Last month, the Pittsburgh Pirates made a needed change, firing Junior Vizcaino, their Director of International Scouting. The move was reported by Francys Romero, who has an update on the situation. Romero reported on Saturday that the Pirates have hired Max Kwan as their new Director of International Scouting.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Kwan had previously been a scout in the Pirates’ system. He joined the Pirates in 2014 as an area scout on the US amateur side, before being promoted to the draft’s Northwest supervisor in 2018. He also became the assistant director of international scouting in 2018.
Kwan remained on the international side through the 2020 season. He played a role in the scouting of the Pacific Rim, which has been one of the most successful international areas for the Pirates. The 2019 signing class was a big one, with Tsung-Che Cheng and Po-Yu Chen signed out of Taiwan, along with Solomon Maguire and Brandan Bidois signed out of Australia. Those four players resulted in around $2 million in bonuses that year.
After the 2020 season, Kwan was moved to become the Assistant Director of Player Personnel. He was moved up to the Director of Player Personnel role in 2023, before leaving the past offseason to join the Boras Corporation.
The Pirates replace Vizcaino with someone who is familiar with their organization, and especially with their international scouting approach. Kwan has shown promise in the past with his scouting abilities, but he’s also held roles that are more about organizing and managing a large department and process of the minor league organization. He’ll be doing more of the latter in his new position.
What the Pirates need from Kwan is to oversee an improvement to their Latin American scouting and signing. They have been producing prospects from Asia, but the amount of Pirates prospects making the Majors from Latin America under seven years of Vizcaino was Luis Ortiz. There have been very few Latin American players who have made it to Double-A or higher.
The promising thing about this move is that Kwan worked within the area of international scouting that had the most success under Vizcaino. That leaves hope that he can replicate the success from the Pacific Rim in other areas of the international scouting and signing process.
