Pittsburgh Pirates

Pirates 2012 pick Mark Appel named one of worst busts this decade

The Major League Baseball (MLB) Draft is volatile. Unlike other professional leagues such as the National Football League (NFL) or National Basketball Association (NBA), where rookies are sometimes pro-ready from Day 1, MLB draftees face long, oftentimes challenging roads to the major leagues.

That means there is plenty of time to develop before reaching the bigs — or plenty of time to crumble and never materialize at all.

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Add in the sheer length of the draft — 40 rounds until this year’s shortened five-round format due to the coronavirus outbreak — and picking the right player can become a dart throw ... with your off-hand. That said, draft busts come in all varieties, and those taken in the top 10 will always carry a little more weight in the history books. At that position, teams shouldn’t outright whiff. But they do. All the time.

In fact, seven of the Pirates' last 15 top-10 picks fall into the "outright busts" category, with three more selections hovering around "mediocre at best."

One of those busts, the Pirates’ 2012 No. 8 overall draft pick Mark Appel, was recently named one of the 10 worsts busts of the last decade by ESPN.

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