Morning Rundown: Baseball America redrafts 2019, Rookie of the year predictions
Baseball America relooks at the 2019 draft plus a look at potential ROY candidates
The MLB draft is different from other professional sports, as sometimes it takes five or more years to get an idea if you’ve hit on a pick.
Baseball America took a nab at the 2019 draft on its fifth anniversary next year. Based on players' success so far, they redrafted the first round.
First overall remained the same, having the Baltimore Orioles take Adley Rutschman, who has been a big part of their team’s turnaround. Bobby Witt Jr. also kept his spot, going second overall to the Kansas City Royals.
The following two picks were the reigning Rookie of the Year in each respective league, Corbin Carroll and Gunnar Henderson.
For the Pirates, who picked 18th overall, they had them taking a pitcher - just not the one they initially selected. Instead, they had them taking Hunter Brown with their pick.
Brown, 24, pitched his first entire season in the majors, and while the ERA wasn’t the best (5.09), he won 11 games and posted a 1.8 WAR and 3.52 xFIP. His extreme 21.8% HR/FB% (league average usually around 10%) didn’t do his ERA any favors.
As for the Pirates actual pick from the draft, Quinn Priester, they had him falling to 31 with the Los Angeles Dodgers, noting his upside as a back-end starter.
Baseball America also mentions Jared Triolo as a player they considered as well at the end of the article.
Being the first overall pick comes with its own set of expectations. Being labeled one of the best pitching prospects in recent history will add even more.
The hype for Paul Skenes continues to grow, as he was Jim Callis’ pick for Rookie of the Year in their ‘Pipeline Prospect Predictions for 2024’ article.
They also had picks for Hitter and Pitcher of the Year, who will be the top prospect at the end of 2024 and the first overall pick, among others.
Every Monday during the offseason, we will be doing a mailbag article. Please send in your questions to have them answered! Either comment below with ‘mailbag’ entered in the message or email us at bucsondeckqa@gmail.com.
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Pirates will wait until safely after S2 to bring up Skenes, to ensure the extra year of service (WTM already said this in another thread) as cheap as possible. I can just see Skenes coming up and dominating for the remainder of the season and finishing in the top 3 for ROY and gaining the PPI bonus and getting a full year's service time. So by being cheap and manipulating his service time they could lose a year of control and by his performance could set him up for record amount arbitration raises. All without getting the extra PPI pick.
The Skenes pick doesn't take into consideration the innings he could pitch. Last year, he threw a combined 130 innings in college/MILB. At most he should pitch this year is 150-155 innings. If he starts the season in the rotation he would get 30-32 starts in the majors. That's about 5 innings a start. I don't think it is realistic that anyone will average 5 innings a start and be in the rotation throughout the year. He's going to need to start the season in the minors and have his innings managed--starting with a couple of innings and then moving up to 5 before being recalled. At that point, he could have 30 innings pitched. He will likely pitch ~120 innings at the major league level. He will need to amaze for 120 innings to beat anything that approaches Corbin Carroll type season.