Pittsburgh Pirates: Update on 2018 Draft Pick Signings

It has been a few weeks since the MLB draft has finished up.  Here are picks that the Pittsburgh Pirates have agreed to thus far.

In the first update, the Pittsburgh Pirates had only agreed to terms with four of their top 10 round draft picks.  This included fourth-round pick Aaron Shortridge, a right-handed pitcher from the University of California and sixth round pick Michael Flynn from the Arizona Wildcats.  Also, the team signed their seventh and eighth round picks in NC State outfielder Brett Kinneman and lefty pitcher Zach Spears out of Miami of Ohio.  The team saved roughly $55,000 on their overall draft pool with those four signings.  However, since then, the team has signed multiple other picks over the last week or so.

Top 10 Round Signings

The biggest signing, of course, was the Pittsburgh Pirates agreeing to terms with their first-round pick.  The Bucs gave 10th overall selection Travis Swaggerty a $4,400,000 signing bonus.  This actually came in below the slot value of $4,560,200.  This was somewhat expected.  Swaggerty is coming from a smaller school in South Alabama and in general, college juniors do not have a ton of negotiation leverage.  The Pittsburgh Pirates used their next two selections on two prep pitchers who likely will get over-slot deals.  So the team will benefit from the savings on Swaggerty.  Swaggerty has since reported to the Pittsburgh Pirates short-season affiliate in Morgantown.

Swaggerty is not the only top 10 round draft pick the team has signed.  The Pittsburgh Pirates have also reached terms with ninth round draft pick Logan Stoelke.  Stoelke is a Ragin’ Cajun from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. The right-handed pitcher was the team’s closer and had 10 saves this past senior season.  With him being a college senior, Stoelke really had no leverage in contract negotiations. The Bucs ended up giving him a $50,000 signing bonus even though his slot-value was $150,200.  This, of course, is great for the team saving about $100K on their draft budget.

Next: July 2nd Targets

Later Round Picks

With all that being said, the team has signed their first, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth round picks thus far.  The Pittsburgh Pirates have also agreed to terms with numerous other later round drafts picks. The team has signed 12th round pick Zach Susi, a catcher from the University of Connecticut.  Furthermore, they agreed to terms with two outfield draft picks in 14th and 15h round picks. These two are Daniel Amaral of UCLA and University of California outfielder Jonah Davis.  The Bucs took three college pitchers from rounds 16-18 and have signed all three.  The first was Randolph-Macon College product Colin Selby, Brad Case from Rollins College, and Michael LoPresti from St. Johns.

*All Salary numbers are courtesy of Spotrac.com