Morning Rundown: Pitchers and catchers report date, International signing period begins, Baseball America article
Pitchers and catchers report in less than a month, the 2025 International signing period begins today
The date for pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training for all 30 teams was released on Tuesday. The Pirates will have their pitchers and catchers report on February 12, with their first full-squad workout that following Monday the 17th.
10 teams from the Grapefruit League will report on the same day, with Tampa Bay the day before and the other four teams on the 13th.
That leaves us less than a month away from baseball being back. The Pirates will open their Spring Training schedule on February 22 against the Baltimore Orioles.
The International signing period begins today for all teams. There’s been a couple of names that have already been linked to the Pirates, and starting today they can make them all official.
John Dreker sent this write-up over, giving a quick preview of the Pirates signing class. We will have more details on the class as more information becomes available.
From John Dreker:
The Pittsburgh Pirates have agreements in place with 25 players at the start of the 2025 international signing period, which runs from January 15th until December 15th. These players will take up a very large portion of their $6,908,600 bonus pool, but the Pirates will have the ability to trade for more space if players come along during the rest of the signing period. Some of the signings might not be completed today, but all 25 players are expected to sign soon.
The players signing today represent six different countries, with the majority hailing from the Dominican Republic (14) and Venezuela (six). The Pirates will also be signing one player each from South Korea, Cuba, Australia and Uganda. This will be the second player from Uganda in the system, following the signing of flame-throwing pitcher David Matoma, who has already put together a strong resume during his lower-level minor league time.
Right-handed pitchers make up 40% (ten) of the players signing. There will also be five middle infielders, five outfielders, two left-handed pitchers, two catchers and one third baseman. With previously announced highly ranked players Johan De Los Santos and Darell Morel taking up nearly $4M of the international bonus pool, the remaining 23 players will fit into the rest of the bonus pool budget. That includes Venezuelan outfielder Gabriel Rodriguez, who the Pirates are very high on at this point due to the progress he has made over the last year.
The Pirates also flipped outfielder Limanol Payero somewhat recently, after he had been linked for quite a while to the New York Mets.
Nearly half of the players signing were previously eligible to sign before today, though it's important to remember that teams have been successful recently having players wait to sign until the next signing period starts, when their bonus pool resets. Of course they aren't always successful with that process, which is how the Pirates wound up with Morel just five days before the signing period started. The Los Angeles Dodgers have been hoping to convince players to sign next year so they can put their bonus pool towards Roki Sasaki, but that's harder to do with players who rank higher among prospects. The rest are players who showed more over the last year than before.
As you would expect with January 15th signings, there are no roster fillers in the group. Each player has a standout tool that gives them enough possible future upside to make the majors someday. I should have reports on the players completed soon. Very few international players from each signing class actually do make that jump, with teams averaging no more than 1-2 signings each year making it to the majors for even one game, so expectations should be tempered somewhat. That being said, you usually don't get three high upside players like De Los Santos, Morel and Rodriguez at the top of your class during the bonus pool era.
MLB Network continued their ‘Top 10 Right Now’ series, going position by position on who the best players in the game are by position. Last night, they did starting pitchers, with Paul Skenes coming in fourth, according to the ‘Shredder.’
Zack Wheeler, Tarik Skubal, and Chris Sale finished ahead of Skenes. Two were Cy Young award winners, and the other was a finalist last year.
This is the link to the video where MLB Network talks about Skenes.
Baseball Prospectus released their Top 101 prospects for the 2025 season, and three Pirates were listed.
Bubba Chandler was ranked 21st, the fifth-best pitcher overall. Thomas Harrington was ranked 81st, 25th among pitchers.
The only hitter was Konnor Griffin, the Pirates’ first-round pick from 2024. He was listed as an outfielder and ranked 86th overall.
You can look at the list here.
My latest article for Baseball America was released, featuring right-handed pitcher Levi Sterling. I talked to Justin Horowitz, the Director of Amateur Scouting for the Pirates, about Sterling, who had plenty of good things to say about him.
Most noteworthy is his change-up and natural ability to throw strikes. Read my report here on Baseball America.
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Pitchers Adrian Florencio and Johan Montero were released today. Neither pitched during the last two seasons. Florencio was a solid prospect at one point, but clearly two full years out of baseball doesn't help
If you see a name being announced, feel free to mention it here. I mentioned all of the ones it was safe to announce except Cuban pitcher Yoslaniel Hernandez, who Anthony wrote about a few days ago after his signing was leaked by a Cuban reporter.
When I got the list of players signing about ten days ago, I was told that 2-3 players were still waiting for MLB identification/drug tests results. I was also told that players might not being signing on the 15th, which I took as the Pirates are at a ceremony right now at the Dominican Republic about to sign players, so they can't be at ceremonies in other countries. As an example, Shim signed a few days later because the Pirates wanted to be there in his home country for the signing. Those "might not be signing today" players could also just be the guy waiting on test results.
That's why I didn't put the names out there yet. There could be up to five players not signing today OR all 25 could be announced. I don't know that part. It will all be announced as soon as I'm given the okay or if the Pirates just mass announce them like they did the last time I got the names ahead of time.