Best College arm available.
pitching is the big need.
I take arms with the first 2/3 picks, depending on what’s available… ‘take the best player available’ but with a strong preference for arms early on. in the later rounds maybe look for some high-upside HS arms with college commitments… take a few risks from 4th round -on .

Brad Lincoln is nearly ready, but he is more of 3/4… Zach Von Rosenberg heads a group of younger more projectable arms, but they are far away and there is still a big need for high-upside arms.

Position-wise… Alvarez and Sanchez seem like pretty safe bets to hit MLB pitching. Chase D’Arnaud will be a good MI utility at the least, and has the work ethic to become more. Starling Mart is a high-upside OF bat… Robbie Grossman and Jarek Cunningham I like a lot. Jarek has a chance to be a big bat at 2B, maybe 3B if Pedro moves off. Grossman is an OFer who can play anywhere but will likely be moved of CF… but he has an advanced approach/eye at the plate despite his struggles last year in his first full season.

but how we need to go about fixing this thing is we need to find some good young pitcher, not Matt Morris, because that really a position that we lack depth at in the Minors. The Franchise will be up sometime around July I’m going to quess. Also I open to offers for Doumit and Duke

They have a cornerstone in McCutchen, and potentially another one in Alvarez. Additionally, LaRoche, Jones, Milledge, Tabata, d’Arnaud, Sanchez, and others give them a pretty nice stable of young position players.

But where’s the upper level pitching? The guys that are close to the majors, like Lincoln and Alderson, have limited upside, and the guys with upside, like Von Rosenberg, Cain, Pounders and Morris, are all either raw or battling injuries.

It makes a whole lot of sense to me to see the Pirates take Pomeranz, McGuire, or maybe even Tallion if he’s still there.

I wonder how early I can start trading my good talent and get more prospects.

The Pirates probably is they do not keep guys after they mature, they have no clubhouse leadership. They do not need to turn to prospects, they have a lot of good talent who are having a small slump in the line up. They have average pitching at best,

Trade Duke and Maholm for some good prspects that are in no lower than High A. Wait until the deadline and deal veterans like Dotel, Donnelly, and Carrasco for some decent prospects. Draft Zach Cox number 2 overall this year at 2B and draft high upside arms in almost every other round. Leave Alvarez in Triple A all year long to help him develop and gain another year of him. Lose as many games as possible that way we can draft Anthony Rendon next year. Also, keep on taking risks like he has been. Taking chances on guys like Milledge, Clement, Morton, Tabata, and others could pay off in a big way eventually.

Would follow the plan GM Huntington setup last season. Go pre-draft deal with low cost but talented hitter on #2 overall pick (Colon/Cox/Machado) and then use remainder of draft budget on draft/sign talented pitching. This draft is pitching heavy so there should be plenty plums this season - similar to what the Pirates did in rounds 4-10 last season.

Players such as PAlvarez should remain in minors so as to control their contracts an extra season.

Be willing to be a seller this season with parts that another club may want.

Wait as long as you can get away with. You’re not playing for this year, or next year, or even the year after that. Barring a miracle, the Pirates are still at least four years away from contending.The less service time Alvarez accrues without blowing his stack, the better.

Also, they just need to do a better job working the waiver wire. Decent players are out there for dirt cheap, but they don’t seem to be getting them, and while Neal Huntington isn’t Dave Littlefield, it seems like he’s not a great evaluator of talent either, and he seems to be repeating some of Littlefield’s mistakes, albeit on not such a catastrophic level.

Go with the same draft strategy as last year (taking an advanced hitter in the first round (Machado or a college guy) and then stockpiling pitchers in later rounds. Get what you can in trades of Maholm, Duke, Iwamura, Doumit, and possibly the bullpen. Keeping Alvarez in AAA could be prudent, but it will be harder to get away with if he gets the average above .258.