The Pittsburgh Pirates lost 11 players in the minor league phase of the 2022 Rule 5 draft. To read up on all of the players lost, check out John Dreker’s scouting reports from after the draft.
It’s alarming to see the Pirates raided for so much talent, although some of what happened reflects the depth of the system. For this week’s Roundtable, I asked our writers which prospect they would have liked to keep around from the minor league phase. That means no Blake Sabol. I also asked for everyone’s top three guys lost, to give a better idea of the consensus losses.
For quick reference, the players lost in the minor league Rule 5 draft:
Joelvis Del Rosario, Joe Jacquez, Wilkin Ramos, Domingo Gonzalez, Austin Roberts, Jared Oliva, Trey McGough, Enmanuel Mejia, Cristian Charle, Peter Solomon, Yoyner Fajardo
Which player would you have liked to see the Pirates keep?
JOHN DREKER: Joelvis Del Rosario, RHP
Top 3 Lost: Joelvis Del Rosario, Jared Oliva, Domingo Gonzalez
Joelvis Del Rosario was a shocking name to hear in the minor league Rule 5 draft. You don’t see that type of talent, at his age, available on the minor league side for good reason. It’s the same good reason that he was the first selection overall in the draft. You have a 21-year-old, who sits mid-90s with a fastball and shows a solid changeup with good separation. He threw a low-90s sinker and a low-80s slider. It’s a strong four-pitch mix that he controls well. It also led to solid stats in Bradenton. By deciding to leave him off of the Triple-A roster, the Pirates guaranteed themselves an easy $24,000. That’s all it cost the Oakland A’s to acquire a young pitcher with potential starter upside in a draft that has zero strings attached.
If this loss was a numbers game decision, then you can just pass it off as the Pirates having a wealth of depth that led to him getting squeezed off. However, they went into the minor league Rule 5 draft with seven open roster spots. That decision led to 11 players being selected, when 3-4 is a normal number. It was actually a combo of decisions that led to this happening.
You can take a look at the Pirates current roster and see room to add Blake Sabol, Matt Gorski and Malcom Nunez without creating any losses to open up spots. By leaving those three available, it trickles down to the Triple-A roster. They then take away spots that could have easily been used for minor league players. You shouldn’t lose anyone on the minor league side with any type of upside.
A minor league Rule 5 draft should almost be an after thought, but this turned into an embarrassment. The total amount of money they got back for those players (minus the two they took) is almost worthless in baseball terms, which is why you don’t leave good players unprotected. It’s not even 1/3rd of a big league minimum salary. That’s not a good use of minor league depth. It’s the type of money you would gladly hand over for a player similar to, oh let’s say, Joelvis Del Rosario.
ETHAN HULLIHEN: Joelvis Del Rosario, RHP
Top 3 Lost: Joelvis Del Rosario, Cristian Charle, Enmanuel Mejia
As I live tweeted the minor league phase of the Rule 5 Draft from my kitchen table while eating dinner, I was most surprised by Cristian Charle (pictured above) going, so maybe I could say him. Or maybe Enmanuel Mejia, who I picked as a dark horse Rule 5 add for 2022, after his great 2021.
I’ll go with Joelvis Del Rosario though, just because he was still starting, and the other two were already relievers. I won’t get worked up about losing low level relievers though—what I really want to do is use this space to talk about the reaction this result is creating from some places.
Yes, the Pirates lost 11 players, which is a lot. It felt like every other pick was a Pirate, so much so that at one point my wife asked “are they going to have any players left”—and she knows nothing about any of this.
However, I was probably one of the only scribes locally to even consider this event before 5 o’clock yesterday, and as I looked over my article from a few weeks back, I think I at least had the right idea.
I started with quite a large list, eventually got that down to 52, meaning I had to leave out at least 14 players to whittle it down to 38. Two selected (Oliva and Solomon) came from that list, while McGough probably should have, but with his injury I truly didn’t think he’d be considered, so I left him off.
As for the other players selected, here is something I wrote as a precursor to the excluded list, with bolded text for emphasis:
Here they are, and this goes with the obvious disclaimer that any of these names could quite easily be transposed with another from above.
I think this is just a good snapshot of how deep the system goes with usable players that have qualities to like, along with the fact that only so many can be protected.
My 38 were obviously not hard and fast—the front office knows who they like more than I do, and they will have a different view of the players on the fringe than I would. So, it’s not surprising that some players I thought may get protected (Mejia, Austin Roberts, Charle, Del Rosario, Wilkin Ramos) would be seen differently by the organization and swapped out for someone else.
Not for nothing, but the team has been intentionally horrible for three years, collecting as many players as they can in an effort to have an endless horde of prospects that will someday beat down the doors at PNC Park all at the same time. The fact that other teams may have liked some of those players and took the shot to have them for free isn’t exactly surprising. What’s surprising was how the team played the roster management aspect.
It was announced before the minor league phase that they had a reserve list of 31. Presumably they started at 32, but Sabol was selected, leaving them with seven available slots. If their plan was to use those six slots—why else keep so many?—then losing a few players wouldn’t have been as big of a deal, as they would have swapped out players of generally the same caliber while using the excuse of a maxed-out list for losing more than picking.
The thing is, they selected two, made an attempt at a third, and after not realizing they couldn’t select a player on the restricted list, they ending up passing on any further selections. That left them with a reserve list of 33 and five slots that would just disappear after the draft (the minor league reserve list is not like the major league one—its main intention is for this very event). That means they just threw away five slots, either because they were woefully ill prepared or just didn’t care all that much. Either option isn’t great.
So, yeah, is it embarrassing (for lack of a better word) that a team lost 11 prospects to minor league draft? Maybe, but they likely won’t end up amounting to much, and that’s not what I want to focus on. The roster management was the embarrassing part, and the worst part of it was it didn’t have to be that way. Either protect a few more players that had a chance to be picked, or fill every spot with a player if that was the intention.
Not knowing the rules and presumably having no backup plan (when simply picking the next player on your working list would have sufficed) was by far the bigger embarrassment.
WILBUR MILLER: Cristian Charle, RHP
Top 3 Lost: Cristian Charle, Trey McGough, Wilkin Ramos
The Pirates didn’t bother to use a whole bunch of their Triple-A roster spots and, as a result, they lost a huge chunk of their mid-level pitching. Of course, everybody involved was a long shot ever to do anything in the majors, but with so many guys, the long odds aren’t quite so long. Trey McGough, who still has a lot of his Tommy John recovery to get through, is interesting as a near-the-majors lefty starter with outstanding control. Lefty submariner Joe Jacques is interesting because . . . lefty submariner. Domingo Gonzalez had a very strong finish to 2022 after moving to relief and Joelvis Del Rosario, a similar pitcher, is still only 21 and should move forward as a starter. Wilkin Ramos, long considered a projection guy, finally started to . . . project, reaching the upper-90s and mainly needing to improve his control.
But the most annoying loss is Cristian Charle. After not showing much previously, he had a strong season in relief at both class A stops and should have gone to Altoona this year. He throws in the mid-90s and has a secondary pitch that’s been described by different sources as either a change or cutter. The confusion may stem from the fact that he varies the velocity quite a bit. His command is good now and he’s usually had good K rates. If he continued to develop well, he could have been a major league option in a year and a half or so.
ANTHONY MURPHY: Domingo Gonzalez, RHP
Top 3 Lost: Domingo Gonzalez, Joelvis Del Rosario, Cristian Charle
A lot of the names listed seem like a longshot at this point to make the majors, or like in the case of Jared Oliva, struggle to stick around or make an impact. Joelvis Del Rosario was an interesting name, as he pitched well in Bradenton but didn’t do much in the strikeout department, and didn’t exactly have the most ideal frame for a pitcher.
I actually wrote an article about Domingo Gonzalez that was set to run next week, which is why he truly showed up on my radar and is one of the few that I believe could make it to the majors out of this list.
He seemed to find another gear when he made the move to the bullpen, as from June 25th through the rest of the season, he posted a 3.26 ERA as a reliever. His sinker/slider combination was a good one, and suffered from a higher than average home run/fly ball rate (not really a surprise playing in Greensboro) while getting ground balls over 50% of the time.
JEFF REED: Trey McGough, LHP
Top 3 Lost: Trey McGough, Domingo Gonzalez, Joelvis Del Rosario
The biggest loss in the minor league portion of the Rule 5 draft to me was Trey McGough.
Going into 2022, I was looking forward to how he fared in Triple-A after tossing 113.0 innings the year prior with a 3.19 ERA. That included 95.0 IP in Altoona with a 3.41 ERA. Unfortunately, his season was cut short with Indianapolis when he required Tommy John surgery.
McGough wasn’t flashy or going to blow anyone away with a fastball that sat low-90’s, but he knew how to pitch. He kept batters guessing and would work all his pitches around the zone. Need I mention the fact he is also left-handed, something the upper levels is very short of.
Had it not been for surgery, McGough had a good chance to become the Pittsburgh Pirates first 2019 draft pick to debut for them, during the 2022 season. Ironically, that accomplishment now stands to become Blake Sabol’s as part of the San Francisco Giants having been drafted in the major league portion of the Rule 5 draft.
I’m sure the Front Office assumed he was unlikely to be taken, given he was recovering from Tommy John surgery, but I’m still surprised he was left unprotected. He’ll be 25 in March, and should have returned to the mound sometime in the summer to fall. He appeared to have an advanced understanding of pitching which should have boded well in his recovery and allowed him to regain his status upon return.
TIM WILLIAMS: Joelvis Del Rosario, RHP
Top 3 Lost: Joelvis Del Rosario, Domingo Gonzalez, Jared Oliva
I was surprised that the Pirates lost Joelvis Del Rosario, simply because you don’t see 21-year-old minor league starters lost in this phase of the Rule 5 draft. Del Rosario pitched 93 innings last year in High-A Bradenton, with a 3.68 ERA, a 7.35 K/9, and a 2.42 BB/9.
As I wrote last night in P2Daily, while Del Rosario was a starter in 2022, he might not be a starter in 2023. The Pirates are currently projected to send Bubba Chandler, Anthony Solometo, Carlos Jimenez, Po-Yu Chen, and Valentin Linarez to Greensboro in 2023. That’s five starters who rate higher than Del Rosario. They also have Luis Peralta, who I would use as the sixth guy.
Del Rosario looks like he would have followed the Domingo Gonzalez path — mostly a starter in Single-A, moving to long-relief in High-A, and likely following that by fighting for a middle relief spot in Double-A. The Pirates also lost Gonzalez, and his chance of being a sleeper reliever in the majors one day is a small loss. It is a loss where the team has depth, and you can’t keep everyone.
Remember, the purpose of this draft is to prevent hoarding of talent. Del Rosario and Gonzalez are good pitchers who could both pitch in an MLB bullpen one day. Right now, they’re unlikely to get the playing time in Pittsburgh’s system to develop into that future. Jared Oliva is in the same situation, surrounded by so many younger outfielders in the upper levels of the minors.
Del Rosario would be the player I’d try to keep from a value perspective. I say that, knowing he has no place in the Greensboro rotation. There are a few ways you can solve that problem. One is by rostering him and trying to trade him or a similar pitcher during the offseason. Another would be giving one of those Greensboro guys an aggressive push to Altoona, where the pitching isn’t as deep.
All of the Rule 5 losses are small-scale losses, but it didn’t seem like the Pirates needed to lose anyone. They intended to use open spaces on minor league free agents, but this doesn’t explain why they didn’t leave themselves the contingency of protecting players in the event that they don’t sign free agents.
My guess is that they have a plan on who they want for the minor league system, and that plan isn’t going to unfold in linear fashion. Right now, it looks like they left a lot of players unprotected who would have been squeezed for playing time. My guess is the open minor league space will be used for players where they don’t have depth.
The one player they lost who didn’t come from an area of depth was Yoyner Fajardo, who is a second baseman with so much torque in his swing, and good plate patience, but was obviously never high in the development plans for this front office. Fajardo is the other side of the coin, someone who could see opportunity in Altoona, but who probably isn’t going to surpass all of the middle infield options ahead of him. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Pirates go with a veteran in Altoona, rather than a wild card like Fajardo, giving them quick access to an emergency option earlier in the year.
In a vacuum, you want to keep as many players as possible. Under the current rules, and with roster limitations, you still would probably want to retain Del Rosario and Gonzalez, and maybe a few other players. This isn’t a huge mistake, but it does raise some questions about the preparedness for this draft. Those questions will probably be answered with minor league free agent deals going forward.
