P2Daily: Pirates Go Pitcher Heavy In Day Two Of Draft

Day two of the 2022 MLB Draft wrapped on Monday with rounds 3-10. For the Pirates, it was easy to pick up a common theme with their picks: Pitching.

Of the eight selections, five (and a half?) were pitchers, two were outfielders, and one was announced as a two-way player. So, up to this point, the Pirates have made 11 picks and seven of them have been true pitchers, with another in the mix as well.

That’s not 2021 Los Angeles Angels pitching heavy, but it’s pretty close.

With one day left in the draft, I took some time to reflect on what happened on Monday.

—Michael Kennedy was the big fish they were going after on day two. It’s hard to see how things are going to fall into place when it comes to allocating their draft bonus dollars, but it’s probably safe to bet it will take a good chunk of an over slot deal to get Kennedy to come off his LSU commitment.

He’s one of the younger players in the draft, a lefty, and has already shown to be comfortable with three pitches. It won’t be a shock if he’s one of the higher bonuses in the first 10 rounds should they come to a deal.

–Looking at their haul on day two, it can seem a bit underwhelming at first. Maybe it is. There are a lot of candidates to take sizable under slot deals. Say what you will at the major league level, it’s not like the Pirates to leave money at the table during the draft, so it’s one of a couple of things in play here.

Kennedy is going to command that kind of bonus that’s really going to cut into their total pool. He won’t turn 18 until November so that’s a very good possibility. It could be that Termarr Johnson could end up with a slightly over slot deal, so it put the Pirates in penny pinching mode immediately. Thomas Harrington, the Pirates pick at 36 and draft-eligible sophomore, will probably need at least slightly more than his $2.15 million slot to sign.

It could also be the Pirates are aiming to go big on Tuesday, like they did on a smaller scale with 14th rounder Braylon Bishop last year. There are no shortage of names available should the Pirates want to swing for the fences.

–The numbers don’t really do him any favors, and almost everyone said how much this past year hurt his stock, but digging deep on Derek Diamond there’s enough there for me to be intrigued.

There isn’t a lot of video available, aside from ‘highlights’, of Diamond’s time at Ole Miss, so I ended up having to dig back to his high school days.

He’ll be a project, but there might be something there with him. It’s also very likely he will come very cheap, which would be an even bigger bonus. This will be a good test for the Pirates development team, if they can get him back on the path he was on before this past season, that’ll be a big win for them.

–I’m not sure what the plan with Jack Brannigan is going to be, but this doesn’t seem to be a willing two-way player like Bubba Chandler. MLB Pipeline seemed to indicate he’s a better pitching prospect than at the plate, but yet he seems adamant he wants to be a position player first.

His fastball was very intriguing, and he’s improved his secondary stuff apparently. It seems like the scenario you are ‘hoping’ for is that you convince him to pitch here and there, and that the hitting struggles enough you can convince him to focus on the mound? That doesn’t seem ideal however.

— Last year the prep kids didn’t pitch after being drafted and signed and depending on what happens with Kennedy I’d probably expect the same. For some of the college kids, you can see a lot of them being ideal bullpen pieces for Bradenton right out the gate, should they be in position to pitch right now.

Last year Justin Meis jumped right in and was a key piece to the Marauders bullpen right away. There’s no shortage of options to do the same this year.