Pirates May Struggle to Sign High-Profile Draft Picks

The Pittsburgh Pirates signed third-round pick Jordy Mercer and fourth-round pick Chase D’Arnaud Tuesday, bringing the number of Pirate draft picks signed to 24 already. This number puts the Pirates on pace to far exceed management’s expectations. President Frank Coonelly and general manager Neal Huntington had previously stated that the team was likely to sign less than 25 players.

Now, it seems as if the number will be well over 30. On the surface, this seems like a very good thing—a team in desperate need of young talent and minor league depth is adding even more young players. It’s just what the doctor ordered. Or is it? 

Here’s the problem: The Pirates have financial issues. It’s not a big secret. Those financial issues have often prevented them from signing players they wanted to sign, even from re-signing their own players. Those financial issues have also prevented the Pirates from drafting certain players—see last year’s selection of Danny Moskos over the much higher-rated Matt Wieters. 

So, when management announced that the team was going to sign less draft picks, the assumption was that the Pirates were conserving money to make sure they could sign their better picks. No. 2 overall pick Pedro Alvarez and second-round selection Tanner Scheppers both are going to demand money well above slot.

Alvarez is essentially a must-sign for the Buccos, and if Scheppers’ arm injury is shown to be minor, the Pirates will want to capitalize on what would have to be considered a steal. And it’s not just the top two, either: The Pirates selected multiple players in the late rounds who fell due to bonus demands.

Sixth-round pick Robert Grossman, 20th-round selection Quinton Miller, and 26th-round pick Zachary Wilson were all named in Baseball America’s list of the nation’s top 200 prospects. It was always unlikely that the Pirates were going to sign all of these players.

Since the team spent a relatively high pick on Grossman, there is a good chance the two sides could come to an agreement. The media reaction to the Wilson and Miller picks was that the two players were, in essence, a “Plan B” if the Pirates failed to sign either Alvarez or Scheppers.

So how is this all going to play out? Again, I would be shocked if the Pirates did not end up signing Alvarez, even though I would also be shocked if he signed more than a day before the deadline, given that he is a Scott Boras client. The team simply cannot afford the public relations nightmare, never mind the actual baseball ramifications.

Without Alvarez, this draft, the first under new management and the start of the Pirates’ future, has no face. Simply put, losing Alvarez would be devastating, and Pittsburgh fans would once again not trust management. Scheppers, on the other hand, is not at all a sure thing.

He reportedly wants top-10 money, and if the Pirates have any doubts about his health, he’s not going to get it. The way the Pirates are rapidly signing players has to make you wonder what they know about Scheppers.

If the team chose not to sign him, whether he were injured or not, they could likely afford—and would make a hard push for—Miller, Wilson, and 10th-round pick Andrew Gagnon as his replacements while still signing over 30 players. If the Bucs sign Scheppers, however, it’s hard to imagine there being much left over for any of those three. 

But if there’s one thing we really know about the process of signing draft picks, it’s that we have no idea about anything. Once slot money is thrown at the window, as it is in the case of all these players, the entire summer becomes one long negotiation. Which means everything is about leverage.

It’s like the Miranda Rights of baseball—the Pirates know that everything they say can and will be used against them, particularly by Scott Boras. So, everyone is kept clueless. Nobody knows why anything is happening. If the Pirates had already decided they weren’t going to sign Scheppers because of his injury, they wouldn’t tell us.

If they had decided they could afford Alvarez and Scheppers because they weren’t going to sign Grossman or any of the late picks such as Gagnon and Wilson, they wouldn’t tell us. If they had more money to spend on draft picks than they were letting on, they certainly wouldn’t tell us. 

Instead, it’s in their interest to make Boras and Alvarez think that whatever they are offering him is the best they can do. For now, all our questions remain unanswered. We can only hope that the Pirates finally have a management team that knows what it’s doing.