Cash Is King: Pittsburgh Pirates Don’t Blink, Don’t Sign Mark Appel

The 2013 Major League Baseball draft just got really interesting for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates will now get the ninth overall pick in 2013.   If you can vanquish the dreams of Mark Appel in the system from your mind, the team will have some serious cash to move around and could exploit a weakness in the CBA during the 2013 MLB Draft.

We think this is very important because of the number of talented players in the top portion of the 2013 draft.

The Houston Astros were spurned by Mark Appel and it inspired the team.   In fact, one could argue that the Astros exploited Bud’s new system this year with the moves they were able to make.

The new draft system favors teams with a large pile of allocated cash in their draft pool.   The Pirates are going to have that in 2013 and it could just get bigger.

Just think about this for a moment, the Bucs now get the ninth overall pick in 2013. The team will also get their normal first round pick based on how the season turns out for the ballclub–the last pick if you think the Bucs will be the World Champs.

More picks means more cash to use to sign those picks.   It could get a lot better, too. Just imagine if the Pirates were to be a winner in the new Poor Ballclub Lottery and get another pick perhaps somewhere in the 30’s?

Adding those three picks up, should all of the stars align, will give the Buccos a 2013 draft pool somewhere in the neighborhood of the six million dollar range.

That’s a lot of cheese.

Thinking that players like Kris Bryant from San Diego, lefty Carlos Rodon from NC State, Ryan Eades of LSU, Chris Rivera the slick shortstop from El Dorado, HS, or Austin Wilson of (gulp) Stanford could be in the system is really exciting.

Sure not getting Mark Appel hurts.  No question.  But this should turn out ok.

The Pirates should be coming off their first winning season since most of us can remember and the amateur draft could be a bonanza for the Bucs too.  It’s just another reason to look forward to 2013.