Draft Pitching Philospohy Explanation?

[casadeozo]

I know it’s been discussed a lot o. Here of Elias regime choice to never draft pitching in early rounds. My question is has he ever offered an explanation? 
 

I’ve heard Matt Blood offer the canned answer of “we drafted best player available” before. 
 

is this a philosophy born from the Astros days of missing on pitching? 
 

 

[Aristotelian]

I'm not aware of them addressing it explicitly. 

[casadeozo]

5 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

I'm not aware of them addressing it explicitly. 

Ya seems like something the media should be asking

[HowAboutThat]

This is from a 2022 Baltimore Sun article, reprinted in another paper:

Mike Elias is trying to avoid spending draft picks on guys who will need TJ, like Carter Baumler.

But it doesn’t work because pitching is just so rare that the remaining guys are increasingly expensive, and are themselves ongoing TJ risks. Elias saves himself nothing by not drafting pitchers, and makes the resulting search more difficult.

We have zero depth and paid too much for mediocre pitching. And it is only going to get worse because we won’t have any single digit draft picks for the foreseeable future.

Tommy John surgery remained a rarity for most of the 20th century, but by 2012, one in seven MLB pitchers had received it. In 2017, that figure had climbed to one in four, and as of last season, one in three had undergone the operation, based on data compiled by baseball analyst Jon Roegele.