Pittsburgh Pirates: Ranking Neal Huntington’s First-Round Picks Part Two

Number 1 – Pitcher Gerrit Cole

Huntington had the number 1 overall pick in the draft just once. This came in 2011 and his one and only number 1 overall pick was also Huntington’s best first-round draft pick. That player? Pitcher Gerrit Cole.

Cole was selected out of UCLA, and was in the Pittsburgh Pirates starting rotation by June 2013. Cole spent five years anchoring the Pirate rotation, and, like Alvarez, was key cog in the team making the postseason in 2013 – 2015.

During his Pirate career Cole owned a 3.50 ERA, 3.27 FIP,6.3% walk rate, and a 22.8% strikeout rate in 782.1 innings pitched in 127 starts. All of this led to him being worth 15.5 fWAR in his Pirate career.

His best season in Pittsburgh came in 2015 when the Pirates won 98 games. Cole made 32 starts logging 208 innings. He posted a 2.60 ERA, 2.66 FIP, a 5.1 fWAR, and finished 3rd in NL Cy Young Award voting.

Cole’s career in Pittsburgh ended in January 2018 when Huntington traded him to the Hosuton Astros for four players. After arriving in Houston, Cole started to evolve into arguably the best starting pitcher in baseball while the players the Pirates got in return have all been below MLB average players with the exception of Joe Musgrove. This would prove to be the beginning of a chain of events that would lead to Huntington getting fired 22 months later.

That does it for ranking Huntington’s first-round draft picks as GM of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Do you agree? Disagree? Sound off in the comments below!