Pittsburgh Pirates: FanGraphs’ 2019 Mock Draft

The Pittsburgh Pirates have the 18th overall pick in this year’s Major League Baseball Draft.  Here is the latest prediction for the team.

One of the biggest times of the year is just two weeks away for the Pittsburgh Pirates, with the Major League Baseball Draft starting on June 3rd.  Sites such as MLB Pipeline, Baseball America, and FanGraphs have put out numerous mock drafts already.  The sites use reports, past trends, and bonus allotments to try to predict who will go where.

The most recent mock draft to come out is from FanGraphs.  FanGraphs has a decent bit of information in regards to what teams are connected with what prospects.  With the draft getting closer, teams start to get a little bit more of a clear picture of who will be available to them.  With that, sites like FanGraphs who know a lot of people in the baseball industry are able to pass that information along.

In their most recent mock draft, FanGraphs shares who they think the Pittsburgh Pirates will take and a couple of players they are supposedly interested in as well.  They project the Pittsburgh Pirates to take Alabama prep shortstop Gunnar Henderson.  This is not the first time that Henderson has been projected to the Bucs.  MLB Pipeline also has the Pirates taking Henderson in their most recent mock draft.  So there must be a consensus that this is a player the club is highly interested in at the 18th pick.

However, FanGraphs lists a few other plays that the team could look at with the 18th pick.  If Neal Huntington and company decide to go the pitching route, FanGraphs believes that the team will look at Texas right-hander J.J. Goss.  The Pirates have only taken one prep pitcher in the first round since 2010 (Jameson Taillon), and that was Shane Baz in 2017.  Both Taillon and Baz came out of Texas, so the Bucs could continue that trend with Goss.

FanGraphs goes on to project into the Supplemental First Round as well.  The Pittsburgh Pirates have the 37th overall pick in the draft after failing to sign their 36th overall pick last year.  They project that Pittsburgh will look to take another shortstop by the name of Brooks Lee, a prep out of California.  They also mention that the team could have interest in Puerto Rico prep shortstop Drew Lugo.  Although with Lugo, they say that the team could consider him as high as number 18 as well.

One thing is for certain, it seems that many of the inside scouting sites believe that the Pittsburgh Pirates will look to grab a shortstop at some point.  There seems to be a lot available this year from both the prep ranks and the college ranks.  The Draft gets underway on Monday, June 3rd and can be seen on the MLB Network.