In college I was coached by this guy: https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=ledbet001gar.
He always said he was a 1st round pick and I looked him up and confirmed it. Well I was talking to some old friends and he came up so I tried looking him up. Couldn't quite remember his name so I looked up the SF Giants first round picks over the years and he never came up. Well eventually his name came to mind and I looked up his baseball ref page and it said "Drafted by the San Francisco Giants in the 1st round (9th) of the 1977 MLB January Draft-Regular Phase from Santa Ana College (Santa Ana, CA)."
What was the "MLB January Draft-Regular Phase"? I think it was definitely a worse player pool than whatever the "normal draft" was. The only guy from the first round of the draft Ledbetter was in that I had ever heard of was Dave Righetti. I have never heard of that draft otherwise though and there isn't a ton of info on it on the web.
Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this.