On Friday morning, Jim Callis posted a new mock draft on MLB Pipeline and he has the Pittsburgh Pirates selecting Florida right-handed pitcher Alex Faedo. Early in the year, he was a possible first overall pick. Baseball America had him as the highest rated college player and MLB Pipeline had him fourth overall in the draft class. That led to him being featured early in our draft coverage.
So Callis is saying that the Pirates could get a player who was considered out of their range just 2-3 months ago, which brings up the obvious questions about why he dropped in the rankings. Faedo has minor arthroscopic surgery on both of his knees last fall, but that didn’t affect his rankings early. When MLB Pipeline updated their top 100 rankings late last month, Faedo dropped down to 11th overall. Their reasoning for the drop is a “slightly uneven performance” this season.
Faedo has a fastball/slider combo with both pitches rated above average. His changeup is considered average and he has solid control, though they point out that he sometimes throws too many pitches that get too much of the plate, so his command could use some work.
In 12 starts this season, Faedo has a 2.42 ERA, which actually only ranks fourth on his team. He has 93 strikeouts and a .206 BAA in 78 innings. He’s doing a better job this season of keeping runs off the board, and limiting hits, but he has walked more batters already this season in 26 fewer innings, and his strikeout rate has dropped slightly, though nothing alarming. I’ve included a highlight video from late March at the bottom of this article.
MLB Pipeline posted mock drafts from Callis and Jon Mayo last week. They both had the Pirates selecting high school first baseman Nick Pratto. In this updated draft from Callis, Pratto dropping to the New York Yankees with the 16th pick.
The draft begins exactly one month from today, with the Pirates selecting 12th, 42nd, 50th and 72nd on day one, which will be televised on MLB Network. We will have coverage of all 42 selections made by the Pirates.
