Pirates Select Wake Forest LHP in 2024 MLB Draft
PITTSBURGH -- The Pittsburgh Pirates took their first college player in the 2024 MLB Draft, when they selected left-handed pitcher Josh Hartle out of Wake Forest.
With the 83rd pick of the 2024 MLB Draft, the @Pirates select LHP Josh Hartle. pic.twitter.com/AmZRX0VcPS
— Young Bucs (@YoungBucsPIT) July 15, 2024
Hartle pitched the last three seasons for the Demon Deacons, starting 46 games and holding a 24-11 record. He also had a 4.41 ERA in 246.2 innings pitched and 275 strikeouts to 73 walks.
His best season came as a sophomore in 2023, where he was 11-2 in 17 starts, had a 2.83 ERA, 102.1 innings pitched, 140 strikeouts to both 91 hits and 24 walks and holding opposing batters to a .237 clip.
He earned both Baseball America and NCBWA First Team All-American honors and both ABCA and Collegiate Baseball Second Team All-American honors.
He didn't have the greatest season this past spring for Wake Forest, with a 5.79 ERA in 74.2 innings, so the Pirates will hope to get him back to performing as he did in 2023.
Hartle almost went in the 2021 MLB Draft, but because of his desire to play for Wake Forest, no team decided to take him.
MLB.com rated him as the No. 70 overall prospect and the No. 12 left-handed pitcher in the 2024 draft class.
"Hartle has an easy delivery that has allowed him to sling strikes and move his pitches around wherever he wants in the past," MLB.com's scouting report said. "But he has lacked his usual precision in 2024 and gotten cutter-happy at the expense of his fastball. Once considered a lock to be at least a No. 4 starter in the big leagues with the upside of a No. 2, he now has scouts trying to figure out what happened and whether it can be fixed."
The Pirates have taken four prospects through the first three rounds of the 2024 MLB Draft. They selected both shorstop Konnor Griffin from Jackson Preparatory School in Jackson, Miss. with the No. 9 overall pick and right-handed pitcher Levi Sterling out of Notre Dame High School in Los Angeles with the No. 37 overall pick in the First Round and shortstop Wyatt Sanford from from Independence High School in Frisco, Texas, just outside Dallas, with the No. 47 overall pick and the eighth pick of the Second Round.
DOMINIC CAMPBELL