Looking back at the Pirates' 2021 draft haul: Was high-stakes strategy worth it?

Upon his hiring as Pirates general manager in November 2019, Ben Cherington was tasked with tearing down the roster and rebuilding, with a stated intention of accumulating as much young talent as possible. In his first season running the show (the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign), the Pirates went just 19-41, securing themselves the top pick in the upcoming draft.

Cherington held firm to his plan to load up the farm with talented prospects, but he did so in an unorthodox fashion. In most sports, teams draft based on team need or just by best player available, especially when possessing the top pick. In baseball, however, it's not always that simple. In order to fully understand the strategy Cherington and the Pirates deployed in 2021, it's important to also understand how the MLB Draft works.

A brief, elementary summary: every pick in the first 10 rounds is assigned a dollar amount, and the sum of the value of a team's picks is the total amount of money teams are allowed to spend on signing bonuses for their draft selections. For example, in 2021, the slot value of the No. 1 pick was $8,415,300, and the total value of the Pirates' bonus pool was just under $14.4 million.

So the Pirates didn't necessarily have to spend the whole $8.4 million on their top pick. With no clear-cut best player in the draft and a plethora of talented high school players projected to be tough signs due to pre-existing college commitments, the Pirates (who had the top pick in each round, plus a compensation pick at the end of the second round) had the option to be creative in how they distributed their bonus pool.

There was buzz leading up to the draft that Pittsburgh planned on going under slot with their first pick in order to be able to draft and sign some of those high school players with signability concerns who would inevitably fall down the draft board. So while Jack Leiter, Marcelo Mayer, and Jordan Lawlar were considered the top players in the draft, the Pirates were able to execute their plan by instead using the top pick on Henry Davis:

So despite passing on one of the favorites to be the first pick, the Bucs still left the draft with a top-five player, plus two others who were consensus first-round talents. Adding that crop of prospects to a system that was already headlined by the likes of Ke'Bryan Hayes, Oneil Cruz, and Nick Gonzales put the Pirates in an enviable position.

Now that a few seasons have passed, we have a better idea of how this strategy has played out for the Pirates. It's still too early to draw definitive conclusions, but to this point, the results have been mixed, and that's being generous.

Did the Pirates go about the 2021 Draft the right way, or did Ben Cherington and co. outsmart themselves?

At first, Henry Davis looked like a home run selection. He crushed opposing pitching at every level of the minor leagues and got the call to Pittsburgh in June 2023. After his first 27 career games, the last of which saw Davis homer twice against Shohei Ohtani, he had a .295/.391/.463 slash and a modest 18.2% strikeout rate. He looked like a legitimate middle-of-the-order threat.

But it's been all downhill since then. A catcher by trade, Davis found himself learning how to play right field on the fly while simultaneously trying to acclimate to MLB pitching. The Pirates opted to give the majority of the reps behind the plate to Austin Hedges and Endy Rodriguez, another young catching prospect, while hoping that Davis and his 70-grade arm would play well enough in the outfield.

After that two-homer night in Anaheim, the rest of his season was a disaster. He received dreadful grades for his defense in right field (despite his 98th-percentile arm strength), he spent a month on the IL with a hand injury, and he slashed a paltry .154/.235/.269 while his strikeout rate sky-rocketed to 33.4%.

Figuring Davis' struggles at the plate largely came from having to play out of position, the Pirates committed to him as the starting catcher going into the 2024 season, and Davis spent his offseason honing his receiving skills. The results at the plate were somehow worse—a .144/.242/.212 slash, a 36.9% strikeout rate, one home run, and more than twice as many Triple-A plate appearances (254) as he had with Pittsburgh (122).

For those keeping track, that's a cumulative slash of .150/.238/.244 in his 72 MLB games since his two-homer game against the Angels. That OPS is lower than the career marks of Jacob deGrom, Brandon Woodruff, and Three Finger Brown. It's safe to say the Pirates either need Davis to rebound in a huge way, or they need to hit big on (at least) one of the later picks.

Pirates' 2021 draft picks after Henry Davis selection

Like Davis, Anthony Solometo's career got off to a pretty good start. The southpaw doesn't have overpowering stuff but his unorthodox and deceptive delivery garnered pre-draft comparisons to that of Madison Bumgarner. He posted a 2.64 ERA in his pro debut in Low-A in 2022, then followed that up with another strong campaign in 2023. He dominated High-A Greensboro (a notoriously hitter-friendly environment) but got hit a tad harder in Double-A. All told, his ERA across both spots was still an excellent 3.26.

Solometo returned to Double-A Altoona for 2024, but with disastrous results this time around. He had a six-start stretch in April and May where he had an ERA of 8.00, and another six-start stretch in August and September where his ERA was 6.53. In between those stretches, he was relegated to Altoona's bullpen and then sent multiple levels down the minor league ladder. Once a top-100 prospect, Solometo has a lot of work to do to once again be considered a legitimate prospect and piece of the Pirates' future.

The other hitter in this group is outfielder Lonnie White. White was seen as a potential five-tool outfield prospect and two-sport star—by taking a seven-figure bonus from the Pirates, he forwent his commitment to Penn State, where he had a scholarship to play both baseball (as an outfielder) and football (as a wide receiver).

White was already considered a boom-or-bust prospect during the draft process, and unfortunately, injuries have pretty significantly hampered his development. He appeared in just 11 games in his first two professional seasons (he amassed a whole seven plate appearances in 2022 before injuries ended his season).

White endured two stints on the injured list in each season from 2023-2024. Though he fared well in 2023 (he posted an .881 OPS between the Complex League and Low-A Bradenton), 2024 was an entirely different story. Taking the next step to High-A Greensboro, White hit just .167, with a .614 OPS and a staggering 34.4% strikeout rate. While he still runs and defends well (and has received ample time at all three outfield spots), that level of production in the low minors is deeply concerning.

The final pick of the bunch may turn out to be its saving grace. Like White, Bubba Chandler needed to be pried away from a college scholarship. He was committed to Clemson as a two-way baseball player and as a quarterback, and it took a substantial offer to convince him to go pro (his signing bonus was more than triple the value of the pick with which he was taken).

Initially, the Pirates allowed him to pursue a career as a two-way player—he was afforded 161 plate appearances across two seasons before being relegated solely to pitching. This sure looks like the right call, as he's climbing the minor league ladder quickly.

In three minor league seasons, Chandler has a 3.61 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, and 29.6% strikeout rate. His 2024 campaign saw him put up his best numbers ever against the best competition he's ever faced. Between Double-A and Triple-A, he pitched 119.2 innings with a 3.08 ERA, but he was downright dominant at the highest level of the minor leagues—in seven starts in Indianapolis, his ERA was a miniscule 1.83, with better rate stats across the board than he posted in Altoona.

There seems to be a correlation between Chandler's rise through the minor leagues and on prospect boards. He's now a consensus top prospect (No. 23 per FanGraphs, No. 21 per Baseball Prospectus, No. 15 per MLB Pipeline, and No. 7 per Baseball America) and in the discussion for the game's top pitching prospect alongside Detroit's Jackson Jobe and Philadelphia's Andrew Painter, who were taken 71 and 61 picks ahead of Chandler, respectively.

Chandler possesses a fastball that touches triple-digits, multiple potentially-plus breaking balls, and a changeup that FanGraphs already rates as a 70 (on the 20-80 scale). He's generally viewed as more advanced than Jared Jones was at this stage, and Jones took MLB by storm last year (2.89 ERA, 63 strikeouts in his first nine starts). While Chandler isn't likely to break camp with the club as Jones did a year ago, it's certainly possible that he solidifies himself as a force in Pittsburgh's rotation as soon as this summer.

The Pirates need their aggressive strategy from the 2021 Draft to pay dividends at the MLB level.

There are legitimate concerns that the Pirates whiffed on the top pick (though early reports on Davis this spring are promising), and Solometo and White are far from sure things themselves. But if Chandler becomes a key fixture in what is already an excellent young pitching staff, Ben Cherington and the Pirates may look back proudly on the gamble they took in 2021.