NEW YORK -- Brian Jones first started to get calls from colleges before the 2018 baseball season. Vanderbilt, Stanford, TCU, Texas A&M. They were all calling the Jesuit Dallas College Preparatory School coach about Jordan Lawler.
But while the schools were hoping to recruit the young shortstop, Jones hadn’t seen him play yet.
“This kid’s a freshman,” Jones told me over the phone about what he said to those schools. “I haven’t seen him play yet. I don’t know if I had even met him at the time.”
Lawlar ended up committing to Vanderbilt before his sophomore year, but will not honor it. He will be one of the first players taken Sunday in the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft, and he is one of the finalists the Pirates are considering selecting first overall.
There is no consensus top pick in this year’s draft, but Lawlar is arguably the best player available. Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus rank Lawlar as the best prospect in this year’s draft. MLB Pipeline has him at number three, and FanGraphs at fifth.
The Pirates met with Lawlar privately Monday at PNC Park.
If they do end up selecting him, it won’t be the first time the Pirates went to this high school and Jones for a hitting prospect. They also did it a decade ago whenever they selected Josh Bell.
Bell was an undeniable first-round player -- Baseball America ranked his as the 15th best prospect in that draft class -- but fell to the second round because of signability concerns. The Pirates took a chance in round two and, $5 million later, got him to sign.
While Bell developed into an All-Star slugger, at the time he was drafted, he looked a lot like Lawlar.
“He was built a lot like [Jordan],” Jones said. “He was a little taller than Jordan, but wiry and thin. Obviously, by the time he made it to Pittsburgh, he had put on pounds and grown into a young man.”
That doesn’t mean Lawlar will develop Bell-like power, he should get more pop as he continues to grow. There’s plenty of room for him to grow, too, with Jones joking that, “I don’t even know if this guy’s shaving yet!”
It’s a bit of an apples to oranges situation to compare the two, but as ball players, Jones sees advantages to both.
“[They’re] two different types of players,” Jones said. “Probably strength wise, power wise, Josh was a little past where Jordan is, but athletically… Jordan is a step above that.”
Lawlar’s best tool -- and arguably the one that sets him apart from the four or five other prospects who could stake claim as the best in this draft class -- is his speed. This year, he went 32-for-32 on stolen base attempts. Jones gave him the greenlight all year, and actually had to push him to run because he was looking for the perfect steal opportunities rather than just trusting his natural ability.
The way Lawlar and Bell compare the best, probably, is off the field. Bell was the Pirates’ Roberto Clemente Award nominee in 2020 for his activism against systemic racism and his commitment to creating social justice. Long before then, he had been one of the Pirates’ most charitable players and most active in the community.
Jones praised Lawlar’s community service as well. On the field, he said that he had never heard him swear or throw a helmet after missing a pitch or making a mistake.
“On the field, two different people, but in the background and on the field, they’ve got the same makeup,” Jones said.
As for performance on the field, the Pirates could certainly do worse with that all important first overall pick than drafting a future All-Star like Bell was. Jones only sees his prized player getting better from here.
“Just being 18 and seeing the skillset he has right now, the sky’s the limit on exactly what he can do.”
MORE PIRATES
• One of the negative things I had heard about Lawlar is that he is prone to swing and miss. If you happened to catch him early this season (not sure how, but play along), you would have noticed him whiffing early. There was a weird reason for that: He had just gone through a months-long circuit against some of the country’s best prep players, where he was routinely seeing mid-90s fastballs. He went back to the high school ranks for his senior year and couldn’t time up 80 mph heat right away. He righted the ship after not too long. "Week two or three, that’s when he really started to turn it on,” Jones said. “I think from that point on, his stats stood for themselves.” -- Stumpf
• Another prep shortstop the Pirates are considering for that top spot, and perhaps the darkhorse of the bunch, is Kahlil Watson. A left-handed hitter, I’ve had a draft analyst tell me he could be the best hitter out of that collection of prep shortstops. “He knows how to stay within himself,” his high school coach, Mike Joyner at Wake Forest, NC, told me over the phone. “If he needs to hit the ball to the opposite field, he does. He has power to all fields. Left-center field gap to right-center field gap, he has tremendous power there.” Getting a comp for Watson isn’t exactly easy. Harold Reynolds of MLB Network compared him to Jimmy Rollins. Watson himself likes to think of himself like Francisco Lindor. In a far more grounded projection, Joyner said he had a scout cite former Pirate Pokey Reese. It’s a bit harder to get a read on Watson since COVID-19 cancelled almost all of his junior season and limited his senior season to just six-weeks long. Fortunately for him, he has made up some of that lost time with private exhibitions in the extra month before this year’s draft. -- Stumpf
• At the end of spring training, the Pirates kept Jared Oliva, Cole Tucker and Kevin Kramer in Bradenton, Fla. for some individualized work rather than sending them to the alternate site. They kept busy this week, with Oliva and Tucker being recalled and Kramer being traded to the Brewers. The Pirates cited “skill development” for the reason why those players stayed behind, but really, it was just a chance for them to continue doing their spring training work, but in a far more individualized setting. “It’s always going to be different when we’re isolated and we have two, three of us and the whole day to go through stuff,” Oliva was telling me. “Go through old video and see how our bodies move a little better.” While the early results for Oliva and Tucker haven’t been too inspiring in a small sample size, both have said they feel their swings are in a better spot. “It sounds simple, but I think we all took away some good things from it,” Oliva said. -- Stumpf
PENGUINS
• Three of the Penguins' five choices in the NHL draft July 23-24 are scheduled to come in the seventh round, which suggests they shouldn't count on doing much to replenish their shallow prospects pool then. Still, the Penguins have gotten some useful players -- Scott Wilson, Joe Vitale, Eric Meloche, Andy Chiodo and Tom Kostopoulos, among others -- in the seventh round, and have at least one interesting young player, Valtteri Puustinen, who was claimed then. What's more, some high-impact players have entered the league as No. 7 selections; that list includes Henrik Zetterberg, Doug Gilmour, Ondrej Palat, Joe Pavelski, Patric Hornqvist, Anton Stralman and Mackenzie Weeger. The Penguins obviously can't count on getting someone of such caliber, let alone three of them, but assistant GM Patrik Allvin believes that some players claimed that late in the draft can develop into NHL contributors if their team's decision-makers make shrewd selections and are patient. "The later you go with the draft, the more long-term (development is needed) for players," he said. "You're looking for maybe a little bit of a raw prospect, a guy who would need some more time, whether it's in college or in Europe. You're looking at raw-type of players." -- Dave Molinari
• Tampa Bay has joined the Penguins as the only teams in this century to win back-to-back Stanley Cups. That's the most significant distinction those clubs share, but not the only one. Coincidentally or otherwise, both suffered embarrassing first-round eliminations the year before earning the first of their two championships. The Penguins were humbled by the New York Rangers in five games in 2015, and Columbus -- an almost-prohibitive underdog -- swept the Lightning in Round 1 in 2019, one of the most shocking results in recent playoff history. There's no way of proving it, of course, but it seems quite possible that those humiliating defeats steeled the resolve of the Penguins and Lightning, galvanizing both for the runs they went on in subsequent seasons. -- Molinari
• Being an NHL general manager puts a guy in a pretty exclusive club; after all, there are only 32 such positions. But there's a subset of that group whose membership is even more limited: GMs who have built an organization from scratch after being put in charge of an expansion team. The latest to take on such a challenge is former Penguins center Ron Francis, who is overseeing the new club in Seattle. Ron Hextall already has a job, of course, and it's one that figures to keep him busy for quite a while, but he acknowledged that constructing an organization would be intriguing. "When you look at Vegas, to go essentially from no logo, no building, no nothing, to what they have now, I think it'd be an exciting thing," he said. "I think Ronnie -- I've talked to him. I worked with him at the world championship a couple of years ago, him and (Kraken assistant GM Jason Botterill), and kind of formed a friendship -- so I've talked to him quite a bit from when he got the job. He's enjoying it. It's been a lot of work, but I think it's very exciting." -- Molinari
STEELERS
• The people who don't feel the addition of Najee Harris to the Steelers' backfield will make that big of a difference are overlooking some very important facts about the rookie running back. Harris rushed for 2,690 yards and scored 39 rushing touchdowns in his final two seasons at Alabama on 460 carries. That in itself is great. But he also caught 70 passes for 729 yards and 11 more touchdowns in the air during that period. You can dismiss what he did on the ground to playing behind Alabama's great offensive line -- at least compared to its opponents. But you can't dismiss a running back averaging more than 10 yards a catch and scoring on over one out of every seven catches. Harris also rarely gets tackled for a loss. He averaged 3.26 yards per carry AFTER contact last season. The Alabama line was good. But Harris made a lot of that yardage on his own. -- Dale Lolley on the South Side
• One player worth keeping a close eye on at training camp this year will be inside linebacker Ulysees Gilbert. With Devin Bush still sitting out team portions of practice while recovering from a torn ACL, Gilbert got a lot of valuable experience in his place. That's something Gilbert didn't get a year ago because of the COVID-19 shutdown of offseason programs. In terms of athleticism, Gilbert is the closest thing the Steelers have to Bush -- though fourth-round pick Buddy Johnson has some of those same sideline-to-sideline traits. Gilbert is entering his third season after having his first two seasons marred by back and ankle injuries. If he can stay healthy this year, it would be a big boost for the Steelers. -- Lolley
• The Steelers' decision to move on from Jordan Berry at the end of training camp last year came straight from the top. The Steelers released Berry at the end of training camp to instead go with Dustin Colquitt as their punter. I'm told that call came from team president Art Rooney II. Colquitt lasted just five games with the Steelers before being released, with Berry re-signed. Berry wound up having perhaps his best season with the Steelers, averaging a career-high 45.8 yards per punt over the final 11 games. But he has struggled with inclement weather over the course of his career. But this also is why the Steelers used a seventh-round draft pick on Pressley Harvin III. Berry has become too expensive to be an average to below-average punter. -- Lolley