The 2019 MLB amateur draft is just five days away, so we are going to get a lot of mock drafts leading up to Monday’s first day, when the Pittsburgh Pirates will make their first four selections of the draft. Over the weekend we had the latest updates from MLB Pipeline and Baseball America. Yesterday, Keith Law posted his second mock draft. Today we get the third attempt from Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel at Fangraphs. They have the Pirates going for high school pitcher Quinn Priester.
Priester has been connected to the Pirates, both as a rumor and in previous mock drafts. The last one was 12 days ago in a mock draft from Jim Callis at MLB Pipeline. That link is interesting for two reasons. The first is that it has recent video for Priester, along with a link to his player profile we did at the beginning of the month.
The second reason ties him in with this mock draft from Fangraphs. Callis mentioned that the Pirates have interest in high school shortstop Gunnar Henderson in the recent mock draft. We profiled Henderson here. The tie-in to today’s mock draft from Fangraphs is their second selection for the Pirates, who also have the 37th overall pick in the draft. They have Henderson falling to the Pirates at that spot.
The short version of all of those links and reports is that the Pirates have interest in right-handed pitcher Quinn Priester and shortstop Gunnar Henderson, and Fangraphs believes that they could end up getting both of them on Monday.
If you really like deep dives into the mock drafts, Fangraphs goes two full rounds, covering the other two picks for the Pirates on day one of the draft. They have them taking high school right-handed pitcher Jimmy Lewis from Texas with the 57th pick, and left-handed pitcher Graeme Stinson out of Duke with the 72nd overall pick. Baseball America has Lewis ranked 56th and Stinson ranked 84th. MLB Pipeline just ranked Lewis 64th and Stinson 70th in this draft class, so all three sources believe they fit well at those draft spots.
For your viewing enjoyment, here are videos of Lewis and Stinson, so you can at least get the sense of the talent level likely to land in those two spots:
Lewis – Prospect Pipeline
Stinson – Baseball America