Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News has an interesting story about how the Rangers nearly ended up with Tim Lincecum.
Texas had the 12th overall pick in Jon Daniels’ first draft as general manager back in 2006 and “had identified the diminutive, hard-throwing right-hander from Washington as the club’s No. 1 target.”
According to Daniels the Rangers felt pretty confident that Lincecum would go undrafted through at least the first nine picks, but worried that the Giants would select him at No. 10 overall. San Francisco did end up selecting Lincecum, but in announcing the pick left out one of the zeroes on his official “draft number.”
“When the Giants started to call the number and there was no zero and I thought we got him,” Daniels told Grant. “Then they called the name. I remember asking our guys if we could have the pick nullified for not calling the zero. Apparently, you didn’t need to call the zero in the draft number.”
And so the Giants picked Lincecum at No. 10, the Diamondbacks selected Max Scherzer at No. 11, and the Rangers ended up with Kasey Kiker at No. 12. Lincecum has won back-to-back Cy Young awards and will start Game 1 tonight opposite Rangers ace Cliff Lee, while Kiker spent this season posting a 7.40 ERA at Double-A.