So when I wrote my preview last Tuesday, I said to expect a review piece coming after the draft.  Well, with the pens winning the cup Friday night, and some craziness going on this weekend, I honestly haven’t had time to write up thoughts in long form as I wanted to.  Since the draft is almost a week old at this point, and its not a topic with a lot of legs, I’m just gonna provide so quick thoughts now.

• I don’t love the Tony Sanchez pick, but I don’t hate it either.  NH’s stated draft strategy was to save money on that number 4 pick and then use that by drafting high upside players in later rounds.  While it makes sense in some ways, it seems to me that its a bit of a foolish strategy.  If the pirates are succeeding at getting better, they wont have many number four, or even top ten picks in years to come.  So when you are in that position, you need to draft high impact talent.  Tony Sanchez, while he should be a great defensive catcher, and may hit 15-20 home runs a year, I don’t think he is that all-star, impact level talent you want with the number four pick.  That said, he ahs already signed, should progress quickly, and NH and co seem to value defensive ability very greatly, lets hope they are right and myself and everyone else are wrong about Mr. Sanchez.
• As for the rest of the day 1 picks, they seem a bit underwhelming.  I’m fine with the pick of Victor black, as if you don’t sign him we don’t get a comp pick.  He’s a college righty, a pretty safe pick, but probably not a future ace or anything.  But the other 2 picks are where you wanted them to start drafting high upside guys.  Brooks Pounders and Evan Chambers don’t seem to be those guys.  Pounders is a large HS lefty who doesn’t show much in the way of velocity, though he may develop it with time.  And Chambers is a smallish Outfielder with some pop out of a community college in Florida.  Both seem like nice talents, but both also seem like reaches for where they were drafted.  I’m just not in love with much of anythign they did on day 1.
• Day 2 is a different story, this is where their draft strategy of taking high upside high school pitchers took shape.  Zackry Dodson, Zachary Von Rosenberg, Trent Stevenson, Billy Cain are all pitchers int hsi mold of high upside prep pitchers who might take some money to sign away from college commitments.  All told, the pirates took (by my count) 21 high-schoolers including 14 pitchers.
• They always say with the NFL draft that you can’t truly evaluate it for three years.  I think that even more true with the MLB Rule 4 draft, and considering what the Pirates’ draft strategy was, we at least need to wait til the August signing deadline to come to any hard conclusions of how well they did.  If they sign most of those prep players, and end up in the top 5 or ten MLB teams in draft spending, then I think this is a successful draft.  If they don’t do that, then obviously, considering the first round pick, then its a failure.  I personally trust this management team, remember this is not Dave Littlefield and Kevin McClatchy, and when they say they plan to spend about what they did last year on the draft, I take that at face value.  Expect that to happen, and expect this to be considered a good draft, with many future bucco players coming out of it.