John Steigerwald: Pirates erred in not drafting West Allegheny's Austin Hendrick

Austin Hendrick may come back to haunt the Pirates.

He’s the outfielder from West Allegheny who they didn’t take with the seventh pick in the MLB Draft on Wednesday.

By all accounts, the Pirates had a good draft, but everybody knows it’s a crapshoot, especially when you take a high school player.

Nick Gonzales was the Pirates’ first pick. He’s a shortstop from New Mexico State who led the NCAA in hitting in 2019 and is much closer to being ready for the big leagues than Hendrick.

But Hendrick is a local kid. That shouldn’t be a major factor or maybe even a minor factor if you’re drafting players for the NFL, NBA or NHL, but with the Pirates, it’s different.

When faced with two players of equal ability, they should go local. They have a much better chance of selling tickets based on the popularity of their players than they do by winning championships.

No salary cap has made that pretty clear for the last 40 years.

And Hendrick hits the long ball.

Left handed.

Brian Giles would tell you PNC Park is great place for left-handed power hitters.

Hendrick was ranked ninth overall by Baseball America and considered the best power hitter in the draft. The Cincinnati Reds took him with the 12th pick.

Here’s what Reds director of amateur scouting Brad Meador said about Hendrick: “We’ve seen him a bunch the last two years. You saw what he looked like — he’s a big strong, physical kid — so from a physical standpoint you feel like he’s ready to go compete right now. We think it’s an advanced bat. We’ve seen him be able to make swing changes and make adjustments.”

He might take a little longer to get to the big leagues than Gonzales, but in case you hadn’t noticed, Major League Baseball has become a home run or nuthin’ league.

The Pirates have a long and painful history of keeping prospects in the minor leagues too long in order to maintain control and save money, but maybe that’s changed with the a new front office.

And Gonzales, according to scouts, is on a fast track to the major leagues. Maybe he’s on the fast track to stardom and the Hall of Fame and will turn out to be one of the Pirates’ best first-round picks, but if he’s not and Hendrick becomes a big-time home run hitter, with the Reds of all teams, the Pirates will never hear the end of it.

The way these things tend to work, if Hendrick does make it to the major leagues, he’ll end up being a Pirates killer.

Not wanting to return

Are you starting to get the impression MLB and NBA players aren’t interested in playing in distorted versions of their seasons?

Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets, during a conference call with 80 NBA players, encouraged them not to take part in the bubble league being planned in Orlando. He mentioned systemic racism as one of the reasons. Dwight Howard of the Los Angeles Lakers said basketball would only be a distraction from the Black Lives Matter cause.

Players don’t seem to be in any hurry to compromise with MLB owners, and time is running out on being able to hold some semblance of a season.

Could it be there are too many people on both sides in both leagues who have made so much money that they have the most important weapon in any negotiation — the willingness to walk away?

Will Canada approve?

NHL players seem to be all in on starting the playoffs Aug. 1, but is the Canadian government? The Premieres of Ontario and British Columbia are against reopening the borders July 31 and, according to a survey, 51% of Canadians don’t want to open the borders until the end of the year.

Canadians tend to like hockey, but apparently not enough to open the border to non-Canadian hockey players. The New York Times surveyed 500 Canadian epidemiologists about when air travel to Canada should resume. Their consensus was not “until later in the next year.”

I’ll believe we’re going to see any games played by any of the major sports leagues when I see it.