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Keith Law’s Second Mock Draft Has High Upside Prep Arm For Pirates

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Keith Law released his second mock draft on Tuesday afternoon and he has a brand new name for the Pittsburgh Pirates. After picking Vanderbilt’s Tyler Beede in his first draft, he has the Pirates going with high school right-handed pitcher Luis Ortiz. Law has Beede falling out of the first round completely.

Like Beede, Ortiz is a player that has dropped in the rankings, but unlike Beede, it wasn’t due to performance. Ortiz missed time with what was called a forearm strain, though Law points out in his scouting report that it likely means he had a sore elbow and didn’t want to scare off teams by revealing that. The injury wasn’t anything serious, as Ortiz returned to action and was hitting 95 MPH. He has topped out at 97 in the past.

He is a big kid at 6’3″, 220 pounds and has been rated much higher, especially coming into this season when some had him as a top ten pick. Ortiz offers a three pitch mix, with that plus fastball, a slider that is a plus pitch at times and a change-up that rates as average. He also has average control already on all three pitches, making him a polished high school pitcher with big upside when you add everything up.

We posted video of Ortiz in an earlier link, which you can view here.

John Dreker
John Dreker
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball. When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.

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