How 2012 changed Pirates' draft approach

In Neal Huntington's first couple years with the Pirates, their drafts were defined by high spending and getting a balanced mix of quality high school and college players. That would not always be the case, though, and the change started to happen eight years ago. Not just in how much they could spend, but to whom they gave that money.

The 2012 Major League Baseball Draft was destined to be a game-changer for the Pirates and the rest of the league. Despite having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, the Pirates had sunk an unprecedented amount of capital into the draft in the years leading up to that year. They outspent the rest of the league each year from 2008-11, including shelling out $17 million for the 2011 class alone. That was, and still is, a big-league record amount for a draft class.

A good portion of that money went to second-round pick Josh Bell and ninth-rounder Clay Holmes, who were given $5 million and $1.2 million, respectively, to forgo college. Gerrit Cole received $8 million. They also gave a sizeable bonus to Tyler Glasnow for him to sign out of high school. In total, the Pirates ended up getting three or four first-round talents because they were willing to spend.

Other teams started to follow the Pirates' model, so MLB decided to cap spending in the draft. Each pick would have an allocated dollar value, and teams will have the total value of those picks -- plus a 5 percent overage -- to spend. Any team that spent more than that would face penalties, ranging from stiff fines to the potential loss of draft picks.

The Pirates went into the 2012 draft with the eighth overall pick and a bonus pool of about $6.6 million for the first 10 rounds. After vastly outspending the rest of the league the last four years, they were now limited to the middle of the pack. That left them with a choice: Do they try to sign another big dollar draft pick like Bell, Holmes and Cole, or do they play it safe and pick players they knew they could sign?

Enter Mark Appel.



Appel was in the midst of a very impressive junior season at Stanford in 2012, and many draft experts had the right-hander pegged to be selected first overall. He may not have been as hyped as the previous two top prospects, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper, but they were once-in-a-generation prospects. Appel was a step below them, but scouts envisioned him leading a big-league rotation someday.

The Astros had the first overall pick but surprised many when they decided to draft Carlos Correa instead, opting to choose someone who would sign under slot so they could allocate more money elsewhere. All of a sudden, Appel started to slide down the board, until the Pirates grabbed him at eighth overall.

“We don’t know why [other teams] chose players over him," Huntington said in a released team statement after the selection was made. "Different teams have different interpretations of players.”

For a moment, the Pirates were ecstatic, thinking about how Appel, Cole and Jameson Taillon could lead their rotation someday. That moment ended up being just that: A moment. It's customary for first-round draft picks to do an interview with local media after being selected. Appel declined, issuing this statement instead:

"I'm currently concentrating on winning a national championship and finishing my academic endeavors at Stanford. I will address the possibility of a professional career in due time."

Uh-oh.

Appel fell on draft day because teams didn't know if they could sign him. Shortly after he was selected, news came out that the Astros did in fact want to draft Appel, and offered him a deal of about $6 million. He turned it down.

Uh-oh, times two.

The eighth overall pick carried a slot value of $2.9 million that year. The Pirates had just $6.6 million to spend on their top 10 picks. The Pirates had virtually no chance of even matching the Astros' offer.

Oh, and Appel's agent was Scott Boras.

Uh-oh, times three.

Huntington and the draft team knew they had to throw as much money at Appel as possible if they were going to have any shot of signing him, so they drafted very differently that year than in the past. Instead of looking for high upside prep school players and college juniors in the first 10 rounds, they instead took college seniors who they knew they could sign for far below their slot values.

They selected seniors Jacob Stallings, D.J. Crumlich and Pat Ludwig with their seventh-, ninth- and 10th-round picks. Those picks had a slot value of about $400,000 all together. They signed for a combined $20,000, with Stallings getting $10,000. Obviously, Stallings ended up being a terrific value pick, but that is mostly because he has worked to become one of the better pitch-framers and defenders in baseball. Before 2019, he was an organizational player who only made MLB cameos in September or when another catcher was hurt. Crumlich and Ludwig were out of baseball by 2014.

The Pirates did not go overslot for any of their top 10 picks, trying to save as much as they could to give to Appel. In the end, they offered him a reported $3.8 million, which was turned down. The team gambled their top 10 rounds in order to try to sign arguably the best pitcher in the draft, and failed.

With the way the bonus pool is set up, that $2.9 million and the additional 5 percent then became unusable for the Pirates, so they couldn't even pass it on to the lower rounds. They did have some money saved from all those high-round value picks, though, that went to some day three selections. They ended up investing heavily in infielder Max Moroff and right-handers Hayden Hurst and John Kuchno, their 16th-, 17th- and 18th-round picks. Moroff reached the majors, but hasn't been anything special. The pitchers never did much in the farm system. And just to add a little salt to the wound, the Pirates were not able to sign their 14th-round pick: Walker Buehler, who is now one of the best young pitchers in the game.

Appel ended up being drafted first overall by the Astros in 2013 and signed for $6.35 million, even more than they'd offered him the year before, so his gamble was worth it from a financial standpoint. The irony in all this is Appel ended up not really being worth the fuss. He reached Class AAA within the Astros' and Phillies' systems but was never able to crack the majors. The Pirates were given a compensation pick the next year to make up for not signing Appel, which they used on Austin Meadows.

But the Pirates never took a big gamble with their first pick again. They still drafted quality players like Meadows, Kevin Newman and Ke'Bryan Hayes, but they knew they could sign them for about the slot bonus value, if not a little less.

They also stopped drafting college pitchers in the early rounds. In Huntington's first five drafts, the Pirates selected a collegiate pitcher with one of their first two picks four times. Tanner Scheppers and Vic Black were second-rounders in 2008 and 2009, and Cole and Appel went in the first round in 2011 and 2012. After 2012, the Pirates never selected a college pitcher in the first three rounds again. They didn't shy away from college hitters, like Newman, Will Craig and Travis Swaggerty, and they invested heavily in high school pitchers, like Shane Baz, Mitch Keller and Quinn Preister. But they avoided collegiate pitchers.

The Pirates would draft college arms starting around round four, but almost always for their slot value or less. Here is the first NCAA pitcher the Pirates selected in every draft after Appel, their round and how much they signed for compared to their slot bonus:



From 2013-17, they gave only one college pitcher an over-slot signing bonus: James Marvel, a 36th-round pick in 2015. They eventually eased up on this strategy, signing Colin Shelby and Will Kobos to $125,000 each despite being 16th and 19th round picks in 2018, and last year, fourth and fifth round picks J. C. Flowers and Grant Ford got more money than projected. But for a long time, the strategy was clear: They wanted to spend their high picks on high school pitchers so they can have control of their development as teenagers, and college pitchers were selected to save money to give other high schoolers in the later rounds.

The Pirates found success in Huntington's first couple drafts by throwing money around. The new draft rules curbed their spending, but they wanted to keep a flow of high upside high schoolers coming through. They needed to find a way to save money, and they chose to cut it from college pitching.

Some of those high schoolers turned out to be good picks, like Keller, and they even found a couple future big-leaguers with those mid-round college picks, like Chad Kuhl. But on the whole, they have not been able to produce enough high quality pitching prospects to compete with other teams. Part of the reason could have been player evaluation and scouting. Another part could have been player development. And another could have been draft strategy.