The Baseball Draft

A team like the Pirates, with their limited revenue base, simple can not compete in the free agent market; they must develop their own talent, hang on to them as long as possible and then trade them for the opportunity to develop more. Established pitchers command astonishing salaries now. But building through the draft has surprising uncertainty. In football, the top ten draft picks do well statistically but from then on, most is luck. The statisticians and great scouts hope to refine this and improve the chances of success. For low income baseball teams, this is life and death.
In the 2009-11 drafts the Pirates spent 22 of their 30 picks in the top 10 rounds on pitchers. Seventeen were high school arms. The Pirates signed 18 of those 22 pitchers to bonuses totaling $25.6 million. It was a rare commitment to prep pitching.

Glasnow and Taillon probably will become the first prep pitcher from that group to pitch for the Pirates.

Two springs ago, Larry Broadway, the Pirates director of minor league operations, said: “From an organizational, 30,000-foot level, we felt like it was time to try and stockpile some of these arms and see if we can't by the law of averages come out with a few aces.”

Cheap, cost-controlled starting pitchers are among the most valuable assets in the game. But high school pitching also is the riskiest prospect demographic.

 Here are the six prep or international pitchers awarded seven-figure signing bonuses by the Pirates from 2009-11:

• Zachary Von Rosenberg ($1.2 million bonus, sixth round 2009) was released last spring.

• Luis Heredia ($2.6 million bonus, international signing in 2010) was exposed to the Rule 5 draft in the fall and not selected.

• Stetson Allie ($2.2 million bonus, second  has converted to first base.

• Clay Holmes ($1.2 million, ninth round 2011) returned to pitch last season after 2014 Tommy John surgery.

• Colton Cain ($1.1 million bonus, eighth round 2009) was traded to Houston for Wandy Rodriguez and posted a 5.29 ERA in the minors last season.

• Taillon ($6.5 million) had Tommy John surgery in 2014.

Said John Hart, now the Braves general manager, to the Tribune-Review in 2014: “A truism is if you have 10 (pitching prospects), you can really count on two of them making it.”

Those odds sound like the odds of a venture capital group. It should make anyone cautious about projecting from good estimates.