Experts offering no consensus on who GM Cherington will take with 7th pick
The MLB draft will begin at 7 p.m. Wednesday with the first round and competitive balance picks and continue with the second through fifth rounds Thursday.
The Pirates have six selections in total, with two coming Wednesday in a draft that has been reduced to a mere five rounds.
Much of the excitement, as is usually the case with any draft, will surround the Pirates’ first-round pick at No. 7.
They could go anywhere. General manager Ben Cherington said last week that he generally believes in taking the best player available. While that is probably the right way to go in a sport like baseball, where prospects will take years to reach the majors, it doesn’t narrow the field of candidates for the Pirates.
ESPN draft expert Kiley McDaniel said he believes the Pirates will be leaning college hitter with their first pick. In McDaniel’s most recent mock draft, however, he put a
college pitcher in the mix, too.
Other mock drafts have had the Pirates taking a high school pitcher. So the ball could swing any way.
There’s even a local connection to keep an eye on as West Allegheny’s Austin Hendrick is projected to fall somewhere in the first round.
But here are some of the names to watch that would make the most sense for the Pirates:
• Heston Kjerstad, OF, Arkansas: The lowest batting average Kjerstad had in his three seasons at Arkansas was a .327 mark in 2019. In that same year, Kjerstad led the Razorbacks in hits, home runs, slugging percentage and total bases.
He played a bit of first base with Arkansas but is projected to roam right field primarily after he is drafted. The Pirates could certainly use another topend outfield prospect, especially in right field, considering Gregory Polanco might not be around years down the road.
Kjerstad has received comparisons to J.J. Bleday, the 22-year-old right fielder who broke out with Vanderbilt in 2019, was selected with the No. 4 overall pick by the Miami Marlins and is currently the No. 51 prospect in all of baseball, according to FanGraphs.
Once this new class of players from the 2020 draft is added into the mix, FanGraphs projects Kjerstad to be the No. 110 prospect in baseball. That would put him around seventh in the Pirates organization, near 2019 firstrounder Quinn Priester.
All that is to say that Kjerstad would fit well with the Pirates and would bolster their minor league system.
He has a good track record and projections say he will continue to improve and could hold down a starting job in the majors some day.
• Patrick Bailey, C, N.C. State: There is consternation about catching depth, both at the major league level and throughout the minors.
If the Pirates feel that need should be filled immediately, they could draft Bailey.
It could be considered a bit of a reach, since FanGraphs has him as the 12th-best draft prospect, and McDaniel sees him falling to the Chicago White Sox at the 11th pick, but that isn’t to say Bailey would be undeserving of a top-10 selection.
He hit above .300 throughout his college career as a switch-hitter, showing a bit more power from the left side than the right. In terms of defensive abilities, FanGraphs reports him as average to above average with his blocking, receiving and throwing.
Bailey doesn’t possess the same type of wow-factor with the bat as Kjerstad, but he was a very good college hitter and plays an important position.
FanGraphs projects that Bailey might not end up being a star catcher in the league but still believes he has a good chance to be an everyday catcher. That is more than you can say for most, if not all, the catchers the Pirates currently have below the major league level.
• Emerson Hancock, RHP, Georgia: McDaniel had a good bit to say about Hancock in his conference call last week. Basically, before the year began, Hancock was considered the top overall pitcher in the draft, just above Texas A&M’s Asa Lacy.
Hancock, however, was hurt last summer, limited in the fall and didn’t pitch very well in the preseason, while working back from the injury. He did begin to turn it around as the regular season got into swing and had there been a full season, he might have cemented himself as a top-3 pick, taking him out of the equation.
But, that didn’t happen. Hancock still possesses an extremely high upside. FanGraphs has him ranked as the No. 4 prospect in the draft and would place him at No. 75 in baseball.
That would make him the Pirates’ fifth-highestrated prospect.
He is a power pitcher, with a mid-90s fastball and a good slider and changeup.
The problem, as McDaniel puts it, is that his arsenal is not the kind teams are traditionally looking for these days.
“Teams are generally looking for four-seam, ‘ridein’ fastballs, in general, because there’s more swing and misses and you have more margin for error, and high-spin curveballs, and Hancock doesn’t have either of those,” McDaniel said.
“So what you’re hanging your hat on is history, the body, the delivery, the arm action, the changeup. Teams also don’t tend to love right-handed starters that are changeup over breaking ball, which he is.
“So he’s a little bit of an old-school pitcher, in that he doesn’t fit a lot of the recent trends, and he hasn’t been seen recently.”
As a result, there is some risk.
Still, Hancock’s track record is stellar, and, if used and developed correctly, he could turn into a very good pitcher down the road.
• Mick Abel, RHP, Jesuit High School (Oregon): Abel is FanGraph’s No. 9 prospect in the draft. He reached 97 mph with his fastball last summer, though that velocity did slip a bit as the summer went on.
There is some risk built in with any high school prospect, and that’s no different with Abel.
He could end up filling into his 6-foot-4 frame even more than he already has while developing into more of a power pitcher. Even if he doesn’t, he has shown power stuff already, which is why he is considered the best high school pitching prospect in the draft.
If Abel slips — McDaniel projects him to go to the Boston Red Sox with the 17th pick — it could be because he didn’t pitch at all in the spring because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
That said, the Pirates could still pull the trigger, adding him to Quinn Priester and Brennan Malone to make a potent trio of good, under-20 pitching prospects working their way through the minor leagues.
Some could slip
Arizona State first baseman Spencer Torkelson, Vanderbilt second baseman Austin Martin and Asa Lacy are pretty much the agreed-upon first three picks. Even if one of them slips, it seems pretty unlikely any will fall to the Pirates.
Florida high school outfielder Zac Veen, Minnesota right-hander Max Meyer and New Mexico State second baseman Nick Gonzales come after that, according to McDaniel’s most recent mock draft.
There could conceivably be some shuffling around that spot. A lot might depend on how teams view Meyer in relation to Hancock. If something falls differently than expected, here’s the short version of what you need to know about Veen, Meyer and Gonzales:
• Veen is the best highschool prospect in the draft. The smooth-swinging lefthander has drawn comparisons to Christian Yelich, and FanGraphs has him as the No. 80 prospect in the minors. He benefited from living in Florida, where high school ball began before the COVID-19 pandemic, and he used that time to separate himself among the prep prospects.
• Meyer is a more modern-day pitcher than Hancock, according to McDaniel. He is a fireballer, reaching 101 mph in his first start of 2020. His slider sits in the low-90s. That led him to a 2.13 ERA in his three years with the Golden Gophers, striking out 11.4 batters per nine innings. FanGraphs has him as the No. 8 prospect in the draft, saying his command and stuff need to develop to get him deeper into games, but adding that he might be “the best athlete among college starters in the draft.”
• The level of competition at New Mexico State is poor, but Gonzales tore it up, hitting .399 with 37 home runs in his three years with the Aggies. He also hit .351 in the Cape Cod League. A lot will depend on his defense, which has been a bit volatile, but his hitting projections are promising, which is why FanGraphs has him as the No. 6 prospect in the draft.