2024 Depth Charts: RH Starting Pitchers

Photo Credit: Richmond Flying Squirrels

Hey there, distraught Giants’ fan! Would reading some 5,000 words on Giants’ pitching prospects right down to some teenagers who’ve never yet thrown in an official game take your mind off those Oh-so-Ohtani Blues? If so, There R Giants has just the thing — it’s the Right-Handed Starters version of this year’s Depth Charts series!

So far in the 2024 Depth Chart series, we’ve looked at:

• 2b

And now we come to a position I discussed briefly last week, but needs much more in-depth attention — the large group of right-handed starting pitchers who may be forming one of the strategic advantages for the club’s future. Or not?

Several years ago, a group of Giants’ prospect followers who hung out at McCovey Chronicles coined a term for a large mass of starting pitching prospects coming up together: The Hydra. The belief was that even without a lot of superstar level pitching prospects, a critical mass of “mid- or back-end” starting prospects should ultimately yield two or three useful and productive arms. The idea was that quantity, in some ways, could be as important as quality, because it brought increased probability of good outcomes somewhere.

If I recall correctly, that group included Kyle Crick, Clayton Blackburn, Adalberto Mejia, Edwin Escobar, Ty Blach, Kendry Flores, Joan Gregorio, Chris Stratton, and Keury Mella. Once you get over the warm glow of Remembering Some Guys™, you’ll probably spot the flaw in the Quantity = >Certainty theorem of pitcher development. While some of those guys have gone on to craft admirable big league careers in various bullpens (and Congrats on that World Series ring, Mr. Stratton!), in the end, The Hydra failed to produce any starting pitching value for the Giants.

Perhaps this modern day Hydra is a better, hardier variety! Will it spill greater largesse across the coming history of Giants’ baseball, or will this Hydra once again have the life squeezed out of it by the Herculean force of “Pitcher Attrition?”

Get out the drill bit, baby, because we need to dig in deep on this one!

Before we start today’s post, however, to help us all get through the cold (and angst-inducing) winter, I’m offering 20% off for a year’s subscription as a Christmas deal, now through December 24. So get the gift of Giants’ future (or give it to the Giants’ fan in your life) with a little more There R Giants in your life.