The Athletics were still in Oakland in 2010, and they turned in a pretty putrid MLB Draft. Holding the No. 10 overall selection, they went with Michael Choice out of the University of Texas at Arlington. He would play all of nine games for the A’s before he was part of the deal that landed Craig Gentry in Oakland.

But what if the A’s had done something different with that pick? This is exactly the exercise that Baseball America decided to do, re-drafting the entire first round of the 2010 MLB Draft. The amount of talent that was in this draft is astounding.

Bryce Harper went first overall–which holds in the re-draft, but Manny Machado, Chris Sale, Jacob deGrom, and Christian Yelich round out the top five with the benefit of hindsight. That’s a lot of guys that have had solid careers at the big league level.

The way BA saw this draft shaking out, they had the A’s ending up with current San Francisco Giants starter Robbie Ray with the tenth pick. Based on talent alone, this could have been a no-brainer. Yet, based on how the A’s have typically made their selections, a pitcher in the first round is a rarity these days, but they had just taken high schooler Trevor Cahill with their first pick in 2006, though their first pick was in the second round at No. 66 overall.

Whether or not the A’s would have ended up taking Ray based on organizational philosophy alone is up for debate.

Baseball America’s archived scouting report on the lefty: “Lefthander Ray had a tumultuous spring, with inconsistent velocity and performances. He was never quite as good as he showed in showcases last fall, when his fastball reached the mid-90s and his slurvy breaking ball showed more power.

“He also has flashed a plus changeup with some late fade. His fastball velocity was more in the 89-91 mph range this spring, and in some starts it sat in the upper 80s. That didn’t keep him from throwing a five-inning perfect game, one of three no-hitters he authored in the spring.”

Ray ended up being traded by the Washington Nationals to the Detroit Tigers in 2013 in the Doug Fister deal, and made his MLB debut with the Tigers in 2014. He was traded again the following off-season, this time as part of a three-team deal with the Diamondbacks and New York Yankees that landed him in Arizona.

This is where he started to really earn some playing time. From 2015-2019, Ray averaged 152 innings per season and a 3.96 ERA (111 ERA+). His best year came in 2017, when he finished seventh in the NL Cy Young voting and held a 2.89 ERA during a 15-5 campaign.

That year is important, because it was also the final season that Ray was pre-arbitration. The A’s finished with a 75-87 record that year, but we also saw the arrival of Matt Chapman and Matt Olson, while Khris Davis hit 43 home runs. The A’s would have held a better record in 2017 with Ray on the staff instead of Jesse Hahn or Daniel Gossett, but whether they would have reached the postseason is up for debate.

The big mystery is what the A’s would have done that offseason. With Ray coming off a career year (at that point) and set to make close to $4 million in 2018, would the team have held onto him, or traded him away? Based purely on how his ’18 season went, the A’s best bet may have been to move him after the ’17 season, given how the team decided to operate during those years. Ray posted a 3.93 ERA and was just a touch above league average in 2018.

The 2018 A’s won 97 games without him in the rotation, and if he wasn’t pitching like an ace, then their ultimate fate of losing to the Yankees in the Wild Card round doesn’t change.

But if they had traded Ray at that point, then they may have been able to better set up the team for those runs they made from 2018-20, and potentially even made the postseason in 2021. Could those years have ended differently and resulted in a deeper postseason run? It’s possible. Would a deep run have changed the franchise’s fate of leaving Oakland? One can certainly hope.

The other reason that the 2010 MLB Draft is an interesting one to take a look at is because the A’s didn’t end up selecting a lot of players that made it to the big leagues. Choice played in under 100 games, but he ultimately made it to The Show. The next player selected by Oakland to make it to the bigs was 13th rounder A.J. Griffin, who pitched some big innings for the club in 2012 as a rookie.

Seth Frankoff in the 27th round also made it, along with 41st round catcher Andrew Knapp, who didn’t sign with the A’s. He went to college and ended up being a second rounder of the Philadelphia Phillies in 2013.

But the biggest pick the A’s made was Aaron Judge in the 31st round. Obviously, he didn’t sign with the A’s either, and ended up a first-round selection of the Yankees a couple of years later. Now if he had signed with the A’s, their fortunes may have been drastically different.