For a long time, it was better to pick fourth (as the Giants do on Saturday) than first in the MLB Draft. When the Yankees won back-to-back championships in 1977 and 1978, they did so with the help of 1968 No. 4 pick Thurman Munson. When they enjoyed bittersweet success in the 1980s, they did so with the help of Padres’ 1973 No. 4 pick Dave Winfield. The No. 1 picks in that era offered teams solid players, like Rick Monday and Floyd Bannister, but it didn’t give anyone a no-doubt Hall of Famer until Ken Griffey Jr. went first in 1987.Number 1 picks have caught up to (and surpassed) the No. 4 picks in terms of career value, and everything sorts out roughly as you might expect.Career WAR by overall pick (via Baseball-Reference.com)PickTotal WARWAR per pick1st1211.319.92nd816.713.43rd676.311.14th642.310.55th466.67.7Thank your lucky stars that the Giants aren’t picking fifth. Look at that shameful WAR total compared to the robust total of the fourth pick. And that’s with the help of Buster Posey’s career WAR puffing up the fifth pick’s totals. Maybe if the Giants whiff on this pick, we should subtract some of the missing WAR from Posey’s career total, which would sink the dreaded fifth pick even further.(I’m just trying to get you pumped up for the fourth pick. It’s so rare that I get to write about good Giants news these days.)This is a spot where a team should definitely get a major leaguer — only nine out of the 57 No. 4 picks made before 2022 didn’t make the majors at all. What kind of major leaguer will they get? No idea. But we can pretend we have an idea by checking out the pick’s history, starting at an obvious spot.The Giants’ history with the No. 4 pickThey’ve been there once, and they picked right-handed pitcher Jason Grilli, who was later traded for Liván Hernández. This was a formative moment in my personal understanding of baseball. The Giants traded the next Juan Marichal (I was sure of it) for an overrated pitcher who was either the oldest youngster or youngest crafty veteran you’d ever seen. Then that pitcher lost Game 7 of the 2002 World Series, a cursed competition the Giants were eternally doomed to lose.All of this was a metaphysical certainty. Then Grilli flopped as a starter and a reliever before he got hurt and missed his age-33 season, which was surely the end of his career. Except it was just getting started, and he had several successful seasons as a closer, even making the All-Star team at one point. Hernández was traded to get the bad memories away, and he immediately put up three absurdly valuable seasons, not only pitching well, but eating up to 250 innings per season, which is exactly what the Giants were missing in 2003 and 2004. Then the Giants won a whole bunch of World Series anyway.The point being that when I think of “Jason Grilli,” I think of my introduction to the sport of baseball being pure chaos. I thought I knew so much about baseball back then. I knew nothing. Still don’t! Don’t forget that a subscription to The Athletic makes a great gift for any occasion.