The 6 worst drafts in Detroit Tigers History

Number 2 Worst Detroit Tigers Draft – 1971

The last of the Ed Katalinas stinkers on our list, Detroit’s 1971 draft is actually the worst in franchise history by WAR. We used some editorial discretion here, though, because baseball was a different game back then, and two of these draft picks actually topped 100 career big-league games.

The Tigers had the 11th overall pick and they used it on New York high-school shortstop Tom Veryzer. On the positive side, Veryzer played in 995 career big-league games over parts of 12 seasons, and almost all of them were at shortstop. On the negative side, his career -3.7 bWAR (and -5.0 fWAR!) was low enough to make him one of the five worst first-round picks of all time. He manned shortstop in Detroit for three full seasons, until a youngster named Alan Trammell arrived, and the Tigers eventually traded him to Cleveland for outfielder Charlie Spikes.

Detroit’s second-round pick was high-school lefty Dennis Debarr, who never played for the Tigers, but was taken by Toronto in the 1976 expansion draft and pitched in 14 games for the Blue Jays in 1977. Seventh-rounder Gene Pentz had a decent rookie season as a reliever for the Tigers in 1975 and was part of a trade package to the Houston Astros, while 13th rounder Gary Christenson was eventually purchased by Kansas City and racked up -0.8 WAR with the Royals over 30 outings.