In downtime before MLB Draft, more Pirates scouts are getting a long look at prospects

Ben Cherington doesn’t know the exact date of the 2020 MLB Draft, how many rounds it will last or what a virtual draft will look like. One thing the Pittsburgh Pirates general manager knows for sure, however, is his scouting department has prepared for it like never before.

With the MLB season on hold and college and high school baseball seasons canceled, the Pirates’ draft preparation is decidedly different. Scouts can’t watch prospects compete in games at ballparks, so instead they are taking a deeper dive into their scouting reports and relying heavily on video.

“The door has been opened to have direct communication with players, whether it’s interviewing or requesting information that existed prior to the shutdown,” Cherington said. “If a player has video of a game from late February and wants to share that with us, he can and then we can use that.

“Our guys have certainly been back in contact with all the players we have interest in, picking up on those relationships again, continuing to ask questions, sharing information as best we can. In terms of digging into the information we have, it’s interesting. In terms of adding more game footage, whether it’s actual live scouting or video or additional game data that would normally be coming in at this time, while that’s not happening, what is happening is that that leaves a whole bunch of time to dig even deeper into the information that we do have, and that’s been a real focus on the calls that we’ve been having the last couple weeks.”

The Pirates have six picks in the first five rounds, including the No. 7 overall selection in the first round and the No. 31 selection in the competitive balance round. They also own picks Nos. 44 (second round), No. 79 (third), No. 108 (fourth) and No. 138 (fifth). The MLB Players Association agreed to reduce the number of rounds, so the MLB Draft could range from five to 40 rounds.

If there is a benefit to during the downtime, it’s that more scouts are getting eyes on prospects than ever before. Cherington said it has allowed the entire scouting department to write scouting reports on prospects that the team has video or data on. As a result, the depth of the evaluations theoretically should be stronger.

“It’s a different kind of scouting, but it is absolutely scouting and it’s evaluation and it’s additional inputs. And all those inputs will go into our process of ultimately ranking the players,” Cherington said. “We’re going to do that the best we possibly can to get to as precise a list as we possibly can. Then we keep learning. Between now and whenever that draft starts, we’ll continue to brainstorm additional ways to do that, borrow ideas from outside baseball, other leagues, etc. I’ve been really encouraged as to how creative and in the deep end of the pool our guys have been in terms of using information we do have.”