List of first overall Major League Baseball draft picks

The First-Year Player Draft, also known as the Rule 4 Draft, is Major League Baseball's (MLB) primary mechanism for assigning amateur baseball players from high schools, colleges, and other amateur baseball clubs to its teams. Unlike most professional sports, MLB does not permit the trading of draft picks,[1] so the draft order is solely determined by the previous season's standings; the team that possesses the worst record receives the first pick.[2] If two teams have identical records, the team with the worse record in the previous season will receive the higher pick.[2] In addition, teams that lost free agents in the previous off-season may be awarded "compensatory" picks.[2] The first draft took place in 1965; it was introduced to prevent richer teams from negotiating wealthier contracts with top-level prospects and therefore, monopolizing the player market.[3] Originally, three drafts were held each year. The first draft took place in June and involved high-school graduates and college seniors who had just finished their seasons. The second draft took place in January for high school and college players who had graduated in December. The third draft took place in August and was for players who participated in American amateur summer leagues.[4] The August draft was eliminated after two years, and the January draft lasted until 1986.[5]

Ken Griffey Jr., the 1987 first overall pick

In 1965, Rick Monday became MLB's first draft pick after being selected by the Kansas City Athletics. Spencer Torkelson is the most recent first overall pick; he was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in 2020. Overall, 23 of the 50 picks before 2015 have participated in the All-Star Game, and four (Bob Horner, Darryl Strawberry, Bryce Harper, and Carlos Correa) have won the Rookie of the Year Award. Twenty-five of the fifty picks before 2015 have been drafted from high schools, one has been drafted out of the Independent American Association, and the others were drafted from universities. To date, Arizona State University and Vanderbilt University are the only schools from which multiple number-one overall draft picks have been chosen. No first overall pick was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame until 2016, when Ken Griffey Jr. was inducted with a record 99.3% of votes cast.[6] Griffey has since been joined by two other top picks, with Chipper Jones inducted in 2018[7] and Harold Baines elected in December 2018 and inducted in July 2019.[8]

In the 54 drafts that have taken place through 2018, 22 of the 30 MLB franchises have had the first pick at least once. The Toronto Blue Jays, St. Louis Cardinals, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, Boston Red Sox, and Colorado Rockies have never had the first pick. The Montreal Expos never had the first pick, but the Nationals have had it twice. The Oakland Athletics have never had the first pick, but the Kansas City Athletics had the first pick in MLB Draft history. The New York Mets, San Diego Padres, and Houston Astros have each had the first pick five times, and the Seattle Mariners, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Tampa Bay Rays have each had the first pick four times.