With their 20th round pick in the 2022 MLB draft, the Pittsburgh Pirates selected right-handed pitcher Joshua Loeschorn out of Long Island University.
Loeschorn is the final pick in the 2022 draft. He’s 22 years old and stands 6’3″, 215 pounds. He had a successful four-year career in college, combining for a 2.28 ERA, a 1.04 WHIP and 226 strikeouts in 225 innings. This season he had a 3.06 ERA, a 1.20 WHIP and a 104:29 SO/BB ratio in 97 innings for LIU. Since graduating, he has been playing independent ball in the Frontier League, where he has a 6.49 ERA, 18 strikeouts and a 1.56 WHIP in 26.1 innings over five starts. He throws about 88-92 MPH, along with a slider and changeup.
+ postsJohn started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball.
When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.
I would be more positive if the Pirates had a proven development record. Who is going to develop all these pitchers?
The Rays.
Presumably after they’re traded…
One other thing I kept thinking when they took all of these arms, is that I think this is really a function of having less minor league teams. A lot of their international and FCL prospects are position players, and are going to need innings. It is much easier to develop pitchers, or at least get them work, behind the scenes and in instructs, but position players need real AB’s, and there likely isn’t a ton of playing time to go around in the lower minors next year
I think that this is a really great point
Have we had any college senior become a real prospect in the last 5 years? I don’t know the answer but it seems like you can write those guys off from the jump, which feels like 2/3 of this draft out the window. I still love Termarr though, and think we got a few interesting guys, love getting so many left handers. Definitely underwhelming compared to last year, maybe that ruined all of our draft expectations.
Stallings was pretty good
Andres Alvarez (AA)
Aaron Shackelford (AA)
Jason Delay (AAA/MLB)
Thanks James for doing the digging. Stallings is the gold standard it appears. So you’re saying there’s a chance…
Plus COVID has really changed everything.
especially the pharmaceutical’s Financial Statements
When the time of the draft comes one becomes excited to see how the team they root for will markedly improve with the players the team chooses. This draft is not one for a fan to get excited over. Sure they drafted TJ and I hope he becomes a superstar but after that pick, they almost exclusively took pitchers that were not rated highly by draft publications. Now I admit I don’t know one player from another but I can see what the alleged experts think of the players that were selected and there were no rave reviews about the numerous pitchers that were taken. Is the Pirates minor league pitching as bad as this draft seems to infer? Were there no hitters in this draft that could have been drafted? For me this draft was disgraceful. I hope, I am wrong and all these pitchers bring a championship to the Pirates. But I doubt it. Ha, ha!
What a disappointing second and third day…I have to assume many of the undrafted HS players told the Pirates to not waste their picks on them…they were never going to sign with the Pirates. Beyond the top 2 picks, this draft may have been the worst on paper in recent memory.
While it is fair to say the Pirates are perennially bad with low budgets etc…, it is not fair to say they do not go all out in the drafts. You can go all the way back to 2011 draft and Bell (could be argued that the Pirates broke the draft that year and MLB had to change the draft rules. The Pirates generally draft well, it is the developmental side that has been questionable. It appears that this year way more than not, the HS players stood firm and are going to college. They didn’t just say that to the Pirates when they called, it happened to every team.
Or I guess any of the other 29 teams, since no one else picked a lot of them either.
None of those teams have been as consistently bad as the Pirates. The Pirates should be exhausting all avenues to acquire talent in the draft.
You mean like they did last year? That was such a different position than this year. Was no consensus no. 1 last year. Gave them the ability to take Davis at a discount, and not worry that they passed on a better player. If they did that this year, and passed on Johnson, while having a smaller pool, they’d have looked like fools. I think last year’s haul has skewed perception of what a normal draft looks like.
Using FG rankings, all of the top HS players got drafted. Few lower-ranked HS players did. Someone will explain this eventually.
NIL -> go to college and make more $$$ immediately
Every HS player has to make a calculation based on where he’s going to be drafted as to whether to take the money that’s available now or go to college, hopefully improve their ranking and re-enter the draft in 2-3 years.
Top high schoolers aren’t turning down $4-8M in today money – they would assume all the risk of injury or having their weaknesses exposed at a higher level. Everybody else is weighing the money on the table now – which starts to flatten out at $1M – $2M after the first round – vs. what they could get in a couple of years once they fill out and develop against top college competition. Some guys will take the $1-2M, some will command a little over slot and sign for $2-$3M like Bubba did, but a lot of them will go to college and come back for what they expect to be a substantially bigger payday in a couple years.
Sacrificing your highest probability selections in order to overpay far lesser talent with much higher risk is the kind of thing that should require explanation for doing, not for avoiding.
Finally conventional wisdom prevails here.
Right, literally the only time it makes sense, is if you can get a somewhat comparable talent (some had Davis as a #1 overall pick) and still get a Chandler, Solomento, AND White.
This year, you’d have passed on Johnson, and likely grabbed a Neto for substantial savings, and then maybe you end up with Porter? And if not Porter, then you end up with a few guys in the back half of the top 100? Very rarely do the stars align like last season, and 99 times out of 100, you are better off taking the potential superstar, and not passing on him.
Plus, I like Harrington better than most. Good control and secondary stuff, already 92-93, but a slight frame. If he can add a little velocity, that’s a mid rotation starter potential, to go along with Johnson, plus maybe get a reliever or two our of all of the arms, and I will take that draft all day long
Smart guy–3.91 GPA majoring in computer science. I don’t think he’ll have any trouble making sense of the analytics that the coaches share with him.
I like this guy as he appears to have been a true student-athlete.
From LIU’s website:
We’re prioritizing wins!
And ugh:
and that’s a wrap
Now comes the slow and annoying part – waiting to see who goes over slot who goes under and who doesn’t sign
I don’t see too many over slot guys…maybe 2 or 3 at the most?
I expect almost everyone to sign, the one I am most unsure of is Tejeda. This was such a weird draft that I find it difficult to anticipate who will sign for over slot and for how much.