The Pirates continue to find baseball players in unlikely places, signing 16-year-old pitcher Alexsey Lukashevich, who is now the first player from Belarus ever to sign with a major league team.
↵↵↵In 2009 he was selected as one of 50 baseball players in Europe to train in the MLB European Academy in Tirrenia (Italy).
↵After the completion of training camp six MLB teams showed interest in the Belarusian Baseball player. Alex finally accepted the offer by the Pittsburgh Pirates.
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This means that the Pirates' management team has now signed players from unlikely countries like Belarus (Lukashevich), South Africa (Gift Ngoepe, currently hitting very well for Class A- State College), India (Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, both of whom are pitching for the Pirates' rookie team), the Netherlands (Daan Cornelissen, also in rookie ball), Colombia (Yhonathan Barrios, a big-bonus signing in 2009), Australia (Dylan Child and Jarryd Sullivan, currently in rookie ball, and Mitchell Fienemann, who's with State College), Lithuania (17-year-old pitcher Dovydas Neverauskas, now in rookie ball), and Taiwan (Ping-Hung Chi, Chih-Weh Hsu and Sheng-Chin Hong, all in rookie ball). Of these, Ngoepe and Barrios have the best chance of making it to the majors.