BATON ROUGE - In years past, the Major League Baseball draft has both hurt and helped the LSU Tiger baseball program.

This off-season head coach Jay Johnson and his Tiger program were just winners with the way that outgoing players were taken in prominent positions and incoming players were largely avoided allowing them to report to campus and start their journey at LSU.

Tiger Derek Curiel was taken with the fifth pick in the MLB Draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates and a good number of their highly-touted signing class was either untouched or taken later in the draft making it more likely that they would turn down professional ball and start their college careers.