Kansas City Royals: Every First Round Pick Since 2000

Every Royals first-round draft pick since 2000: Mike Stodolka (2001)

With the fourth overall pick in the 2000 MLB Draft, the Kansas City Royals selected Mike Stodolka out of Centennial High School in Corona, California. For those of you who didn’t recognize his name, don’t feel bad. He never made it to the majors, even after eight seasons in the minor leagues.

Drafted as a left-handed pitcher, Stodolka also spent time swinging the bat as a first baseman and as a right fielder. Nothing just seemed to work out in his favor.

As a pitcher, Stodolka had a career average of 4.93 in the minors with a record of 20-39 and a WHIP of 1.441. As a batter, his stats weren’t awful, with a slash line of .287/.394/.444, but Baseball Reference only had the stats from 2006 and on.

In other words, Mike Stodolka had inflated hitting stats because he had been in the minors for six years at that point. He never got his big league call up and was out of the majors after 2008. He’s a prime example of high praise players not always panning out in Major League Baseball and is not the only guy this has happened to (you’ll see for yourself quite a bit in this post).

Bleacher Report actually listed Stodolka as one of the biggest draft busts in MLB history, putting him at number 43 on the list.

I guess you can’t win ’em all.