2024 Depth Charts: 2b

A seasonal classic returns

Photo Credit: Kevin Cunningham | Giant Futures

With the frustratingly slow and silent Winter Meetings behind us, the Giants’ front office returns home to continue the process of building a competitive and entertaining roster (and good luck to them on that). Here at There R Giants, that means it’s finally time to turn my mind to starting to build up this year’s Top 50.

As my long-time readers know, the process I use to kick-start that effort is this granular look at every position in the system: my Depth Charts series — or, as some readers seem to affectionately refer to it, “that chart with all the colors on it.”

That’s right, it’s the ol’ Rainbow of Value. And I suppose the point is that we HOPE these depth charts are splashed full of color, because a depth chart that comes all in shades of grey and white isn’t a very happy one at all! So, we’ll see what we can do to splash color over the coming series, and, as best I can, I’ll explain how I get to the various grades handed out to just about everybody who remains in the system.

This year, rather than just going around the horn, I’ve decided to shake things up by putting the positions into a randomizer — which is a fancy term for me writing abbreviations on slips of paper and then pulling said slips out of a paper bag. That means we’re starting the series this year with 2b.

The Keystone isn’t always the sexiest of prospect positions — at the major league level the majority of players filling the spot were shortstops on their way up, after all, which means that minor leaguers already limited to the right side of the infield have something of an uphill climb ahead of them to work through their flashier, toolsier, left-side comrades.

But I’m actually quite happy to get this position to begin with — it feels like a good omen to me. Because this is the position that is topped by the Giants’ best, most productive player (by fWAR) in each of the past two seasons, one Thairo Estrada. Last year, despite losing time to injury, Estrada topped all Giants by producing a just about 4 WAR season (3.9 technically), becoming the first position player acquired by Farhan Zaidi to register at least a 3 WAR season for the Giants (indeed, the only position player other than the triumvirate of Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford, and Brandon Belt in 2021 to do so).

In doing so, Estrada fulfilled my prediction in last year’s “2b Depth Chart” post that he was going to rise to the level of a 55 Grade Player — a position that got me gently chided in the comments section of that post, as I recall. Score one for the Depth Charts, baby!

Now if I can do half so well on the rest of these charts, we’ll really be cooking! So, let’s see what we can cook up in the line behind Thairo for this year….