Point Park University Friday Insider: Cherington sounding patient with No. 1 pick

BRADENTON, Fla. -- Ben Cherington faces a franchise-defining decision July 11, with the Pirates selecting first overall in the 2021 Major League Baseball Draft.

And unlike most drafts, it could legitimately come down to the wire.

Because the sport's been shut down at most every level below the majors by the pandemic, the scouting and statistical data accumulated on almost all draft-eligible players dates primarily back to 2019. Which is to say, it's dated. And in the exceptionally fickle realm of grading amateur baseball talent, several months of innings pitched, at-bats, everything ... that's a colossal gap.

So, while Vanderbilt pitcher Kumar Rocker remains the consensus No. 1, a parallel consensus seems to be growing within the baseball community -- not just the Pirates -- that more could change than what'd occur in a normal year.

"I think a lot depends on exactly what the 2021 college and high school season ends up being," Cherington told DK Pittsburgh Sports, Thursday morning at Pirate City, when asked how much it'd affect his broader outlook. "It’s started and, if it continues uninterrupted, then we’ll have more information on those players from 2021 than we got last year, and you’d be right: It will carry significant weight. If it gets interrupted, then we’ll be trying to make up for that lost information somehow, either through non-game scouting or weighing prior information."

Either way, from the sound of it, eyes will remain wide open.

"It will always be a combination of all of the information from all of the history we have, but the most recent information is usually most valuable so we hope we get a lot of it between now and draft. Just as professional players have, it's fair to think some amateur players will have improved a lot in the last few months even without much game activity."

It's logical, to be sure. It isn't just performance. It could be injury. It could be pitches added to an arsenal. It could be whatever lit the fire for the Pirates' current top pitching prospect, Quinn Priester, in Instructional League this past fall, enough to have scouts forecasting he'll be baseball's top pitching prospect before long.

Heck, there's already buzz that Rocker might not even be the best pitcher on his own staff. Vanderbilt opened its season Monday with a doubleheader sweep of Wright State in which Rocker and Jack Leiter, son of Al Leiter, both dominated, combining for 16 strikeouts -- eight each -- over nine innings while allowing one total run and two total runners to reach scoring position.

Rocker, 21, generally pounds his fastball-slider combo, but he unveiled a wicked cutter to make it further unfair:

Leiter, 20, twice touched 100 mph on the stadium gun, in addition to showing a Jameson Taillon-level curve and fun, slow-ish slider to keep hitters off balance:

Hey, what's the rush, right?

MORE PIRATES

• Cherington's got nothing imminent on his agenda for personnel moves, but he's open to adding a starting pitcher, and he's still open to trading Adam Frazier. For the right price. The Pirates are feeling zero urgency on this front. If Frazier produces out of the leadoff spot, he could develop into a more attractive option for another team than he is now. -- DK in Bradenton, Fla.

• Derek Shelton's declared an open "competition" in center field between Anthony Alford and Brian Goodwin, and that might well prove to be the case. But I'm told it's Alford's job to lose. Management loves that he was a top prospect as recently as 2018, and they really love the energy he brought in 2020 before hurting his elbow with that crash into PNC Park's center-field wall. Also, at age 26 and with just two months of service time, he has a far greater chance of being part of the future than Goodwin, 30. -- DK in Bradenton, Fla.

• Joel Hanrahan continues to rocket through the Pirates' system ... only not as a closer this time. Bumped up from Class AA Altoona in 2019 to Class AAA Indianapolis for this season, that only scratches the surface of the superlatives I've heard here about his work. That's both neat and rare. Professional athletes who've achieved as much as Hanrahan did in his career tend to take their money and head for the sunset rather than ride buses all over again. But Hanrahan's been a joy to observe down here, smiling, laughing and pranking while doing his work. -- DK in Bradenton, Fla.

STEELERS

• There seems to be an assumption Ben Roethlisberger's conversation with Art Rooney II this week dealt solely with his 2021 salary cap hit. But Rooney also got assurances from Roethlisberger that he can buy into the Steelers' desire to run the ball more effectively in the upcoming season. And that means running the ball more than the 373 times they did so in 2020. Part of that is Roethlisberger checking out of running plays and into passing plays at the line of scrimmage. The Steelers would like to see him stick with the running game a little more than he has in his past two full seasons. The Steelers ranked 28th in rushing attempts in 2020 and 31st in 2018, Roethlisberger's last two full seasons. In 2019 when Roethlisberger missed most of the season, the Steelers were tied for 21st in the NFL in rushing attempts. That's still in the bottom half of the league, but they were closer to being middle of the pack than they were to the bottom. Then again, given the Steelers' lack of quality at running back, it's hard to blame Roethlisberger for wanting to throw the ball instead of run it. In fact, in 2017, Le'Veon Bell's last season with the team, the Steelers ran the ball 437 times, which was 15th-most in the NFL. They'll address the running back position this year early in the draft and get back to something closer to that ranking. The Steelers aren't going to be a top-10 team in rushing because they get nothing out of the QB position on the ground. But they can be more dedicated to it. But that starts with Roethlisberger and improving the running back position. -- Dale Lolley on the South Side

• While we're on general perceptions, there seems to be a feeling in certain circles the Steelers are still in a dire salary cap situation. That's no longer the case. Maybe the people reporting that are simply looking at the cap numbers at overthecap.com and seeing the Steelers are still $19 million over the projected cap, which that site is assuming is $180 million. But that site hasn't yet taken Maurkice Pouncey off the books for the Steelers. But Pouncey is retiring. So you can take his $8 million in cap savings off the books. Even with that, the Steelers obviously would be $11 million over the cap. Spotrac.com, on the other hand, has taken Pouncey off the Steelers roster and factored in his cap savings. That site also is estimating the cap to come in around $185 million. So it has the Steelers at $7.2 million over the cap right now. The morale to the story is that both sites, while very good at what they do, are making guesses right now on a number of things, most notably what the actual cap will be. The Steelers have a much better idea of where the cap will fall. Either way, however, the reports that are floating around out there that a Roethlisberger extension won't put the Steelers under the cap are false. -- Lolley

• The Steelers have just over $58 million in salary cap expenditures for 17 players for 2022. They also have fifth-year options to pick up on Minkah Fitzpatrick and Terrell Edmunds that they will pick up to give them 19 players under contract. Assuming the cap goes up in 2022 -- which it should -- the team should have $150 million or more available. But it also could extend some players beyond this season, with Steven Nelson and T.J. Watt being strong candidates. Some are looking at that number of signed players -- the lowest in the NFL -- as a bad thing. Here's the thing, however. The Steelers will have plenty of cap space in 2022 with which to fill out their roster. The Packers, for example, have 27 players under contract, but those players eat up $179 million in cap space. The Falcons have 22 players under contract but at $172.7 million. The Chiefs have 22 players under contract, but they eat up $144 million in cap space. Even with any contract moves the Steelers make this offseason, they'll still have $100 million or more in cap space in 2022. So, even though they don't have as many players under contract as any other team, the Steelers are in a much better cap situation than most next year. It's much better to have fewer players signed but a lot of available cap space than to have a handful more of players but no cap space. -- Lolley

PENGUINS

• The Penguins completed the first third of their season Thursday night in Washington, but there are some things they still haven't seen in 2020-21. Divisional foes New Jersey and Buffalo on the other bench, for example. And fans. The kind that aren't made of cardboard, anyway. Neither of those will happen this weekend, however. Games against the Devils and Sabres will have to wait until next month, and the Penguins won't get to play in front of even a scaled-down crowd Saturday and Sunday at Nassau Coliseum, despite pandemic-related restrictions being eased by New York state. As of three days ago, teams based there are allowed to admit some fans -- up to 10 percent of their venue's capacity -- to their games, but the Islanders have decided they will not admit any to the Coliseum until March 18 (although an exception will be made for 1,000 invited frontline workers a week earlier). It will be interesting to see eventually how the Penguins react to the presence of a crowd, regardless of when or where that happens, since they haven't done so since last March. Even in places where they aren't particularly popular -- Long Island certainly would qualify, in that regard -- it's possible that the energy in the building, negative or otherwise, will prompt as much of a reaction from the Penguins as it does from the home club. -- Dave Molinari in Uniondale, N.Y.

• P.O Joseph started the season on the taxi squad. A handful of injuries to injuries to left-shooting defensemen and some strong two-way performances later, Joseph moved into the spot Brian Dumoulin usually fills opposite Kris Letang on the No. 1 pairing. Joseph was still there when the Penguins played Thursday, but Dumoulin, who has missed 11 games because of an undisclosed injury, has resumed skating and might well rejoin his teammates for practice when the Penguins return from their four-game road trip. What's more, two other left-handed defensemen injured earlier this season, Marcus Pettersson and Mike Matheson, already have resumed playing. Another, Juuso Riikola, seems close to being game-ready, if he isn't now. If those defensemen manage to stay healthy -- never a given with the Penguins in recent years -- the coaching staff and management will face an interesting issue with Joseph, whose play has slipped a bit after a start that bordered on spectacular. Does he stay in the lineup, forcing a capable -- and more experienced -- guy into street clothes? Does he return to the taxi squad? Or does he get assigned to the Penguins' farm team in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, where he conceivably could play huge minutes and gain experience in every game situation while keeping his skills sharp in case the parent club requires his services again? The Penguins have given no indication of what they plan to do with Joseph if they end up with extra left-handed defensemen -- and possibly won't decide until they know the precise situation when that happens -- but sending him to the American Hockey League wouldn't be an insult, or even a criticism of his work this season. It would simply provide an opportunity for Joseph to build on the very promising foundation of his career that he laid during the early weeks of 2020-21. -- Molinari

•  The Penguins' power play broke out of a 1-for-29 funk last Saturday and was showing signs it could become the lethal force so many expected it to be going into this season, at least until it regressed with a 0-for-4 showing Thursday night. They did make progress in one aspect of the power play in that 5-2 loss to the Capitals, though: The Penguins were awarded four chances with the extra man, well above their average of 2.88 in the previous 17 games. Their total of 49 tries with the man-advantage had been the fourth-lowest in the NHL, and was fewer than six teams that had played fewer games. Last season, the Penguins averaged 3.06 power plays per game, and they did even better the past two times they won the Stanley Cup. They averaged 3.18 per game in 2015-16, 3.17 in 2016-17. Jake Guentzel leads them in penalties-drawn with nine, followed by Sidney Crosby with six. But with the Penguins' team speed and the high skill level of some of their big-minutes players, they should be able to force opponents to resort to rule-breaking to contain them more often than they have in most games so far. Of course, even if the Penguins manage to do that, translating those power plays into power-play goals is another matter altogether. -- Molinari