The 2001 draft: Joe Mauer, Mark Prior, Mark Teixeira

Mark Teixeira let this grounder get through him in
Game 2 of the ALDS on Monday

Mark Teixeira looks ... old. He's 32, but the Yankees first baseman is playing older and stiffer than that.

In 2010, he hit .256/.365/.481; in 2011, he hit .248/.341/.494; this year, .251/.332/.475. Batting average unimpressive, walks dropping, still hitting an occasional bomb ... And the Yankees are committed to him for another four years at $22.5 million a year.

I've little doubt that the calf injury that cost him most of September still bothers him somewhat and helps make him look slow and unathletic in these playoffs, but that's still a three-year trend line that has to be worrisome to the Yankees.

Teixeira was the fifth player taken in the famous 2001 draft, although he was widely regarded as one of the top three talents. He slipped, without a doubt, because he was aligned with Scott Boras, and many a team preferred not to deal with that devil.

Joe Mauer, as we Twins fans know, went first and Mark Prior second. The only quarrels anybody had at the time was which order the two should be in. The Twins clearly made the right choice.

They were followed by  two high school pitchers: Dewon Brazelton (Tampa Bay) and Gavin Floyd (Philadelphia). Brazelton flopped, and the Phillies traded Floyd to the White Sox, where he's been a good-but-not-great starter for six seasons.

Then Texas popped Teixeira. He was the fifth guy taken in the draft, but he'll probably wind up making the most money of anybody in the field.

What intrigues me today, looking at the 2001 draft with more than a decade of hindsight, is how poorly the rest of the first round played out. The best of the rest were Casey Kotchman and Jeremy Bonderman. Noah Lowry and Bobby Crosby had their moments but flamed out early, and Mike Fontenot has hung around as a utilityman/low-grade regular, but you've got to go to the supplemental round and the 38th overall pick (David Wright) to find the next star in that draft.

Quotes, notes and comment

* It's easy to forget now that the Twins' decision in 2001 to draft Joe Mauer with the first pick in that year's draft was criticized in many quarters. The guy who "should" have gone 1-1 was Mark Prior, that year's greatest college pitcher ever.

The San Diego Padres this week released Prior, who hasn't appeared in a major league game since 2006.

* Some blame Dusty Baker, who managed Prior during the pitcher's tenure with the Chicago Cubs, for the string of injuries that have bedeviled Prior since 2003, Prior's one good year. In September and October of that season, Prior's pitch counts were 131, 129, 110, 124, 131, 133, 133 (again), 116 and 119. In contrast, Johan Santana's career high is 125. He did that once.

Last season, Edinson Volquez (pictured above) had a big season pitching for Baker in Cincinnati. On Monday, he had Tommy John surgery — out the rest of this year, probably out all of 2010 as well.

Blame Baker, right? Maybe, but in terms of his pitch counts, Baker was far more careful in his use of Volquez than he was with Prior.

This link provides a series of links to a variety of views on why Volquez got hurt. To me, it's easy: He's a young pitcher. Young pitchers pitching well get hurt. That they're more likely to get hurt when managed by Baker or Tommy Lasorda than by Tom Kelly or Jim Leyland is probably not coincidential.

* The Twins win on Tuesday; the Tigers (and Jarrod Washburn) lose; and despite the weekend-long disaster against the Angels, the Twins are just 2.5 games behind the Tigers.

* La Velle Neal, in this Star-Trib blog entry about Scott Baker, makes a worthwhile point about Baker and foul balls. But he also comments on the stuggles of the Twins rotation:

Baker was supposed to lead the rotation, and the adjustments he needs to make aren’t as serious as Francisco Liriano’s. I’m surprised that Nick Blackburn has gone haywire lately. And that Glen Perkins seems to be in such a mess. Rookie Anthony Swarzak is young and talented and learning.

This may be the basis of a future Monday print column, but just in case I go in a different direction before then: Nothing surprising about Blackburn and Perkins, really. Neither gets enough strikeouts. Blackburn is striking out fewer than four men per nine innings this year; Perkins is just over four K/9. It is beastly difficult to succeed in the modern game with fewer than five strikeouts per nine innings.