What's the value of the 18th pick in the draft, which will be the shiny part of our two-part compensation for Chone Figgins (unless the Mariners sign another Type A free agent)? Cupla-three ways of looking at the question. The first is just observing that the Angels have only picked as high as #18 four times during the Mike Scioscia decade.

Three of those four will be familiar:

10 2000 Joe Torres
12 2002 Joe Saunders
12 2004 Jered Weaver
13 2001 Casey Kotchman

If you wanna bracket that a bit with some guys a few clicks south of 18, here's a batch:

20 2000 Chris Bootcheck
23 2003 Brandon Wood
24 2009 Randal Grichuk
25 2005 Hank Conger
25 2009 Mike Trout

I'd be happy with more than half those guys, so that's a pretty promising list. You could, for example, simply check out the #18 picks over the past 14 years. This is a far less impressive group:

1996 R.A. Dickey
1997 Mark Mangum
1998 Seth Etherton
1999 Richard Stahl
2000 Miguel Negron
2001 Aaron Heilman
2002 Royce Ring
2003 Brad Snyder
2004 Josh Fields
2005 Cesar Carrillo
2006 Kyle Drabek
2007 Peter Kozma
2008 Ike Davis
2009 Chad James

So that's basically 5 marginal major-league pitchers, 2 high school pitchers who washed out in the minors, 2 dudes currently stuck at AAA, enigmatic Chisox 3Bman Josh Fields, and 4 pretty decent young prospects (the 4 most recent).

Of the two lists above I would weight more heavily the Angels' track record than that of the numeral 18.

Completists can go to Baseball Reference to see #18s throughout the years (and real anal sonsabitches can adjust the draft slot to equal .6 of the number of teams drafting, but that's a time-waster for another day). An executive summary of the 31 pre-1996 #18s:

• 15 never made the show.
• Of the 16 who did, the best were Willie Wilson, Joe Magrane, Carlos May, and Disco Danny Ford.
• Other notables include Rex Hudler, Glenn Wilson, Jamie Quirk, and Jack Armstrong.

For previous discussions on what certain draft slots mean, see my posts here and here. And remember -- we'll also get a pick somewhere in the 40s!