2025 There R Giants' Top 50: #4 James Tibbs III

The burden of great expectations

Photo Credit: Eugene Emeralds

So far, in this year’s Top 50, we’ve seen:

• Just Missed List

• 46-50 (Camacho, Foster, Flores, Hernandez, Reckley)

• 41-45 (Christian, Pomares, Ahuna, Perez, Sugastey)

• 36-40 (Howell, Murphy, Miles, Simon, Choate)

• 31-35 (Sanchez, Waites, Bresnahan, Rengel, Maldonado)

• 26-30 (Hipwell, Bello, Tejada, Diaz, Bericoto)

• 21-25 (Ortíz, Furman, Cayama, Harris, Ceballos

• 16-20 (Cox, Martin, Meckler, Bostick, Velasquez)

• 11-15 (Arteaga, Crawford, Davidson, Seymour, Ragsdale)

• 10: Trevor McDonald

• 9: Mason Black

• 8: Joe Whitman

• 7: Rayner Arias

• 6: Jhonny Level

• 5. Dakota Jordan

So, here’s a story:

The Giants headed into the draft one year with the 13th overall pick. There, they selected one of the premier college performers of the year, a player whose skillset gave him a strong probability of a high floor outcome. This player had a core set of very clear — and valuable — strengths in his game, which could safely be assumed to translate well at the top level. At least, as safely as any player starting out on their pro journey.

Once the games started, however, the performance lagged a bit behind expectations and hopes for such a high pick, and whispers and rumbles began filtering up around the game. There were flaws. There were weaknesses in the game. There were frustrations on almost everybody’s part. Maybe the safe floor wasn’t there. Maybe something was wrong. The player began slipping in rankings. The weaknesses in his game became all anyone could see, though that core set of strengths was still always present.

Soon enough — quite soon, in fact — that player was brought up to the majors, and, though the weaknesses in his game still exist to this day to some degree, the core strengths shone through. And, today, Patrick Bailey is a Gold Glove award winner. He’s in a very small group of players in the conversation for the greatest defensive player in all of MLB, and he’s arguably one of the very best young catchers in the game.

The moral to that story — though I won’t trot out my old Brian Sabean quote yet again — is not to become so obsessed with looking at what you think a player can’t do quite so well that you are no longer able to see what they can do extremely well. An old scout once told me that to look at young players is to imagine possibilities with an open and positive mind, and I always try to remember those words when I’m thinking about prospects.

This lesson may serve well as a back drop to today’s discussion about the team’s most recent 13th overall pick, the 2024 1st rounder, James Tibbs III.