Pittsburgh Pirates Show Different Draft Philosophy Under New GM Ben Cherington

Ben Cherington insisted he did not have a grand plan going into his first amateur draft as general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

However, five of the Pirates’ six picks in this past week’s truncated draft were right-handed pitchers, four from the collegiate level. And that represented a definite departure from former GM Neal Huntington’s approach.

Under Huntington, the Pirates usually avoided college pitchers in the early rounds. The thought was that many of those pitchers had lower ceilings than their high school counterparts and had been overworked by their college coaches.

Cherington said it was just a matter of taking the best player available when it was the Pirates’ turn to pick.

“That was it, simple as that,” Cherington said. “We didn’t go into looking for any particular position. Those were the best guys there. The first four guys we took ranked really highly on our board, including the three pitchers, then the last couple pitchers were interesting guys with really good stuff, a combination of stuff and swing-and-miss ability.

“That’s the way it played out. As we got into each round, it just happened to be that as we got closer the top guy left on the board in those rounds was a right-handed pitcher. We weren’t thinking about anything other than taking the best player available with our pick.”

The Pirates used their first-round pick, seventh overall, to select New Mexico State shortstop Nicky Gonzales.

Then it was a parade of pitchers starting with the University of South Carolina’s Carmen Mlodzinski at No. 31 in the competitive balance round.

Then came Jared Jones from LaMiranda (Calif.) High School, Chapman University’s Nick Garcia, Appalachian State’s Jack Hartman and Northwestern State
NWE
’s Logan Hofmann.

Interestingly, the common thread among all five pitchers is they were originally position players before converting to the mound.

Thus, they should seemingly have less mileage on their arms than the typical amateur pitcher and carry over athleticism from their time playing in the field.

“With former position players, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be a fresh arm and a good pitcher,” Pirates amateur scouting director Joe DelliCarri said. “I think you want to see them for a little bit. It’s just not an automatic. You see some of that aptitude and athleticism show through.”

Cherington again reiterated that drafting pitchers with such similar stories was happenstance.

“Not a particular demographic we were pursuing, the position-player-to-pitcher demographic, but it just ended up being the best player on the board when we came around to our picks were pitchers,” Cherington said.