- 1986 - The Pirates selected University of Arkansas's Jeff King, The Sporting News college player of the year, as the first overall pick in the June draft, giving him an $185K bonus. He spent eight of his 11 big league years as a Pirate, hitting .258 with 99 HR (Matt Williams and Bo Jackson were taken after him). The Bucs selected other MLB talent in OF Tom Goodwin (.268 over 14 years), SS Mike Mordecai (.244 over 12 years) and pitchers Stan Belinda (who spent his first four plus seasons as a Pirate) & Rick Reed, who started as a Pirate but blossomed as a Met and Twin in a draft that didn’t particularly stock the home club very well.
- 1987 - HS outfielder Mark Merchant was the Bucs top pick and second overall in the draft, right after Ken Griffey Jr. (who was almost available to Pittsburgh; Seattle owner George Argyros was said to favor drafting a pitcher, but his evaluators talked him out of it). The Pirates signed Merchant for $165,000 three hours after drafting him, but he never played an inning in the majors after a 10-year minor league career. He was a highly touted player (he and Griffey were everyone’s 1-2 selections) but Merchant separated his shoulder during his second minor-league season and broke his ankle in the next campaign, losing both his gun and his speed. Pittsburgh’s seventh round pick, Kittanning SS Mickey Morandini, spent 11 years in MLB, mostly with Philadelphia where he was an All-Star in 1995, and OF Wes Chamberlain and SS Brian Williams also spent a few years in the majors. The Pirates actually had a worse record than the Mariners did in 1986, but the AL and NL alternated the top pick during that era and so the Pirates lost their chance to land the Donora-born Griffey, a future 13-time All-Star, MVP and Hall of Famer.
- 1994 - High school QB & SS Mark Farris was the Pirates first selection (#11; $820K signing bonus); he hurt his knee and left the Bucs after hitting .273 in AA to attend Texas A&M as a football player in 1999. It was a sparse draft for the Pirates; only LHP Jimmy Anderson and last round pick UT Brandon Larsen played in the majors. Farris ended up being a pretty big miss; another SS, 6-time All Star Nomar Garciaparra, went to the Boston Red Sox as the second pick.
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| Chad Hermansen - 1995 Sport Classic |
- 1995 - 17-year-old SS Chad Hermansen of Nevada’s Green Valley HS was the Buc’s first selection in the draft, taken at the #10 spot. The Bucs wasted little time in signing him - he agreed to a $1.15M bonus with a $75K kitty to pay for college if the baseball thing didn’t work out. The Pirates started him out in Bradenton with the GCL rookie club, and after a couple of campaigns, he was converted to the outfield. But it didn’t help his bat - in six in-and-out MLB seasons, he hit just .195.
- 1998 - The Pirates picked LHP Clint Johnston of Vanderbilt first (#15; $1M signing bonus); he ended his career playing indie ball, never advancing past AA. Johnston was an OF’er/closer who the Bucs wanted to convert to full-time pitching, noting that he threw 90-94 and that “big strong left handers were hard to find” per scouting director Leland Maddux. But he ended up with elbow surgery and then suffered from ulnar nerve issues. Clint eventually went to Toronto and was converted back to the outfield, but never climbed the ladder and closed his career with three indie seasons. None of the Bucs’ first 14 picks ever played a MLB game. Later Pirates pitching picks Joe Beimel, Jeff Bennett, Dave Williams and Jon Switzer were the hometown highlights of that draft day.
- 1999 - The Bucs selected RHP Bobby Bradley as their first pick (#8; $2.3M signing bonus) in the draft; he topped out with a cup of coffee in AAA after undergoing three surgeries. They had more success in the second round, choosing C Ryan Doumit (#59, $500K). They also chose LHP Brian Tallet in the middle rounds; he didn’t pitch for the Bucs but did end up with nine seasons in the show. Multi-sport all-star and catcher JR House was signed in the fifth round and got into 32 MLB games. Pittsburgh even went over the slot then; they signed 39th-round pick Patrick O'Brien, a big high school RHP, for $500‚000, but he never got past AA.
- 2003 - Lefties Paul Maholm (#8; $2.2M signing bonus) and Tom Gorzelanny (#45; $750K signing bonus) were the first two Pirate picks of the 2003 draft. Later selections Matt Downs, Jeremy Horst and Josh Sharpless also saw time as major league pitchers. Maholm became a rotation mainstay for several years while Gorzelanny was in and out as part of the regular staff.
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