No. 6 pick Hernandez hopes to become next stud in Bucs' rotation

The question wasn’t if Seth Hernandez was going to be drafted, but when and where the right-hander would land. Billed as one of the best high school pitching prospects in the MLB Draft’s history, that 39-minute wait from the start of the Draft until it was announced that the Pirates selected him with the sixth overall pick was no sweat.

"I wasn't super nervous, at all. I was kind of excited, kind of anxious in a way,” Hernandez said over Zoom. “I had an event at my house, so I had like 60 to 65 people here. Everybody that supported me over the years, family, friends. To share that moment with all of them was super awesome.”

For the Pirates, it was less obvious.

“If we're being honest, we thought the odds [of us drafting him] were against that,” director of amateur scouting Justin Horowitz said.

With a fastball touching triple digits, a 6-foot-4 frame and multiple above-average offspeed pitches, Hernandez -- MLB Pipeline’s No. 3 Draft prospect -- is the top right-handed pitching prospect in the 2025 Draft class for good reason. In a deep Draft class for collegiate pitching, the Pirates took the best prep player – and perhaps the best player – on the board, as they did last year when they selected their No. 2 prospect, Konnor Griffin.

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“Our whole group had done a ton of work, our pitching development group, our R&D group and across the board we had high, high levels of enthusiasm for what Seth can do now and what we think he can do in the future,” Horowitz said. “He's an incredible athlete, he can manipulate the baseball, he throws a ton of strikes, he's projectable, he's explosive and he's an awesome kid.

“I'll be honest, he's a great kid to be around. He's a culture-changer. He's competitive. He's focused. He has a professional demeanor about him. He just checks so many of our boxes, to be honest. We were pumped when we had the opportunity to grab him at 6.”

The Southern California high school star is coming off a senior season for the ages, posting a 0.39 ERA in 53 1/3 innings with 105 strikeouts against just seven walks. Committed to Vanderbilt (although he’s quite unlikely to forgo a professional contract to play college baseball), Hernandez has reached 100 mph with his fastball, although he usually sits in the mid-90s and tops out at 97-98 mph.

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His repertoire features three secondary offerings: a changeup that he called his “bread and butter,” a curveball and a hard slider. It’s an arsenal that had MLB Pipeline ask if the Pirates selected the best prep right-handed Draft prospect ever.

“It's a blessing to be able to be considered like that,” Hernandez said. “Obviously with the greats, especially with recent guys like Jackson Jobe, Hunter Greene, or even guys like Paul Skenes and Chase Burns, I know those guys came out of college, but even out of high school, being able to be considered better than those guys, or even just up to par with them is awesome. Obviously it just goes into all the hard work and great support I've had around me."

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Hernandez’s inclusion of Skenes on a list of high school prospects isn’t a perfect fit, but Skenes’ influence is obvious. Hernandez listed Skenes as one of the three pitchers he models his game after (alongside Zack Wheeler and Jacob deGrom), so there’s obvious appeal of joining an organization where he could potentially share a rotation with him.

It’s part of the reason why Hernandez thought he had good meetings with the Pirates at the Combine and back home in California. He’s seen what they’ve been able to produce on the pitching side in recent years, so he had plenty of questions to find out what it would take for him to be their next pitching development success story.

“Knowing [2024 first-rounder] Levi Sterling of last year and also Jared Jones and even guys like Paul Skenes, it’s kind of hard not to have a good conversation,” Hernandez said. “People know those guys. I asked them a lot of questions and got a feel for what they want to do and what they want to do with me going forward.”

Hernandez doesn’t have a relationship with Skenes yet, but he has bumped elbows with Jones. The two were on the same travel team growing up (years apart) and met at a benefit banquet. There, Jones said that he hoped Hernandez would join him in Pittsburgh.

“He kind of spoke it into existence in a way,” Hernandez said. “… To share the field with them going forward, I think it’s going to be super awesome. Obviously, Paul Skenes is a stud. Everybody in the Pittsburgh organization, I’m excited for them.”