One year ago the Rangers selected Josh Jung in the first round of the draft. The draft hasn’t been kind to the Rangers in the Jon Daniels era.

RANGERS SELECT JOSH JUNG.

The Rangers entered their annual blind bobbing for apples contest yesterday. They optimistically call it the Major League draft.

They haven’t been all that successful at it.

If you fielded a team consisting solely of the Rangers first-round draft picks in the Jon Daniels era, it would look like this:

Pitchers:                                             Catcher:
Kasey Kiker (2006)                           Kellin Deglan (2010)
Blake Beavan (2007)
Michael Main (2007)
Neil Ramirez (2007)                         Infield:
Tommy Hunter (2007)                     Justin Smoak (2008)
Matt Purke (2009)                             Mike Olt (2010)
Tanner Scheppers (2009)                Joey Gallo (2012)
Luke Jackson (2010)                         Travis Demeritte (2013)
Kevin Matthews (2011)                   Chris Seise (2017)
Collin Wiles (2012)
Chi Chi Gonzalez (2013)                 Outfield:
Luis Ortiz (2014)                              Julio Borbon (2007)
Dillon Tate (2015)                            Jake Skole (2010)
Cole Ragans (2016)                          Zach Cone (2011)
Cole Winn (2018)                             Lewis Brinson (2012)
Bubba Thompson (2017)

In all, Jon Daniels has overseen the drafting of twenty-six first-round picks, before last night.

Take away the last three years because you cannot reasonably expect a player drafted that near to this year to be major league ready yet, that leave twenty-two first-round picks.

It’s a veritable who’s who of “who?”

Of the twenty-two, nine never played one big league game— Kasey Kiker, Michael Main, Kevin Matthews, Collin Wiles, Dillon Tate, Kellin Deglan, Travis Demeritte, Jake Skole, Zach Cone—and two played only one year—Matt Purke and Luis Ortiz.

So exactly half were total, complete washouts.

Kevin Sherrington, of the Dallas Morning News, said this: “Daniels’s record in the first round is nothing to get excited about. Going into his 13th draft as the club’s general manager, his best, by far, is Joey Gallo, a 2012 supplemental pick.”

The general consensus is, drafting is hard, and the Rangers general manager isn’t great at it. It’s like a college kid studying Nuclear Physics. And getting a D.

So, another first-round draft day is over. The Rangers will march out their pick, Josh Jung, a third baseman from Texas Tech, drape him in a Texas Rangers uniform, and hope that, someday, he comes back to wear it for real.

Now the real hoping and praying begins.