Pittsburgh Pirates: A Look at the Draft One Week Out

The Pittsburgh Pirates and the 29 other Major League Baseball teams will take part in the Draft one week from today. What does the board look like?

The Pittsburgh Pirates will have one of their most important events coming up in one week with the MLB Draft starting up.  Every year the Bucs rely upon having a good draft to help supplement their smaller market team.  With that being said, it is vital for the team to have as many picks as possible, which they do this year.

The Bucs have the 18th overall pick in the first round this year.  This is lower than the last few years when the team picked 12th in 2017 and 10th overall last year.  Then the team has a compensation pick at the backend of the first round at number 37.  The team was given this for their failure to sign 2018 Draft Pick Gunnar Hoglund.

So the team has two picks inside the top 40 which gives them a shot to pick up multiple top prospects.  The good news is the team also has two second-round picks as well.  The Pirates will have the 57th and the 72nd overall pick.  The 72nd pick was awarded to the Pittsburgh Pirates in the Competitive Balance lottery.

All in all, the Pittsburgh Pirates will have four picks on day one of the draft.  This will give the team an opportunity to really add some talent back into the farm system.  However, this will also help the team later in the draft.  With so many high picks, the Bucs were given $9,944,000 as their draft pool this year.

This ranks 11th in the league, and with picks later in each round the team should be able to get creative with over-slot deals.  The Pittsburgh Pirates have been very consistent in always finding over slot players in the 11th round.  They will likely be able to again this year with such a big pool, along with taking other high upside prep players elsewhere in the draft.

The MLB Draft will start at 7:00 pm eastern next Monday, June 7th.  The Draft will go until the 5th and has 40 rounds.  For the past few years, the Draft has aired on MLB Network.  Coverage on MLB Network will start this week on the draft and will start at 6:00 the day of the draft.  It is a good opportunity to watch and get some opinions on players the Bucs will be drafting.