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Kevin Gorman’s Take 5: Ben Cherington's strategy involves risks with Pirates' top picks | TribLIVE.com
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Pirates/MLB

Kevin Gorman’s Take 5: Ben Cherington's strategy involves risks with Pirates' top picks

Kevin Gorman
Kevin Gorman
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Jose F. Moreno | The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Pirates selected Malvern Prep outfielder Lonnie White Jr. with the No. 64 pick of the 2021 MLB draft.

Ben Cherington had suggested the strategy as a possibility, that the Pittsburgh Pirates could go under-slot with the No. 1 overall pick and spread their draft pool bonus money through the MLB Draft.

With the largest pool in the majors at $14,394,000, the Pirates were more interested in adding an influx of top-tier talent than spending more than half ($8,415,300) on one player the way the Detroit Tigers did last year when they took Spencer Torkelson with the top pick.

What the Pirates pulled off on the second day of the draft is being hailed throughout baseball, given that they selected four players ranked among the top 32 prospects by Baseball America. After taking Louisville catcher Henry Davis first overall Sunday night, Cherington was willing to take some risks by picking four prep prospects, including two who are committed to play major college football, on Monday afternoon.

Now, he has to sign them.

Last year, Cherington spent the allotted $11,154,000 draft pool by paying top pick Nick Gonzales his assigned value ($5,432,400), signing Competitive Balance A Round pick Carmen Mlodzinski for $262,000 under slot and paying over-slot for his second and third rounders.

Jared Jones signed for $2.2 million, more than $510,000 above slot for the No. 44 pick. Nick Garcia signed for $1.2 million, nearly $420,000 above slot for the No. 79 pick. Cherington offset that by going under-slot with the fourth and fifth rounders, paying Jack Hartman $60,000 instead of the $538,000 at No. 108 and Logan Hofmann $125,000 instead of the $402,000 at No. 138.

Signing this class could require similar creativity.

“We are confident but not done. So we’ve got some work to do there,” Cherington said. “We took those guys with a level of confidence and optimism that we can reach an agreement, but we’re not done, so we’ll keep working at it. I think it’s probably less about trying to sell baseball and more just finding out just how important baseball is to those guys, and we feel like the guys we took really want to play baseball and want to be Pirates, and now we’ll do everything we can to make them Pirates.”

1. Flying Solo: To say the Pirates’ second-round pick was excited is an understatement. Anthony Solometo was wearing a Pirates hat, beamed while talking about his love for the Steelers and shared that he had researched their minor league affiliates.

The left-hander from Bishop Eustace Prep in Pennsauken, N.J., has an unorthodox three-quarters delivery, which he claimed was based on Clayton Kershaw mixed with Madison Bumgarner and blessed by God.

No wonder Cherington said the Pirates “spent a lot of time analyzing it” before drafting Solometo. Fear not. It’s all part of a process they have for analyzing and assessing deliveries of any potential pick of a pitching prospect.

“It is unique and different, but we think it works pretty well,” Cherington said. “With him it’s really just about timing. The delivery itself adds to his effectiveness and the deception, and it’s just unique to who he is. It’s part of who he is as an athlete, and it’s really just about timing for him.

“When he’s on time, it works really well. He’s a young pitcher, so timing is just something that will continue to get better, and he’ll have time to continue to practice that. But we like the positions that he gets himself into, particularly when he’s on time, and he creates a lot of deception and unique pitch qualities from the angles he creates. So it’s been really effective.”

2. Going Lon: While it might seem like a surprise that the Pirates picked a three-sport star who planned to play football and basketball at Penn State, Malvern Prep outfielder Lonnie White Jr. had met with Cherington and the draft team last week.

White originally planned to play baseball at Clemson before changing his mind and committing to play wide receiver at Penn State in May 2020.

So the Pirates discussed parameters about what it would take to sign him before picking White at No. 64 overall.

“From the team side, obviously, you want to have as much information as you can so you can have some confidence about our chances to sign a player,” Cherington said. “At the same time, we want the players to know as much as they can, too. It’s their lives. It’s their careers. We want them to feel good about where it lands for them and what direction they’re going. I don’t know how to do that other than to just share information and be honest and ask for honesty in return, and usually that leads you to a good spot.”

3. Betting on Bubba: On MLB Network, Jim Callis predicted before the second round that the Pirates could take a Clemson football commit.

Instead, they selected Solometo in the second and White in the Competitive Balance B Round. Yet Bubba Chandler was there for the taking at the top of the third, so they took him at No. 72.

A 6-foot-3, 200-pounder, Chandler is a three-star prospect committed to play quarterback for the Tigers but also starred as a right-handed pitcher and switch-hitting shortstop at North Oconee High School in Bogart, Ga.

“We really believe in his potential as a pitcher. Super athletic. Obviously strong. Really good arm speed. He’s already showing really good stuff,” Cherington said. “He’s a talented position player, too, and I do think we’ll explore that with him, at least initially in pro ball — give him a chance to play some infield, do some hitting.”

Cherington said the Pirates player development staff hasn’t mapped out a gameplan for Chandler yet and is more concerned with signing him first.

“If we can bring him into the Pirates, assuming we can do that, we’ll put pen to paper and see what that looks like,” Cherington said. “We had a conversation with Bubba about that. It’s something that’s important to him. And he is legitimately talented on both sides, so we want to look at that and we do believe there’s a really big upside as a pitcher.”

4. Owen K’s: The Pirates’ strategy shifted when they took Owen Kellington, a 6-3, 195-pound right-hander from Montpelier, Vermont, in the fourth round at No. 102.

Kellington is an intriguing prospect from a part of the country that produces few pro ballplayers. The most prominent major leaguers from Vermont in the 2000s — Oakland A’s first baseman Daric Barton and Pirates outfielder Chris Duffy — were born in Vermont but played high school baseball out West.

Baseball America ranked Kellington the No. 386 prospect, though the UConn recruit impressed scouts with a low 90s fastball and a sharp breaking curveball with above-average potential. He struck out 91% of the batters he faced this season, which had opponents cheering every time they got a hit off Kellington.

“Well, I think I can visualize that because that was probably pretty close to the competition I played in in high school — not too far from where I grew up,” said Cherington, a native of Meriden, N.H., who played at Amherst. “If I had faced someone like Owen Kellington, I might have been doing the same thing. I know a little bit about what high school baseball is like up there. He definitely stood out from the crowd.

“Given that, the performance itself and whatever the numbers say is probably less important than what we see in him as an athlete: how he moves on the mound, the arm action, the arm speed, the raw pitch qualities that we can measure. And the person himself, the makeup and kind of who he is. We think he has all of the traits to develop as a starting pitcher and hoping and looking forward to working with him for a long time.”

5. Backstop with a bat: Drafting Davis first overall addressed not only the Pirates’ greatest organizational need — which was improving the depth at catcher — but served as a sign of Cherington’s priorities.

For the second year in a row, the Pirates picked the best hitter in college baseball. Last year, it was Nick Gonzales from New Mexico State. This time, it was Davis from Louisville.

The Pirates padded the position by taking San Diego State catcher Wyatt Hendrie in the seventh round. The 5-11, 200-pounder batted .379/.464/.633 with nine homers and 57 RBIs, and was a finalist for the Buster Posey Award as a junior. He was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 10th round in 2019 but didn’t sign. This time, he was picked one round after the Pirates took his teammate, fifth-year senior infielder Mike Jarvis.

“He’s also got well above average arm strength and a good reputation as a teammate and all those qualities,” Cherington said. “As we look forward with where catching might go, we think he has qualities that will hold up, no matter what happens to strike zone and things like that. So we’re excited to continue to strengthen our catching throughout the organization. We’ve already got guys here that we like, but we feel like we’re getting stronger in that area.”

Despite dropping that hint, Cherington said the potential for MLB to use an automated ball-strike system didn’t affect the Pirates’ decision to choose another catcher in their top 10 picks.

“I try to stay aware of all the possibilities, but we’re not counting on any of that stuff happening,” Cherington said. “I think the bigger driving force is … the hitting. Guys who hit have a way to get to the big leagues and have sustained careers and have value. We need lots of those kinds of hitters, and so we’re looking for him in the draft and in other places, too. Just so happens that’s who we took last couple years, two college hitters who we feel good about. So I think the other stuff we keep in mind, but it’s really the offense that is still the biggest driver.”

Kevin Gorman is a TribLive reporter covering the Pirates. A Baldwin native and Penn State graduate, he joined the Trib in 1999 and has covered high school sports, Pitt football and basketball and was a sports columnist for 10 years. He can be reached at kgorman@triblive.com.

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