Morning Rundown: Pirates favorite to sign international prospect, Fall-Star rosters announced
Three Pirates to play in AFL All-Star game
As reported on Friday by John Dreker, the Pittsburgh Pirates are now front runners to sign amateur international outfield prospect Limanol Payero Perez.
Perez had originally been linked to the New York Mets, but it looks like he will sign with the Pirates once the international signing period opens up on January 15, 2025.
This is an interesting development because the Pirates recently underwent a change in their Director of International Scouting, moving on from Junior Vizaino to Max Kwan.
The Arizona Fall League is starting to wind down, and Saturday will be the annual Fall-Stars game.
Geovanny Planchart, Sammy Siani, and Derek Diamond will participate for the Pirates.
In a league where the offense is carrying, the Pirates pitchers are all having success as of late, but Diamond has been the most consistent among the bunch.
Siani has been among the best hitters in the fall league, and while Planchart hasn’t played much, he’s impacted the ball when he has.
The game will start at 8:00 pm ET and will be broadcast on MLB Network.
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I'm a little concerned that we still haven't hired a hitting coach, not because we need a hitting coach at this point but what it says about our FO's efficiency. They had to know by midseason that Haines was going to be fired so they've had months to work through potential candidates. Of course the only way this matters is if it's keeping Ben from tending to other matters.
Indications of a change in strategy in the pursuit of International Free Agents? The Pirates have always had the numbers strategy whereby they would spend money on the second 50 or 100 best prospects hoping that strategy would result in getting a few sleepers cheap - think Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco, Luis Ortiz. This could be a major change in how we will approach this market in the future.
Along with spending big on IFA's, spend some money and buy some top level hitting instructors to create a positive influence on these young players. Nice article in BA recently about the system in place within the Red Sox Org, and the positive results so far. The Pirates have a solid group of young hitters in the lower levels - let's make sure we have that same quality of development all the way through the system so there is not a dropoff before they hit MLB.