All Star Break Free For All Mailbag

We have a few days off, perfect for answering some correspondence!

Photo Credit: Michael Jimenez

At There R Giants, our All Star festivities start with a big ol’ mailbag! I have a ton of content coming out this week. I’ll have draft coverage of Day 2 and Day 3 picks coming under separate posts today and tomorrow.

(and if you missed Day 1 coverage, allow me to show you the way…)

As we work our way through the week, I’ll also be rolling out a first half Organizational All Stars list, a brand new, midseason re-rank of the Top 30, a look at some of the major storylines of the first half of the year, and I’ll have a couple of familiar guests joining me for a First Half Review podcast coming up on Thursday.

In other words, now’s a great time to become a There R Giants’ subscriber!

And with that, let’s get to your questions! There are a lot of them this week!

Amanda

My question is what are you hearing about Ricardo Genovés? I know he was on the taxi squad earlier this year, but his name isn't mentioned that much as a possible option on the big league squad. Farhan has picked up so many waiver wire catchers ahead of him. He's still young even though he's been in the system for some time. What do scouts say about him and could he be a viable trade candidate with the rise of Bailey and the continued presence of Bart? (Even though you can never have enough catchers...) [He gave my son a bat earlier this year at the first River Cats game of the season and he's such a nice guy.

Genovés is a player who has always had his fans — in and out of the Giants organization. He has a strong arm and is more flexible and athletic than you might imagine of a man his size. I’ve had scouts tell me that they see him as a backup in the big leagues, though without providing much offensive contribution, and others suggest that Genovés’ bat might play decently well at another position if he were moved from behind the plate. He has been on the taxi squad before, though has yet to be able to put on a big league uniform, but I really do believe that he will one day get to call himself a big leaguer. The Giants’ view of him might become clearer over the next few weeks. If, in their efforts to fill in some of the cracks that have started showing on the roster, they use Joey Bart as a trade chip, it would be an awfully big statement of confidence in Genovés. If Bart stays, of course, that’s another obstacle between Geno and a big league future.

Genovés was re-signed as a minor league free agent last winter, which should mean that he’s on year by year contracts and will once again become a free agent once the season is over. It’s hard to believe that at some point, some team won’t see him as a part of their big league mix — even if it’s just a Tyler Heineman or Chadwick Tromp sort of role providing 40 man depth.

You are absolutely on the mark about his character though. He’s a tremendous guy who is really beloved and admired by his teammates.

rb

Fangraphs released its Giants list, which carries an immense amount of information. One trend they noted was that the Giants seem to be hit or miss with pitchers. There are always with a lot of pop up guys like Hayden Birdsong and Mason Black, but high draft picks seem to have not worked out.

They point out that Giants have a type: "often pitchers with lower arm slots rather than drop-and-drive types who create backspinning axis on their fastballs."

Do the Giants adhere maybe too much to molding pitchers into a single type? Is this why the high draft picks have been failing. Can we glean any information from that, or is it all just random noise and the ephemeral nature of prospects?

I definitely agree with that “type” assessment. Low arm slots are all over the Giants’ system, while traditional drop and drive guys are pretty hard to think of. They also seem to like sinkers more than traditional four-seam fastballs. This is definitely not one of those organizations that is known for adding velocity to guys once they get them into the organization — indeed, I can think of a few arms who have gone the other direction with their velo the last couple of years.

The team definitely has some unique development ideas when it comes to pitchers, and I don’t know if we can say exactly whether they’ve proven to be strong or weak in that regard. They certainly have shown that they can work with major league pitchers to get the best of them — which is a true development success. And, for what it’s worth, five members of the current major league staff are home grown guys (I’ll count Tristan Beck in that group — he’s spent most of his career in the Giants’ system).

As for top of the draft misses? That’s really just Bednar and Mikulski, right? Bednar just hasn’t been healthy, and maybe they over-rated his athleticism coming out of college (that’s a critique I’ve heard scouts give him going back awhile now). Mikulski has certainly been a disappointment as well, and his motion just seems so complicated. But putting those two up against Black (who, as a third rounder, doesn’t seem to fit in the same sort of “pop up” bucket as Birdsong to me), Harrison, Whisenhunt, Swiney — it doesn’t seem like there’s a trend there of top picks missing to me? It’s really just Bednar casting an outsized shadow in that aspersion I think.

Jason S

It seems like a lot of prospect sites out there tend to think a lot of the Giants’ pitching prospects tend to have high reliever risk, and I'm curious if that's coming from the fact than many of the pitching prospects in the system tend to only have 2 legitimate pitches. I guess my question is a 4-seam fastball combined with a sinker and some third pitch like a slider, curve, or splitter (in Winn's case) enough to enable pitchers to be legitimate starting pitchers?

First and foremost — every pitching prospect has significant “reliever risk.” It’s HARD to make it as a major league starter — and even harder now when teams are much less willing to put up with the lackluster results of traditional 5th starter types. Sean Hjelle was a starter prospect until he wasn’t, same with Tristan Beck. Even for guys who make it as a starter, the bullpen can beckon as soon as the results start to decline (hello Mr. Manaea!). I personally believe that Keaton Winn can get over the hump — but would any of us be surprised if his ultimate role in the big leagues settles into the pen? Of course not! And trust me, if you spent the time reading those same sites’ blurbs on every other system you would come to the conclusion that the other 29 organizations also have a lot of reliever risk in their pitching prospects!

With that said, the typical attributes that cause scouts to assign heightened reliever risk to a prospect are (not necessarily in order): 1) violent, max effort delivery,
2) significant command issues, and/or 3) lack of a third pitch (did I just indirectly assign some reliever risk to Kyle Harrison? Like I say, everybody is a potential reliever until they prove that they’re not!).

So, yes, I think you are spot on. This is something I’ve commented on several times. There are a lot of pitchers in the system who don’t really have a major league third pitch — which is quite different from a minor league third pitch. Last year, Winn was a fastball, splitter, slider guy, but it was apparent to the Giants that the slider lagged behind the other two, and it’s mostly been shelved since (Winn attempted to master a cutter in the winter to give him that horizontal movement pitch that he needs, but ultimately went back to the old slider). Beck was throwing six or seven different pitches as a starter in Sacramento last year, but he’s focused heavily on two of them as he tries to retire major league batters (or three, if you want to separate the gyro slider and sweeper out). Hayden Birdsong has four pitches right now, but reports have two clear favorites in that repertoire and two so-so offerings. Getting to the top with three different average or above selections is a huge challenge. I think that’s part of why you’re seeing so many organizations asking for less of pitchers in a lot of ways — fewer innings, fewer pitches, fewer outs — and looking to aggregate quality innings, rather than rely on two or three “horses.”

Alexi Zemsky

Any word on when Chen Hsun Lee will debut?

No. He’s been battling some arm issues this year it sounds like. I didn’t see him at all in the spring (though I did speak to one scout who had), and it sounds like he was shut down pretty shortly thereafter.

A national baseball writer was talking about Aaron Judge’s toe the other day and noted off-hand that NSA agents couldn’t get a job with the Yankees’ medical staff because they couldn’t keep secrets well enough to qualify. The whole industry is that way and teams are even less inclined to talk about player health issues when it comes to the minor leagues. Though I know that won’t keep my curious readers from asking….

Jake

I know injury reports are tough to come by, but any word on Rayner Arias? Not to speculate but last I heard it was a season ender.

Speaking of which….

Let me be 100% clear on this issue — ANYTHING you have heard on Arias’ health is completely uninformed speculation. This is not a topic on which the Giants are talking — I’ve reached out to them to see if I could get any sort of comment and it is not forthcoming. Maybe we’ll see an enterprising journalist get something from Arias’ agent or the player himself will post something on Instagram, but be very skeptical on anything you see that isn’t coming directly from either the Giants or Arias.

With that said, there are some calendar mechanics at work here. The DSL season has a little over six weeks remaining in it (where is the summer going?). In rehab terms, that’s not a lot of time. An oblique strain could be season ending at this point. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see Arias again this year — but that’s not necessarily a comment on the severity of the injury or any potential repercussions.

Just to take a recent example, in the final week of spring training, Anthony Rodriguez injured his shoulder in a slide at 2b that had some surface level similarities to Arias’ injury. Rodriguez was taken off the field on a cart in clear discomfort. He missed about two months before he joined the San Jose team and has been a regular part of the lineup since then. Had that same injury taken place last week, it would have likely been season ending — but that doesn’t mean it was traumatic or in any way significant to the shape of his future development.

The real question with Arias is whether his injury is serious enough to require surgery or is simply a rest and rehab situation — and that is not something we’re likely to know for some time (the same way that we didn’t know about Vaun Brown’s winter knee surgery until players showed up in Scottsdale for spring training).

MikeH

Any news on Will Bednar? Seems to have disappeared again after a brief ACL showing.

PGBreaker

I haven't seen anything recently on Jairo Pomares and his rehab. Any news there?

I guess I just never will convince folks to stop asking injury questions, despite my repeated assertions that the club doesn’t much like to put out injury information on these kids. I get it. It’s hard to follow the progress of your favorite prospects when they’re not on the field. In both Bednar’s and Pomares’ case, their rehabs seem to be on hold at this point. Bednar last pitched on June 22 and Pomares last appearance in the lineup came two days later.

I would say that it’s not that hard to read between the lines there. Both guys have had setbacks of some nature. And I think in both cases there’s cause for concern. Both have had back issues for multiple seasons now, and, given the fact that neither gets very good marks from scouts for their basic athleticism, those could be long term problems. Not inevitably, of course — Tristan Beck had back issues for several years that he’s gotten a pretty good handle on how to manage at this point. But I think Beck is a better athlete than either Bednar or Pomares.

Maybe even more concerning for Bednar, when he was pitching, he once again was throwing the fastball in the 90-92 range, which is essentially where he’s sat pretty stubbornly as a pro, despite steady time off. It’s really hard to project him as a starter at all, and maybe as a major league pitcher of any role with the fastball velo sitting that low. Pomares’ value is certainly trending down with the loss of reps, too. One scout referred to him to me as a “one trick pony” as a prospect, “and the trick had better be pretty good to make up for the rest of his game.” When you have a player who absolutely has to mash to provide value, extended loss of playing time can really harm the development. At least, Pomares is still fairly young (he’ll turn 23 in August).

Barnaby Feder

Since you clearly need a question from way out there -- is there any hope of our ever seeing another knuckleball pitcher? Anyone in the draft? Do any other teams have one in the minors? 

Bonus question -- people have recently been recalling the amazing Marichal-Spahn game and it got me thinking, has any Giant pitcher in the minors been allowed to throw even as many as 100 pitches in a game in the past 10 years? Has anyone this year thrown as many pitches over 3 games as Marichal threw in that one outing? There is something exquisite about the CG pitching performance that is sadly missing from modern baseball.

Actually, the Altoona Curve have a knuckler whom they’ve unleashed on Richmond a couple times this year — just knowing that he’s likely to pitch in a game sends shivers down the entire roster. His name is Matt Eckelman, a 29-year-old who has been plugging away in the system since 2016. He’s been placed on the Development List lately, however, which I don’t think is a great sign for his future. I did also see a knuckleballer in a spring training A ball game a couple of years ago for the Rox, though Rob Emery (who homered in that game) told me that guy “isn’t a real knuckleballer.” That’s about it though. That is a genuine dying breed. I think at least some of that is due to the difficulty in finding someone who can catch the pitch.

Your second question sent me to the record books — which I, of course, love. Pitch data gets a little shaky before 2015, but I think you’d be surprised to know how common it was for starters to go 100 pitches in the not too distant past. On the 2016 Richmond staff, for instance, no fewer than 28 starts went up to or over the 100 pitch mark that year: Matt Gage (10x), Tyler Beede (7x), Kyle Crick (5x), Dan Slania (2x), Sam Coonrod (2x), Andrew Suarez (1x), Adalberto Mejia (1x). And that was just with Richmond — that group of starters added eight other 100 pitch games with other teams. Coonrod even had two 100 pitch efforts that year in High A San Jose — and he wasn’t the only guy there to do that either. Beede had the high water mark in Richmond that year, using 112 pitches to go 5.1 innings on August 23.

The following year Richmond had 21 starts that went over 100 pitches. After that year the numbers start going down (though whether a result of a changing industry or simply the makeup of the 2018-19 staffs, who is to say). Since the lost pandemic season, 100 pitch efforts have become much more rare. Sean Hjelle hit the century mark in his final start in 2021. And last year in Richmond, Kai-Wei Teng managed the feat three times, while Kyle Harrison had two different outings that were stretched to 102 pitches — interestingly enough they came in a single week against the Portland Sea Dogs in late June.

I’m absolutely with you on the loss to the game of the disappearing CG. The starting pitcher is in many ways the “protagonist” of a game, and seeing them disappear essentially in the first reel, Janet Leigh style, leaves a real a gap in the narrative. After all, who wasn’t on the edge of their seat rooting Logan Webb on to that CG ShO on Sunday? Now that’s compelling theater!

JK

The second half of Richmond's season, to me, seems like it will be of most interest to the 2024 Giants, to see how development continues for Brown, Luciano, Meckler, Black, Roupp, and Whisenhunt. For those six guys, what is one developmental step you would think would be most important for each guy, or, if more appropriate, what is one developmental step you would WANT to see each of them take.

Appreciate all the hard work, love reading your content!

Thanks JK! I appreciate you reading and supporting my work as well. Well, let’s see…for Marco Luciano, I think we want to see a little more pitch recognition on breaking balls and maybe even retune the balance so that he’s a tiny bit more aggressive early in counts. I think he’s very focused on working deep counts right now and that often puts him in a position of having to deal with quality breaking balls in two-strike counts, when a hittable fastball might have been let go in the first couple pitches. Mostly, though, I’m just hoping to see his good process lead to even better outcomes. For Vaun Brown, on the other hand, I’d love to see a little less chase, and a little more contact. Double A pitchers have been able to get count leverage on Brown by getting him to chase out of the strike zone a little too often early in at bats. Tightening that up should help him get to his hard contact a little more regularly.

Mason Black has already made quite a few adjustments this summer that are doing him a world of good, but I guess I would like to see his changeup become more of a usable weapon against right-handed hitters. I worry that the fastball-fastball-slider repertoire isn’t quite diversified enough. The same would go for Landen Roupp, who really is predominantly a two-pitch guy right now. A little variation might help (although I suspect a significant chunk of the rest of Roupp’s year might be spent on the IL, so this might be a 2024 To Do item). For Carson Whisenhunt, it’s really working on the fastball command and a more consistent breaking ball (perhaps Roupp can give him some tips there) that he has faith in. Wade Meckler is the really hard one because his particular skill set is so unique that I worry about knocking it all down like a jenga tower if he tried to do something to add more power to his game. For Meckler, I might suggest just keep on keeping on.

David

Could you talk a little about Logan Wyatt? He always had a great eye, but he seems to finally be hitting for some power with a modest increase in strikeout rate. What changed? He's giving me LaMonte Wade Jr vibes at first base.

That would certainly be a pretty great outcome. Wyatt is a really big guy, which I think has always made it a bit confounding that he didn’t hit for more power (I remember Kevin Goldstein, then of Fangraphs, earlier with the Astros and now part of the Twins organization, going on quite a harangue about that several years back). The Giants certainly spent a lot of time trying to encourage him to tap into his natural strength and power in the years after drafting him, but the pandemic and injuries interceded. Maybe it’s just taken a little time for him to get where he needs to be physically to start making these adjustments.

That said, before we get too excited, it’s always worth repeating that it is really hard to make it to the majors as a 1b only prospect — something Wade, who came up as an outfielder, didn’t have to do. There’s tremendous pressure for 1b-only prospects to develop their offensive potential to something like the 90th percentile outcome, because they have so little ability to positively impact a major league roster beyond the bat. Wyatt’s teammate Andy Thomas, for instance, brings a similar “walks and power” profile, but his additional ability to play some behind the plate gives that profile a much better chance of finding a path to the top (as we’ve seen with Blake Sabol, the work behind the plate doesn’t need to be that strong to convince a team to give that profile a try).

With that in mind, Wyatt’s career .252 batting average does create some questions as to how good his hit tool is — even this year in his breakout season, he’s hitting just .265. While there’s plenty of OBP on top of that, batting average is still a pretty useful number in a development context — the vast majority of major leaguers, especially major leaguers who make a living on the corner, were .300 hitters in the lower minors against low level competition. Low batting averages at lower levels (especially for older hitters) can be indicative of some in zone issues that the best pitchers in the world will find a way to exploit, causing some of those walks to dry up. Still Wyatt’s in-zone contact rate in Eugene this year was 85%, which is certainly strong enough (better than Patrick Bailey’s was last year at the same level, for instance).

Those are things to keep in mind when thinking about a player like Wyatt — but I certainly don’t want to prevent your good vibes from growing! Development improvements can come at any time and often in surprising forms. For Wyatt, maybe just being healthy at last and getting the reps he needs is opening up a new level of ability for him. As you imply, his discerning eye is going to keep him interesting to this front office.

Scott C.

It's great to see Victor Bericoto getting promoted to Double-A. I've been intrigued by his well-rounded offensive game, including slugging .533 at High-A despite being listed at 155 pounds. Wow! How do you see his prospect stock at this point? What's next in his development/ where do the Giants want to see growth? And is he equally adept at RF, LF and 1B?

I feel like I’m on pretty solid ground in saying that that listed weight is …uh….no longer current. However, Bericoto is another kid with a decently discerning eye. There are only three players in the system who have seen more pitches than him this year, and his average of 3.66 pitches per plate appearance is second behind Will Wilson.

That’s been an element of Bericoto’s game since he was a 17-year-old in the DSL, but he hadn’t shown much power before hitting 16 HRs in Eugene this year. That said, he looked like a player who was going to have a hitting breakout in what is only his second full season. Bericoto missed essentially two full years in 2020-21, when injury wiped out the season following the lost 2020 pandemic year. Not surprisingly, jumping up to Low A San Jose in 2022 was a challenging assignment, and his league average production in San Jose was actually an impressive achievement given the context, especially when you watched his growth throughout the season. Bericoto left a lot of his hard hitting on the ground last season in San Jose, but he’s been much better at getting balls up into the air this season, with the ground ball rate dropping from 48% down to 42%.

With all of that said, reviews I’ve gotten from scouts has been perhaps a little muted, given the loud numbers. He has a unique swing that scouts worry will cut off his power (yes, despite the power eruption in the NWL), and he doesn’t several folks I’ve talked with would like to see more athleticism from him. A lot of people look at him as a player who will ultimately be limited to 1b, or maybe stick in LF without providing a ton of defensive value. That’s a profile that scouts frequently tend to be dismissive of, so he could well be a player who outhits projections (not to make this comparison, but I remember a R-R 1b prospect named Paul Goldschmidt getting pretty condescending scouting reports as he was hitting his way up through the minors back in the day, for many of the same reasons). Unless something really dramatic happens in the second half in Double A, I’m skeptical the Giants would need to protect Bericoto from the Rule 5 draft this winter, for instance — not because he’s not a talented hitter, but rather because corner-only guys aren’t typically take in the Rule 5. That’s a really hard profile to carry on a big league bench all year (just imagine the Giants trying to keep Blake Sabol on their roster this year if he couldn’t catch, for instance).

But I think that also gets to your final question. I’m sure the Giants would like to see Bericoto work on his quick twitch athleticism and body composition — maybe get a little faster, a little more dynamic, and work his way into being a solid corner outfielder who can provide value in multiple ways (to go back to the Goldy well, something you heard a lot from scouts who saw him in the majors was how much he had worked himself into a far better and faster runner in the pros than he had been in college). But certainly the Giants enjoy his commitment to working at bats, looking for pitches to hunt, and sticking to a game plan. He’s made big strides offensively this year. Next up is improving the all around game.

Ginn_John

I have been closely following the group of pitchers selected in the 2021 draft. The first nine picks were all pitchers, and we've seen and heard many good things about them, especially from Roger M. and There R Giants. How are they progressing in their second (or maybe third) year of professional baseball? Especially interested in Mason Black, Eric Silva and Seth Lonsway. Also wondering if we will soon see good pitching from first round pick Will Bednar and/or second round pick Mike Mikulski. Rohan Handa was an interesting pick. Anything happening there? Our Giants need some good young pitchers from this class. How soon might we see them in SF?

Sadly, John, with two major exceptions, the trend lines have been on a downward trajectory for most of that pitching class almost from Day One. Bednar has had trouble staying on the field, continually bothered by back tenderness that originally put him on the IL in June of 2022 and (along with a bout of COVID) has prevented him from getting in much work since then. When he has seen the field (as he did over four starts in June in the complex league), the stuff has been well down from the guy who was MVP of the College World Series. He’s mostly been in the 90-92 range with his fastball as a pro. And he’s once again taken a leave of absence, as his last outing was on June 22nd.

Mikulski hasn’t had the same health issues, but his stuff too has really backed up. After pitching his way to the top of the 2021 draft with upper 90s stuff at Fordham, his fastball has wavered between the low 90s and high 80s in pro ball, and his complicated mechanics worry some scouts. The litany of troubles seems to go on: Handa has never pitched professionally, as stubborn shoulder soreness ultimately led to surgery late last year. Silva’s stuff and command has backed up this year as well, and he was re-assigned to the Arizona complex this weekend to try to work out his issues. Lonsway owns one of the system’s prettiest curves, but he struggles with his control, walking about five and a half batters per 9 this year in Eugene, where he currently sports a 6.41 ERA and has bounced back and forth between starting and relieving.

The two clear success stories from the draft right now appear to be Black and 12th rounder Landen Roupp. Black was recently named the Eastern League’s Pitcher of the Month for June (he was also the Pitcher of the Week in the final week of that month), and he’s been throwing his best ball as a pro in recent outings. While his 22 inning scoreless streak was ended last Friday night (thanks to an unearned run), he also struck out a season high nine batters in that game. Since June 2, he has a microscopic 0.34 ERA and a robust 39% K rate. Pretty clearly, Black is going to be the first member of this class to reach Triple A, which puts him in a good position to become the first to reach the majors as well.

The only competition in that race would be Roupp, who pitched his way to Double A in his first full season in 2022, and has pitched exceptionally well this year in between injuries. Over 10 starts, Roupp has a 1.74 ERA and an outstanding 42 strikeouts to nine walks. Unfortunately, Roupp has recently hit the IL after tweaking a muscle in his leg, which is probably going to take a bite out the second half of his season.

Rae

Having trouble phrasing this as a question, so I’ll just ask if you agree with my perception. Despite the (flawed) narrative that last year was the injury year on the farm, I’ve found the number of injuries this year remarkably high (even excluding more recent ones like Arias/Roupp). There was a week in early May when every player in the org who had exceeded rookie eligibility was either in MLB or on an IL somewhere, that’ll make the depth look pretty bad! And in my roster tracking, I don’t think more than one affiliate at a time has had a full roster (Richmond mostly has due to the lower limit), certainly not for any prolonged stretch. Last year that seemed a rare occurrence in the first half. Does this match your perception?

I’m not sure that I do, to be honest. The Giants certainly have an old club with a lost of players with past injury histories — both of which make future injuries more likely. But I don’t have the sense that they are being inordinately afflicted by the injury bug — in fact, I don’t believe they’re in the top two or three clubs in terms of days lost to IL this year. I think that injuries are more of less the normal state of professional athletics and, when they happen to your club or to important members of your club, they stand out a bit more.

As for the minor league rosters, it’s true that they have run under full capacity most of this year. That’s in large part due to the large amount of players who started the year in extended (thanks to, yes, injuries in the spring or winter) and the 180 player maximum which cuts so close to the bone.

I’ll put it this way, as I’m starting to work on my “major storylines of the first half” post for this week, “injuries” was certainly not one of the categories I had considered including.

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And with that, let’s close up the bag for this week! As I said at the top, there’s plenty more content coming the next few days, so keep checking that Inbox, or look for new posts in your Substack mobile app! That starts with a second day draft post coming in just a little bit.

But before we get to all of that, let’s check in briefly on the little baseball action that was actually going on yesterday, down in the Dominican Republic.

Dominican Summer League

Giants Black lost at DSL Angels, 3-0

Giants Orange beat DSL Cardinals, 5-4

Team Black has run into a bit of a rough patch lately, losing five of their past seven games and dropping from their first place perch in the DSL South Division. They’ll need the middle of the order bats — Dennys Riera, Carlos Concepcion, Moises de la Rosa — pick up for the departed Rayner Arias and Yosneiker Rivas. But it’s tough to lose to quality bats like that and still compete. Not surprisingly, the Runs per Game average has been dropping lately as well as the Win-Loss record (yesterday’s whitewashing doesn’t help either).

Team Orange 3b, Dario Reynoso, has cooled off significantly from his torrid start. Entering yesterday’s game, he had just one hit in July over 16 at bats. But he rocketed a double down the 3b line in his first at bat, jumping the Orange out to a 2-0 lead and later drew two walks. Nine of his 21 hits on the year have gone for extra-bases, which is why the 18-year-old sports a .185 ISO — very solid for a kid the age of a high school senior playing in his first pro season.

Seventeen year old Venezuelan outfielder Miguel Blanco had two more hits, including his first professional double, and scored twice. Since returning to the lineup in late June after an absence of about 10 days, Blanco had gone 11 for 31 (.355) with a double, triple, and homer, and has struck out just twice in 37 PA.

Orange starting pitcher Jose Gonzalez is an older pitcher (21) in his third DSL season, and his strikeout numbers are not particularly impressive this year — which doesn’t sound like a great profile overall. But he was getting his fastball up there in the 93-95 range yesterday, and it looked like it had some hop on it. You can never tell when these young bodies are going to start transitioning to some man strength, perhaps this is Gonzalez’ time.

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Coming Up

DSL Giants Black (TBD) vs DSL Nats (TBD), 8:00 am
DSL Giants Orange (TBD) at DSL Pirates Black (TBD), 8:00 am

Look for a draft-related post coming soon featuring some very pro-Giants comments from first round pick Bryce Eldridge and a look at the Giants’ Day Two draft haul. Coming soon!

In the meantime, enjoy this fine graphic announcing Heliot Ramos being named PCL Player of the Week!