Looking Ahead At 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates Draft; Looking Back On Mark ‘Can Wait On That’ Appel

The 2013 Major League Baseball draft is going to be very interesting for the Pittsburgh Pirates.   The Bucs have one of the better systems in Major League Baseball and in a few months are going to drop two of the fourteen more talented players in the country into that system.

So if you can vanquish the dreams of Mark Appel in the Bucs system from your mind, which isn’t hard for me, the team will have some serious cash to move around and could exploit a weakness in the CBA during the 2013 MLB Draft.

Mark Appel had some pretty interesting comments in a recent article that you can check out here.

We especially liked this one:

"“There’s not enough that can be said about the relationships you create with your teammates,” Appel said. “A lot of my friends that signed last year have come back and said, `Coach was right. This is the last time until you get to the majors where your teammates are pulling for you.’ In the minors, everyone’s so cutthroat, trying to get a leg up on everybody else. Even your own teammates are rooting against you, hoping that you don’t perform so you can move up to the next level. I can wait on that.”"

Once again, Houston has the top pick, but the love ’em or leave ’em Pittsburgh Pirates have two of the the first 14 picks including the ninth overall selection.

The Bucs earned the number nine pick for failing to sign Appel. It will be interesting to see where Appel will be selected in the 2013 draft.  (Through the Fence has him going fifth to the Tribe)

As always, we’re going to keep a close eye on this 2013 draft and various mocks have the Bucs taking pitchers, third baseman, all sorts of players.  Heh, it’s still early but we couldn’t help getting pumped about the thought of injecting two of the better players into a system already ranked in the top ten by most draft beatniks.

With the 9th pick, Through the Fence has the Pirates taking Jonathon Crawford, right handed pitcher out of Florida.

The 6’1″ Crawford threw a no-no in the NCAA Regional game against Bethune-Cookman last year. He has a plus slider and a low 90s heater.

and because we’re a sucker for videos like this one…

because these ones are always rather boring…

With the 14th pick, Through the Fence stood pat on Colin Moran who is a third basemen/first basemen out of The University of North Carolina. (You might recall the Bucs selected Jacob Stallings out of UNC this year. The big catcher performed well for State College this season.)

Here is video of Colin Moran from the Cape Cod League where he lead all players in RBI with 42. Moran has a lot of bat movement prior to the pitch and if you watch the video you can see he can cover the outer half shown by his .314 average over 39 games. He had eight double, and six bombs.

It was this strike call on Moran that got UNC Coach Mike Fox suspended. Notice Moran’s reaction in such a big situation.

TTF has the Pirates taking 6’6″ high school pitcher and first baseman A.J. Puk from Washington High in IA with their 51st pick.  Considering the lefty hasn’t pitched exclusively, this could be a very interesting player.  Puk is committed to Florida.