As a Pittsburgh Pirates fan myself, the last thing I want to do is throw a wet towel on a great week.
With the signings of Jameson Taillon, Stetson Allie, and Luis Heredia, the Pirates have added three power arms.
They signed the best American high school arm, arguably the second best American arm, and the top international arm of 2010.
For a team like the Pirates, this is a major step in the right direction. Every year they get slammed for not spending money at any level.
You cannot make that statement this year, as they have spent what appears to be $12 million on the draft. They then dropped another $2.6 million on Heredia.
You’re looking at almost $15 million being dropped on players this week. This is what the Pirates need to be doing, and finally this year they have done it.
With Taillon and Allie you immediately put two pitchers in the system that can reach 100 miles per hour on the radar gun. Heredia is younger at 16 but already reaches 94 miles per hour.
Taillon and Heredia are destined to be starting pitchers for the Pirates, and Allie could be too. If he doesn’t carve out a niche as a starter, he will be the closer of the future.
If you look past the first two picks, the Pirates did a great job of getting players signed. They signed six of the top 10 draft picks and 27 of the 50 overall players.
It would have been nice to see more of the top 10 signed, but it is what it is. You add in the signing of Heredia, and the loss of four top-10 draft picks isn’t as bad.
With these three young stud pitchers (and 14 more pitchers), this is the kind of draft that I truly believe changes the Pirates franchise.
They have the young position players in place at the major league level and now have the pitchers that can make a rotation. They may be three or four years off, but the cavalry is on its way finally.
This is the third good draft in a row for the Pirates, but this is the one we will look back on and say, “That is when everything changed for the Pittsburgh Pirates.”
The biggest testament of this draft may not even be the players. Some of these guys won’t pan out, and some of them will.
The lasting effect of this draft may be the money spent on it. Taillon got $6.5 million, Allie got $2.25 million, and fourth rounder Nick Kingham got double his slot money at $480,000.
That list could go on for a lot more players. The Pirates drafted the people they wanted and then made sure they got them on the club.
Now all this is great and dandy but let’s get honest with ourselves here.
The Pirates are going to have their 19th straight losing season. This is something that needs to be repeated every year.
We should be 19 years in and finally get our first big international signing. Yes, this is the third good draft in a row, but we have missed some important signings in that time period.
We, the fans, should be downright giddy because of what has happened this week. We should also remember that the Pirates have been bad for a long time, and this should just be the start of something great.
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