In 1965, as had been the case in the preceding few years, the New York Mets posted the worst record in baseball. Despite the fact that the team was being guided by Casey Stengel, interim-turned-permanent manager Wes Westrum, and player-coaches Warren Spahn and Yogi Berra, the talent simply wasn’t there, and the team went 50-112 for the year. The only silver lining in their dreadful record was that fact that the team would make the first selection in the 1966 Major League Baseball Draft.
Player development is an inexact science. Scouts and evaluators make as best a decision they can on draft day based on the information that they have available, but the process of developing a baseball player from an amateur into a professional is a long one, full of twists and turns, guided by the invisible hand of luck.