheless, it is important to hit with the first-round pick, because those players tend to have a greater chance of making an impact with their potential organization compared to those selected in the later rounds.

For the Toronto Blue Jays, they have been fortunate enough to draft some notable star players over the years in the first round, including Shawn Green, Shannon Stewart, Vernon Wells, Alex Ríos, Aaron Hill and the late Roy Halladay to name a few. But at the same time, they have also missed on quite a few, including the likes of Alex Sanchez, Augie Schmidt, Eddie Zosky, Felipe Lopez, Kevin Witt and others.

On the good side, the Jays have had some success in their most recent years, having drafted strongly in the first round with picks ending up as Nate Pearson, Alek Manoah, Austin Martin and Brandon Barriera. However, looking back in the past two decades dating back to 2000, there have been many big misses by the ballclub, which could explain some of the reasons why they weren’t a competitive team for the majority of the time aside from their playoff contending years in 2015 and 2016.

Here we take a look back at 10 of the worst first round draft picks selected by the Jays since 2000, and how their unfortunate selections led to more mediocre years for the ballclub than expected. The overall draft position of the player selected is shown in parentheses.

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