Pittsburgh Pirates Aggressive Push In The International Market Yielding Results

The Pirates have made a heavy push in stockpiling young, hitting international players, which have started to yield results in the lower levels.

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Even more so after drafting Paul Skenes, pointing out the strength of the Pirates farm system is quite easy, pitching. It will become even more clear as the likes of Henry Davis, Endy Rodriguez and Nick Gonzales all start to lose their prospect status.

If there is one thing that you can say the front office have really nailed down is their ability to turn prep pitchers into potential top end prospects.

In each draft class they they’ve invested added money in signing prep pitching, and have seen two reach Top 100 status (Anthony Solometo and Jared Jones), with another certainly possessing the talent (Bubba Chandler). They have an 18-year-old lefty pitching well in the Complex League as well this season.

There is another vocal point the front office is trying to drive home, one that hasn’t seen the same kind of success as on the pitching side of things, but certainly is holding a lot of promise currently.

Ben Cherington has increasingly become aggressive in the International amateur market, especially when it comes to position players, and digging into the lower levels of the system, you can see the crowd starting to get bigger.

Recent Push Into Top End Market

Over the last three signing periods, the Pirates have been able to pull in four of MLB Pipeline’s Top 30, five if you count the pitching side of things and Jun-Seok Shim.

When it comes to position players, since 2021 they have signed Shalin Polanco (10th), Tony Blanco Jr (11th), Yordany De Los Santos (12th), and Raymond Mola (26th). They’ve also continually added from this list through trades (Jhonny Severino was the 21st ranked prospect in 2022), and have opened the door to signing more (the Austin Hedges trade).