Jeff Passan has a good article up at Yahoo about the tough decision facing the Pirates at the top of this year’s draft (we can quibble, of course, about his assertion that the Pirates don’t like dealing with Boras, but until the Pirates take another Boras client or two that’s probably something that will be unavoidable for the team).
And just to assure you that the Pirates aren’t the only team struggling with this decision, Larry Stone wrote on Saturday that Jack Zduriencik is trying to decide between something like five different guys and mentions that teams are waiting on Rendon’s medical records to be released.
Rendon still seems to be the favorite among Pirate fans, but his injury history makes me pretty nervous. What if he’s a Ryan Doumit? A Steve Pearce? The Pirates can’t keep those two guys on the field no matter how much they limit their exposure. What if Rendon’s no different? How good can a guy be if he only bats 400 times a year?
I could go on forever here. Cole’s performance this season makes me nervous, Bauer’s small stature weird windup makes me nervous, Hultzen’s late rise to the top and status as the most polished guy likely to fly through the minors makes me nervous because of desciptions like Passan’s that refer to him as a “finished product,” Bundy and his ridiculous workload in high school coupled with the huge bonus he’ll likely wants makes me nervous, Starling and his committment to Nebraska makes me nervous, Lindor’s low upside on offense makes me nervous.
The bottom line is that the Pirates are going to get a player with a lot of talent and some warts no matter who they take with the first pick in this draft. There’s pretty much no pick out of the top five or six guys that would be indefensible at this point, and that feeling makes me really, really uneasy.
