Photo Credit: Kevin Cunningham | Giant Futures
I’m apparently very bad at writing intros. The standard way to bait you into reading this entire post is to start with a great, teasing lede. I’ve got a listicle to peddle here — everybody loves those! — and I should hop on and start peddling away!
Instead, I tend to start with a lot of little odds and ends that I want to get down here at the top before I forget them. There R Giants’ readers — you guys are the best to put up with my idiosyncratic ways, and I love you for it!
That said, here I am starting off with some weird odds and ends before getting to my fun listicle. Oh well.
First off, MLB revealed its 2025 schedules yesterday, and the A’s schedule goes a long way towards answering a question that many of you have had this year: “what is going to happen to the River Cats?” Kudos to MLB schedulers for making the A’s schedule conform so closely to the minor league format — it can’t have been easy to make this work, but it’s immediately apparent that this schedule will dovetail easily with a normal PCL schedule for the River Cats and enable the two clubs to share Sutter Health Park:
That has to be a huge sigh of relief for Giants’ officials, who might have had reason to worry about their players becoming homeless nomads. It looks like they should have full use of their home stadium and get facility upgrades paid for by a third party. That’s a Win!
Secondly, in the wake of the draft, I wanted to just update folks on the administrative logistics that every club must deal with in the era of a 165 domestic-reserve maximum. By my calculations, the Giants currently have 162 players on their domestic reserve list, which includes every player on one of the five domestic team rosters with the exception of players on the 60-day IL or Injured-Full Season list. Teams don’t want to sit right at the max because players on the 40-man who are optioned back to the minors will get added to that number — so, for instance, when Robbie Ray and Alex Cobb join the Giants off the 60-day IL, two players might get optioned down to Sacramento and will need to be accounted for in that 165 maximum number.
That means the organization is teetering very closely to maximum occupancy at this point, and any player added onto the domestic reserve list means another needs to come off — either by going onto the 60-day IL or by being released. Fortunately, the Giants do not have to add every member of their draft class, or undrafted free agents (like North Carolina RHP Ben Peterson, whom the Giants have reportedly signed), as soon as they are signed. Players do not need to be added to the domestic reserve list until they play in a minor league game this year. So, the Giants (and all other clubs) only need to find space on their rosters for those of the draft class whom they want to get into game action this year. Players who don’t see any minor league action in 2024 (which probably includes all of the pitchers, and maybe some others) will not need to be added onto the domestic list until the day after the season ends (e.g., immediately after the World Series).
Hope that clears that up for everyone. We are still going to see a wave of releases once the ACL season concludes, but the Giants can continue to sign members of their draft class before that comes. The deadline for signing all of the drafted players is August 1.
And with that out of the way, let’s listicle!
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