2007 Draft: Bucco Blog Recommends..

When talking about the first year draft, you often hear this catch phrase - OBA. It stands for 'Overall Best Available' and that's what every team focuses on in each round of the draft - taking the best player available to them.

But the OBA for one club might not be the OBA for another club, as we've come to learn over the years. Some teams shy away from certain agents, some teams refuse to draft high school players in the first round, some teams prefer to draft the OBA for a certain position instead of the pool's OBA to them at the time, and some teams consider the use of personality profiling more important than tools, as examples.

Dave Littlefield tipped his hat a bit on Baseball Prospectus Radio Saturday when he said his plan was to take the best player available who is closest to the majors. You can follow the link above to hear the entire segment or click this link to hear just the answer to that one question (Windows Media).

The are three draft picks who are considered to be closest to the majors in every poll from Baseball America to Top Prospect. They are (Baseball America ranking is in parenthesis):

1 -- David Price from Vanderbilt (#1)
2 -- Josh Vitters from Cypress High School (#3)
3 -- Rick Porcello from Seton Hall Prep (high school) (#4)

I have to believe there is a 99.9% chance Price will be gone before the Pirates pick at number four. If he falls to us, Price should be our pick without question.

Littlfield probably has Vitters in his cross hairs, but so do the Cubs and possibly the Royals. If Vitters falls to us, Littlefield will take him. But the probability of Vitters being available to us has dropped almost daily.

So we have to look beyond Price and Vitters and there are really only two other candidates worth drafting at the number four spot - Rick Porcello and Georgia Tech's Matt Wieters (#2). The quality of the players drops dramatically after the first few premium picks.

But one of the four players mentioned above will absolutely, positively, be available to the Pirates. The problem is that three of the four are Scott Boras clients and Littlefield has run from Boras ever since Bobby Hill days.

To be fair to Littlefield, Boras typically sets the asking price for his players at about 20% higher than true market value for the slot. That would mean the Pirates would end up paying a signing bonus of somewhere around $7MM - $8MM for one of the three players.

Should that deter Littlefield?

I don't think so, especially when the organization has made it perfectly clear they have at least $3MM available for player salary for 2007 and it's quite obvious they are not only not going to need it, but that they will be sellers again at the July deadline making even more cash available. When you consider the average first round pick received a bit over $4MM last year, that means the Pirates have no less than $7MM they could allocate - by their own admissions.

So there's really no excuse not to take the best player available in the draft.

However, the Pirates have been linked to Beau Mills (#12), a left-handed slugger out of Lewis-Clark who plays third. After reading all the scouting reports I could muster on Mills, not only would he be a serious overdraft, but he isn't needed in the organization considering we have converted Neil Walker to third base.

So where would Mills fit into the organization's three year plan? He doesn't.

There are a few other pitchers that will be available in the draft like Andrew Brackman at NC State, Michael Main at Deland High School who I watched with a scout throw and I like, Daniel Moskos out of Clemson, and Ross Detwiler at Missouri State. All of these guys rate higher than Mills except Main.

But the Pirates took a PR hit when Brad Lincoln fell to the wayside needing surgery. With all the bad luck they have had from the first round pitchers they have taken, there is a cry for them to take a hitter in the first round this year.

Vitters would solve both Littlefield's wish list and the cries for a bat instead of a pitcher. However as the Rays have found out over the years, it's next to impossible to trade a bat for a front line pitcher. If they could, Carl Crawford would have been long gone.

So while the Pirates fan base and media hype up their cries for a bat, Bucco Blog recommends that the Pirates continue to focus on pitching in the first round and if Porcello happens to fall to us, Littlefield should take him - Boras notwithstanding.

If Weiters and Porcello both fall to us, then we recommend Weiters notwithstanding the ridiculous signing bonus Boras will want. After all, Weiters could be a significant force in Pittsburgh by 2011 along side of McCutchen and Walker.

The Pirates' fan base was already rocked one time this year with the revelation the organization had a $25MM operating profit in 2006, the organization has clearly admitted it has available player payroll it can extend, and now the team looks to be headed for another losing season.

Taking Mills over Weiters or Porcello could be the straw that breaks the camels back.

And it should.