The Pirates continue to spend, spend, spend as part of their spread-the-wealth strategy to the 2009 draft, far exceeding Major League Baseball's recommendations by dropping $3.9 million on five high school pitchers they drafted between the second and eighth rounds -- including the newly signed sixth-rounder.

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Today

• Game: Pirates vs. Colorado Rockies, 8:40 p.m., Coors Field.

• TV, radio: FSN Pittsburgh, WPGB-FM (104.7).

• Pitching: RHP Ross Ohlendorf (9-8, 4.29) vs. RHP Jhoulys Chacin (Major League debut).

• Season series: Colorado, 4-2.

• Key matchup: Ohlendorf will have to figure out the Rockies' Brad Hawpe, who homered, doubled and singled off him in three at-bats June 19 in Denver.

• Of note: The Pirates have lost all seven meetings in Denver the past two seasons. The most recent victory came Aug. 23, 2007, and none of their eight position players in that day's lineup remain on the roster.

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Yesterday the club officially made 175th-overall selection Zack Von Rosenberg the highest-paid draftee thus far outside Major League Baseball's top 25 picks from June. His $1.2 million deal is the largest sum the Pirates paid a player drafted after the first round or signed from a foreign land.

And, after investing $8 million of their $10 million allotment on 21 signed draftees, they may yet add more.

"We continue to have dialogue with a handful of additional players to see if there is common ground between our value on the player and the player's ask[ing price]," Pirates general manager Neal Huntington said in an e-mail interview yesterday, when he completed a Von Rosenberg deal that wrapped up the Pirates' top 10 draft picks and put a tidy bow on their much-discussed strategy. "We will move when there is common ground. We will move on when there is not. We feel very good about those [draftees] that we have signed but are open to adding additional high school or college players."

Von Rosenberg, a 6-foot-5 right-hander considered a top-two-rounds prospect and the pitching jewel of NCAA champion LSU's recruiting class, constituted the focal point of the Pirates' philosophy this draft. Instead of spending $6.3 million on one can't-miss prospect such as Pedro Alvarez in September after protracted negotiations, they spread $7.9 million over their top 10 picks -- all of whom, once Von Rosenberg reaches Pirate City today, are in their minor league system and launching pro careers.

"It's going to be fun, being part of the comeback -- 17 [losing] years in the making," Von Rosenberg said, a reference to the Pirates' consecutive sub-.500 seasons, before heading to Bradenton last night. "It's going to be awesome."

The signing of Von Rosenberg, a two-time Mr. Louisiana in baseball, followed the signings Friday and the arrival in Bradenton Saturday of fourth-rounder Zack Dodson ($600,000) and eighth-rounder Colton Cain ($1.15 million), both tall, Texan left-handers.

In all, the Pirates laid out $3.93 million on five high school pitchers they drafted between the second and eighth rounds, buying out their college-scholarship futures: No. 2 Brooks Pounders of Southern California ($670,000), Dodson of Baylor, Von Rosenberg of LSU, Cain of Texas and No. 7 Trent Stevenson of Arizona ($350,000).

As a comparison, most nights the Pirates field a starting eight costing about $4.9 million for the season.

In a strange coincidence, the club run by the former Major League Baseball executive who oversaw its contract-slotting system -- president Frank Coonelly -- was delayed in implementing this strategy while awaiting MLB discussion on their requests to hand out such above-slot contracts.

"In each of these cases," Coonelly said, referring to this year's class plus the $1 million given 2008 sixth-rounder Robbie Grossman, "the value we placed on the player exceeded the [MLB] recommended value. The Pirates need to take advantage of these inefficiencies in the system and these opportunities. I now represent the interests of the Pirates, and I am not doing my job if I allow a role that I played in the Commissioner's Office to interfere with our acquisition of talent at values with which we are comfortable."

"The players' performance, however, will be the ultimate determination of whether the investment was made competently," said one American League talent evaluator.

Coonelly's club stayed close to the mandated money amounts early on: fourth-overall selection Tony Sanchez was roughly $200,000 below slot, supplemental-round selection Victor Black about $600 over, Pounders $3,200 under, third-rounder Evan Chambers spot-on and fifth-rounder Nathan Baker $400 under.

The Pirates, long deemed cheap by followers, have spent the most so far of Dodson's fourth round (the rest of MLB's signees that round to date average $212,000), Von Rosenberg's sixth ($164,000 average), Stevenson's seventh ($125,400 average) and Cain's eighth ($104,000 average).

Only Arizona, at $900,000-plus each for two high school players in the sandwich round between the first and second, shelled out close to the Pirates' cool million apiece for any player after the first round. Cain and Von Rosenberg rank as the sixth- and fifth-highest paid prep draftees of 2009 at this juncture.

No wonder the Pirates are outspending their closest National League Central competitor, the Cubs, by 2 to 1. No wonder the Pirates, while they might sign less than two dozen total, might finish ahead of most every other club in spending except for the Stephen Strasburg-saddled Washington Nationals.

"We believe that aggressive spending in the draft and in the international market is more effective for us at this stage of our progression than is spending on free-agent players," Coonelly said. "We have targeted these markets and are spending at the top of the industry."

Such a late start in signing these prep players means many of them will have to work deep into the Florida Instructional League, which "slows down the process, but doesn't inhibit it," Huntington said. "We had to be respectful of the [MLB] process and the environment in which we work. At the end of the day, we still feel good about getting the players signed. We'll get them out and into the system as quickly as we can and begin the growth process."

As for their strategy overall: "It's a situation that a lot of people have made a lot of incorrect assumptions about the things that we've done. It wasn't risky at all. We're fortunate to have the resources that Bob [Nutting] has given us. We want to make sure we allocate that money correctly."