The Pirates made a few selections in the Triple-A phase of the Rule 5 draft today, and a couple of them are interesting picks worth keeping an eye on. The most interesting one is Aaron Poreda, who you may recognize as the White Sox’ first round pick in the 2007 draft and a main component of the Jake Peavy trade in 2009. He’s since completely lost his control in the Padres’ system, but he’s a big lefty capable of huge strikeout totals. That makes him probably worth a roll of the dice, even if fixing him is likely a very long shot at this point. The Pirates have had quite a bit of success in the past curing young pitchers with control problems, so why not give it a shot, you know?
They also picked up two more catchers (!), Francisco Diaz from Philadelphia and Charlie Cutler from St. Louis. Diaz doesn’t seem all that interesting, but it looks to me like Cutler can hit a bit, though he only played 72 games in 2010 and 69 in 2011, which probably indicates some injury problems.
You can check out the full Rule 5 results here: for what it’s worth Baseball America calls Gustavo Nunez “one of the highest profile players” drafted this year and they say that he “has a better chance to stick than most Rule 5 picks.”
