This story was excerpted from Justice delos Santos' Pirates Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
First pick and bonus slot: No. 4, $7,002,100
Additional first-day picks: No. 36 ($2,149,200)
Total bonus pool: $13,733,900
Last three first picks: Henry Davis (No. 1, 2021), Nick Gonzales (No. 7, 2020), Quinn Priester (No. 18, 2019)
Best pick of the last 10 years, per MLB Pipeline: Ke'Bryan Hayes, 2015
The Pirates hope that, in the coming years, the most important month of the season will be October (and, potentially, some parts of November). With the organization still building its next contender, July remains the most important month of the season, headlined by the Draft.
“It’s an important month. Both the Draft and the [Trade] Deadline are opportunities for us to get better, to get closer to winning more games faster,” general manager Ben Cherington said on July 2. “So, you have to execute well on both. It’s a busy month. It’s a lot going on, but it’s fun.”
So, who, exactly, are the Pirates going to draft? The specific name will remain a mystery until about 7:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, but, in all likelihood, it’ll be a position player.
The majority of this Draft’s most prominent names -- Druw Jones, Jackson Holliday, Elijah Green, Termarr Johnson, Brooks Lee, among others -- are position players. MLB Pipeline’s prospect rankings feature exclusively position players in the Top 10. Barring a shocking move, Pittsburgh's first-rounder should be a bat.
“We stare at [our big board] a lot every day, trying to break off and spend time on other parts of the board, then come back to it,” Cherington said. “The top of the board is important. History says that if you’re betting, that’s where the biggest returns can come in the Draft.”
On the pitching side, there are a couple factors worth considering. First, starting pitchers are throwing fewer and fewer innings every year. Additionally, the Pirates have highlighted their use of pitchers who are in hybrid roles. When asked how these factors will play into their drafting of pitchers, Cherington noted that simply hitting on pitchers is difficult, in and of itself.
“I think it’s hard enough to figure out pitching in the Draft, who has the traits that we’re looking for, who has the best chance to develop into a Major League pitcher,” Cherington said. “I think what we’re looking for, first and foremost, is who has the physical traits, the pitch traits, the psychological traits to perform as a Major League pitcher, and focus on that first.”
Also worth watching for is whether the Pirates try to parallel last year’s draft strategy. In 2021, the Pirates signed Davis under slot value which, in turn, allowed them to spend above the slot value on players like Anthony Solometo and Bubba Chandler, among others. Chandler, in particular, received a signing bonus of $3 million, well above the $870,700 slot value.
"I think it really just depends,” Cherington said. “We gotta get the order in the best way we can get it first. That’s what we’re focused on now. And then it really just depends on how the draft falls. We certainly are not going into it assuming that’s a strategy we will deploy, but want to be ready for it if that’s the way it falls, if that’s where the opportunity is.”