MLB.com's Jennifer Langosch has been all over the numbers of the Gerrit Cole and Josh Bell signings by the Pirates, and, as expected, she now reports the Pirates have broken a record for total draft spending...impressively.
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The #Pirates spending $17 million on the Draft is an MLB record. Previous one was close to $12 million (Nationals, 2010)less than a minute ago via web 
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Jenifer Langosch
LangoschMLB
This statistic really hammers home just how breathtakingly huge the Pirates' spending binge was this evening. Washington's signings last year, which included big money for prodigy prospect Bryce Harper, were considered shocking at the time. That the Pirates outspent not only the Nationals, but the rest of Major League Baseball by as much as they did would appear to be a huge statement from general manager Neal Huntington to the rest of the game, one which you can probably expect will be one of the biggest baseball stories of the coming week.