Pittsburgh's selection of Tony Sanchez at No. 4 overall on Tuesday was the most controversial pick of the day, but the Pirates did do one thing they promised, taking some tough-sign high school pitchers on Wednesday. Their philosophy is that high school arms are so volatile that paying premium prices in the first round is a poor strategy, and that the value of that first pick (when you might get a premium bat or college arm) is too high to surrender, so try to stockpile young arms in later rounds. Whether Sanchez was the best pick for slot is another question -- I don't think he was -- but the idea of adding young arms who fell due to signability reasons is a sound one, and they added four good ones, two from my top 100 in Jordan Cooper and Zach Von Rosenburg and two who would have ranked in the next 50 or so players in Colton Cain and Trent Stevenson. Stevenson and Cooper both looked like top-two-round picks last summer, but neither had a good spring, with Stephenson losing a little velocity and Cooper pitching very inconsistently until late in the season. If the Pirates sign three of those four kids, it's a great draft, and if they sign two, it's still a good one.
Also, John Perrotto (a name you should have known before his days at piratesreport.com) has some thoughts that roughly echo KLaw.
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