David Bednar pitched a scoreless ninth inning for the NL All Star squad — in what only feels ironic — on the losing side.
Returning to the draft, in total the Pittsburgh Pirates made 21 picks in the 2022 MLB Draft.
- Five position players – One prep 2B/SS, two college OF’s, a college 1B, and a college catcher.
- One Two-way player – College 3B & pitcher (possibly two if they let prep Yoel Tejada play 1B and/or bat)
- Fifteen pitchers – Two prep pitchers and thirteen college pitchers.
In my opinion, I can’t see them having much trouble signing all 21 picks. I was hoping for at least one more high upside prep pick on day three, which would have lead to some discussion of whether they’ll all sign, but as of now I believe they picked all players that should mostly be expected to sign.
As I mentioned in the previous Discussion article, if obtaining LHP was on your personal “Want List”, they drafted six in total.
Aside from signability, it appeared they were also trying to draft pitchers with some size to them.
Overall, I can’t say that I’m enthralled with the Pirates 2022 draft haul, but I do believe they got it right with their first selection in Termarr Johnson. Everything after is mostly window dressing.
Thomas Harrington, Michael Kennedy, Yoel Tejada, and Dominic Perachi are picks that I’m initially most excited to see their careers kick off (assuming all sign). After that, Jack Brannigan, Miguel Fulgencio, and Julian Bosnic are pitchers — with Brannigan announced as a two-way player — I think will be an intriguing follow.
I’m leaving Hunter Barco out at the moment, just because it’ll likely be quite some time before we’ll get to see him take the mound, and see where he’s at post Tommy John surgery. He had his surgery on May 4th of this year. Given a typical 12-15 month recovery, that puts him at some time around mid next season before returning to the mound.
Links
**You can find the 2022 Draft Tracker here along with individual articles and player pages on each pick.
**Here is Tim Williams from Tuesday analyzing What it Takes to Go From the draft to Pittsburgh.
**If you missed it, Anthony Murphy wrote an article discussing 2021 Draft Pick Bubba Chandler and his overpowering fastball.
