![]() ![]() Three of the headliners of the 2011 class - of the top 11 picks, in fact - are on full display during this year’s World Series: Houston’s Springer and Gerrit Cole and Washington’s Anthony Rendon. “What do you want? You can get all 31 flavors, but you can’t get them all at once.” You had left, you had right, you had high school, you had college, you had pitchers, you had position players, It’s like it was Baskin-Robbins out here,” said Greg Smith, who picked first overall in 2011 as the Pittsburgh Pirates’ scouting director. This class boasts an American League MVP ( Mookie Betts), an AL Cy Young ( Blake Snell), an AL Rookie of the Year ( Michael Fulmer), an NL Rookie of the Year (the late José Fernández), a World Series MVP ( George Springer), an ALCS MVP ( Jackie Bradley Jr.) and an NLCS MVP ( Javier Báez), as well as five Gold Glovers, six Silver Sluggers and 20 All-Stars. The accomplishments, though, are already noteworthy. It’s already in the conversation, despite its class members being in the 25-to-30 age range, meaning there’s still a lot of baseball left to play for most of them. When the dust settles, in a decade or so, there will be more clarity and maybe more gusto added to the debate: How extraordinary was the MLB draft class of 2011? Could it emerge as the best ever? It’s been kicked around within baseball circles for the last year or so, but it took this postseason for the discussion to gain more traction.
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