"Back for More" Edition of the Free for All Mailbag
Hello again! Been a while, hasn’t it? Hope you’ve all been keeping yourself well.
I guess it’s not too surprising that the combination of my Dominican trip and the draft would lead to mailbag overstuffed to “Miracle on 34th Street” proportions. So, settle in for a long one, because you readers certainly had thoughts! (and questions!).
Let’s get to them all, right after a word from out sponsors:
Hello Roger! Hope it's been a productive and enjoyable trip to the Dominican Republic. A few questions/thoughts about this year's draft class:
1) After signing, do you think any of them will play in our organization this year? I think as a rule most new draftees don't play professionally that first summer (they've just completed a season in HS or college), but we know some do.
2) Assuming the maximum number of MiLB players remains at 165, any thoughts on players who might be released (as happened to Jairo Pomares and Vaun Brown) to make room for the new guys? I respect that you probably can't/won't mention specific players, but whatever thoughts you can share would be of interest.
3) Any early thoughts on which draftees might develop into rising stars or at least fast breakouts? Any player you might see as a dark horse to surprise and rise through the system quickly?
Thanks John, it was pretty tremendous! I really learned a lot, and I hope I was able to do my bit to raise awareness for Giants’ fans of some of the talent down there (plus got to stick my toes in the Caribbean a bit, which is nice).
The amount of playing time that newly drafted players get in has really waxed and waned over the years. Back when short season ball existed and the draft was in early June, you’d see players routinely get in some 250 PA or 60, 70, even 80 innings pitched in their debut summer. And then there was the period when the signing deadline was moved back to mid-August — that really cut down on the playing time for some newbies, including our new President of Baseball Operations, who played in just ten games and had 45 trips to the plate before calling it a summer.
The current situation has been specifically engineered to keep drafted players from counting against the reserve limit, but we saw last year that quite a number of the draft class did get into games eventually — albeit quite late in the season for many of them. Six of the 17 members of the Giants 2024 draft class were activated and spent time playing in San Jose (and even Eugene in one case). The breakdown of that number was pretty telling, however: six of nine position players who were drafted were activated, but none of the eight pitchers were (although Hunter Dryden was assigned to the San Jose playoff roster). There was one UDFA pitcher who saw active duty: right-hander Cam Pferrer.
I’d expect something similar to happen this year. First round pick Gavin Kilen will likely be activated pretty quickly, the way James Tibbs III was last year, and the rest will play unofficial camp games in Scottsdale, with a handful probably seeing some time with San Jose, presuming their roster gets a little less crowded. I would say the college hitters are the ones most likely to get their feet wet this year, with maybe Cohen, Meola, Maldonado, and Bravo in the lead for opportunities. (Michael Holmes was pretty enthusiastic in his comments about Barajas as well, so I’d love to see him on a roster if he’s deemed ready).
As far as I can tell, there’s no immediate pressures on the domestic reserve list, which my editor and spreadsheet keeper, Jeff, tells me is currently at 150. That said, releases are a constant part of this business, and, especially as the club looks for playing time opportunities for certain players (the release of Pomares and Brown was very clearly a way to make room for the desired promotions of Davidson and Bandura), they do happen this time of year. I don’t really think I need (or want) to make any specific guesses on that score, but if you pay attention to playing time and performances, it’s usually not that hard to get a picture.
As for your final question, the beauty of baseball is you never really know how things are going to go and who’s going to respond to professional coaching. I’m certainly very intrigued by what I’ve heard of Cohen, and it sounds like the Giants are pretty exciting to work with him as well. There may be something of a more athletic, better defending version of Wade Meckler in there, with a chance to get to some more power in his swing. Meola and Bravo are both players who, if they started hitting the ball a little harder would be very interesting up the middle athletes. And, as I said above, I’m quite interested in seeing what Barajas’ bat looks like.
Hi Rog and welcome back.
I'd be really interested in whether you were able to glean any views on how the Giants’ DSL set up is perceived by other orgs down there. It really seems that over the past couple of years that the Dominican clubs/international scouting have been the best performing 'business unit' within the Giants, as shown not only by winning records but also by the fact that the highest ranked prospects are joining (Josuar this year, plus the rumours for the future). There seems to be a virtuous circle going on down there! Am I reading too much into this? Is there a view in the industry as to whether the Giants are 'best in class' at what they are doing?
Thanks Duncan. It was an awesome experience. I think if there’s a single org viewed as “best in class” right now it’s probably still the Brewers — moving Jackson Chourio, Jesús Made and several other potential big leaguers through in a matter of just a handful of years will do that for you.
But yes, I do think there is a strong “I like what the Giants are doing down there” sentiment that’s growing around the industry. That will need to be sealed with real impact at the major league level (and I think there is still a lot of hope that Luis Matos can grow into a real player, though it’s been a bumpy ride), but the volume of interesting talent that is starting to flow through that area can’t be denied — four of my top 10 and half of the top 20 and 30 in most recent re-rank came out of the international arm of the org. That’s really helping supplement the level of talent.
There was a lot of scouting presence at the Giants’ complex while I was there. Among them, a member of the Milwaukee org actually comped Josuar Gonzalez to his own org’s Made, which I thought was incredibly high praise, and made other very complimentary remarks on the Giants’ recent international work. If the Brewers’ officials think it’s high quality, that’s good enough for me!
Hi Roger, could you provide a deeper analysis of Gonzalez? Scouting reports from many sources, including yourself, are very positive about him, but he’s batting below .250 (with a fairly typical BABIP). From what I can see, the only standout aspect is his speed and stolen bases.
I realize that half a season isn’t a large sample, and it’s possible he’s working on specific adjustments. However, based on surface-level numbers, his performance seems "okay" rather than "great." Can you help explain how we should interpret his season so far?
Yeah, that’s a classic question, Yeti. What you’re getting at is the dichotomy of performance vs tools as filtered through age vs level. You’re quite right, his performance, statistically, doesn’t jump off the screen at you. But the hardest thing to really wrap the mind around when looking at prospects is the degree to which performance matters or doesn’t matter. We talk about this a lot with older players having big performance seasons — since we’re on the IFA theme, think about guys like Angel Guzman or Jesus Alexander, who were the statistical stars of last season’s DSL teams, but didn’t get nearly the same prospect love (or any) as guys who hadn’t performed nearly as well like Oliver Tejada. Or, if you want, think back to the now sadly departed Vaun Brown’s dominance as an older player at San Jose.
But the other way to look at it is that performance for really young and inexperienced players isn’t necessarily all that important — because you expect these players to learn greater skills as they gain more experience. As I note elsewhere in this mailbag, this is the common arc of most college careers. A lot of 1st round college hitters in their junior years were not that great in their freshman years (or had big red flags in their games). What matters more than their performance — which is skills and experience-based — is their physical tools. Because if you figure that experience will bring an advance in game skills, then the question is: what are these tools going to look like once they’re married to greater experience and skills (and granted, in a lot of cases that marriage never comes to fruition). Think of it as a graph with two trendlines: one always going up, and one gradually coming down over time. The one going up is skills/experience, the one steadily coming down (after about age 25) is physical tools. You want that tools line to start up as high as it can be, so that you have a longer and more productive decline period as the skills line is coming up to, first, meet and, then, cross over it.
You are quite right that Gonzalez’s season this year has been most notable for showing plus plus speed and legitimate defensive chops — range, hands, arm, there’s little doubt that he has what he needs to be an impact defender at the Six. He also has tremendous bat speed — and we’re starting to get a clearer picture at the major league level of the direct correlation of bat speed to exit velocities and, ultimately, production. Just recently, that bat speed has started to show up in power, as he’s homered now in consecutive games — and came darn close a couple times in my final game on the island. He also has a strong sense of the strike zone and recognizes spin pretty well. Interestingly, he recognizes it, but he doesn’t like swinging at it, and a lot of his strikeouts have come from taking breaking balls for called third strikes. However, his first professional HR came on a breaking ball that hung up at the belt — so another positive step for the youngster.
That’s a pretty great tools package that is filled with a lot of important 60s on the scouting card. Now there is skills development needed. He makes a lot of contact right now, but he’s hitting a lot of balls on the ground and has some bat path work to do along the way. But there’s plus bat speed, some sneaky pop, good contact skills, good approach, plus plus speed, and defensive actions and arm that you feel confident is sticking at shortstop and being a benefit there — all in the package of a very confident-looking kid who knows he’s headed for better things. That’s a great place to start — a place that’s far superior to most of his direct contemporaries — even if the stat line doesn’t jump out at you. (As an aside, he’s also got truly an 80-grade flow going on.)
TL:DR: at this age tools trump performance. Yes, it would be more gratifying from the outside to see him have a monster statistical year, or even something like Level did last year. But not having that kind of statistical success is not going to put scouts off him at this age — go back and look at what Francisco Lindor was doing coming out of high school as an 18-year-old, to make the obvious comparison. Check back when he’s 19 or 20 for stat line success. For now, it’s All Tools Ahead!
Hey Roger. Obviously, actually being able to put wood on a baseball is a crucial skill for any prospect, and the Giants have no shortage of hit-tool-challenged players who otherwise could be studs (Luciano, McCray, etc). I'm just wondering how often you've seen prospects like this make substantial improvements? Have you seen any/many encouraging examples, even outside the organization, of former whiff-meisters who finally figured it out? Or is this just usually a hand/eye coordination thing that you kind of have or you don't?
I think that’s a good and important question, Swaggy. Let me just start by saying: there are certainly lots of examples of players improving on strikeout rates, and I’ll tell you an easy place to find those examples. Look at the college careers of highly drafted players and you will find a number of guys making steady improvements in their rate of contact. A really dramatic one for instance, belongs to the former Giants’ prospect, James Tibbs III, who started his college career with a 31% K rate (in college!) and ended up shaving it down to 12% in his final season. That’s some work! Gavin Kilen always had a low strikeout rate in college, but, by his own admission, he made serious strides in his plate discipline over the years, leading to far less chase outside the zone.
Implicitly sitting within that anecdote are some important mitigating factors to look for: how young is the player and how long is his track record of struggling to make contact? Is he showing improvement year to year? And of course, not all contact-phobia is the result of the same underlying issue. A lot of players pile up the Ks because they’re chasing bad pitches — which can be curbed. Some do it because they have trouble making contact with balls in the strike zone — that’s probably harder to fix. Some because they can’t catch up to velocity, and some because they can’t pick up spin. And, because pitching these days is so otherworldly, there’s probably a lot who experience a combination of all! Reps can help with some of troubles, mechanical fixes with others (the Giants have done a great job this year with Dakota Jordan’s stance, putting him in a better position to see the ball earlier). But if young players are showing steady improvement, then I think there’s reason to hope that they can mitigate their weaknesses to the point that their strengths can come out to play more often.
Not surprisingly, if you want to find the greatest improvements, look at the greatest players. Both Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani (without a doubt the two best hitters in our current era) have made significant strides in their K rates at the major league level! Aaron Judge struck out 42% of the time in his short debut, and ran rates over 30% for his first three full years in the majors. Now he’s a .300 hitter who strikes out a little more than league average. Ohtani has made similar strides in his career. Ronald Acuña, Jr. may have had the greatest improvement in history, when he rather astonishingly went from a 24% strikeout rate to an 11% rate in one season! Is anyone surprised to learn that that was by far his greatest year? (Sadly, for RAJ, his K rate more or less reverted to career norms after that).
I think clearly, the longer a problem persists, and the bigger it is (40% K rates harder to fix than 30%, etc) and the harder it probably is to overcome. But the fixes aren’t always huge ones, and you never know when somebody is going to stumble across the thing that makes it click.
Hi Roger. After a few years of wondering if he'd make it Heliot Ramos has become a fixture for the Giants. Do you think the Giants can get a similar return from Marco Luciano if they allow him more time to develop in the outfield or is it too late?
It’s certainly never too late, as I implied above — nor is anything ever really fixed and settled permanently. When the Baseball Gods get angry, they tend to “accidentally” knock all the chess pieces on the floor and make you start the game over again. I’d really like to hope that Ramos is a fixture at this point, but man all that blue on his Savant page really does sort of unnerve me (as does his increasingly erratic defense)!
Anyway, it’s interesting that you set these two players up as a comparison because, for me, Ramos’ presence on the Giants really complicates Luciano’s path to arriving there himself. I struggle to think of a way that these two players AND Rafi Devers can co-exist productively on the same team. For all the good that Ramos has done, he has simply been a brutal fielder this year. His reads and routes have been inconsistent to a non-MLB level, his arm is scattershot, and his hands have been wholly unreliable.
So, how do you construct an outfield that has both Ramos and Luciano — whose defensive ceiling is probably somewhere around Ramos’ level? You could say that one could be DH, but Devers is there. The impending arrival of Bryce Eldridge adds yet another complication. When you’re theoretically trying to build a team with “pitching and defense” as your mantra, there’s a limit to have many DHs you can have running around on the field at the same time, and I’m afraid that Luciano likely puts them over the edge — although, until the time comes that Eldridge is ready, if Devers can play 1b in the second half, there’s a possibility that Luci could DH (Jerar Encarnacion is in this conversation as well, with a ticking rehab clock that has been turned on).
Now look, “these things tend to work themselves out” is a baseball cliché for a reason. All sorts of things could prevent the Giants from ever having to worry about what to do with a Ramos-Devers-Eldridge-Luciano positional lineup — injuries, protracted slumps, lack of development, trades, you name it. The most likely thing is the Giants never really have to worry about this. I do think that Luciano still has some sort of major league future ahead of him, but I’m not sure the fates are aligning to put that future on the field at Oracle Park. I would not be at all surprised to see him end up in some other organization by August 1st. (On the other hand, I suppose there’s some world in which it ends up that Luciano stays and Ramos is the one who didn’t quite make it? That would be pretty shocking, I know, but weirder things have been known to happen — remember Chris Brown’s slide from young, exciting All Star to out of the game in a handful of years?)
Do you have any thoughts or speculations on the upcoming trade deadline? Buster and co. have been pretty proactive so far making moves...and some notable prospects are getting older or running out of minor league options. Seems like we could see some action!
Speaking of which!
You know, Sam, I had an entire answer written up here about Posey’s aggressive and competitive nature and bold moves and…. to be honest, I’m just not sure how the front office could watch this team right now and think that being aggressive is the right move. It’s not just the losses, either. The play has been ugly, sloppy, and unfocused far too often, and right now, so many different elements of the team are leaking oil that I’m not sure which leak you’d choose to plug first. You’d hate to watch the best years of Logan Webb’s career pass by without taking advantage of them, but you’d equally hate to give away a Jhonny Level or Keyner Martinez on this group’s chances of success. Tough choice!
I really don’t know. Maybe fortune favors the brave, but these players are not exactly forcing bold behavior from their front office right now. Maybe some smaller moves to bolster the pitching staff (just for player health if nothing else). I can’t imagine Posey would swallow hard enough to check out and look to sell. But who knows, maybe my first answer was right, and he’ll go big game hunting. That’s usually my first instinct…but man, this has been hard to watch with any real trust and faith for a while now.
Can you see Braxton Roxby in the Show this year?
He’s in Triple-A and really having a nice year, so it’s certainly possible! I’d imagine we’ll see the club try to shore up its relief corps with a deal or two for veterans in the next couple of weeks, rather than sally forth into the Dog Days hoping for newbies to step forward, but injuries have a tendency to bite hard over the final haul, and Roxby is having the kind of year that could press his case if the need comes up.
I will say that it’s a sign of where the game is these days that I say all that and immediately find myself thinking: 95-96 mph is a little short for a reliever these days. And it doesn’t help him that he’s not on the 40-man. But there’s no doubting that he’s having a tremendous season, and his slider/sweeper combo with a four-seam chaser is a pretty powerful three-pitch mix.
Hi Roger! Glad you enjoyed your DSL trip and thank you for all the good work you do. You mentioned recently that a lot of the interest in Giants’ prospects from potential trade partners has focused on ACL-level prospects (e.g. Jose Bello earlier.) What are the pros and cons of this?
For example, does it limit the players the Giants may be able to go after? Is it good that they don’t have to give up prospects closer to the majors? What might be different if the Giants had plenty of AA prospects, for example?
Thanks, Will. It was a one-of-a-kind experience!
I think the pros and cons here are pretty simple. Teams that are “selling” are always looking for high upside players who are close to the majors first and foremost — for the obvious reason that there’s more certainty with guys with longer track records. You’ll typically see a complex level flyer type be the third or fourth guy in a major deal — as indeed Bello was — rather than the first guy.
I’d say if teams are looking at the Giants’ farm and being more interested in the younger, less experienced players with further to go than they are players in the upper minors, that could definitely restrict the potential pool of players the Giants could pursue in trades. They aren’t bereft of those kinds of players of course — the Carsons have value, Davidson is now in Double-A. And, of course, they could deal from the major league pool, as they did with Kyle Harrison, but they might have to be willing to move Hayden Birdsong to do that, which is obviously a risky proposition. On the whole, though, I feel like a lot of the excitement around the Giants’ farm this year has been generated in the ACL and San Jose. We’ll see if that’s enough to attract a big piece in the next couple of weeks (like NorCal native, Joe Ryan, for instance, whose mom is a huge Giants’ fan, and who, in my opinion, would be a dream addition to this team when I’m feeling more positive than I was in the previous answer).
My question is regarding how the players are found by the scouts. Is the game of baseball so prevalent and popular that most youngsters have a great chance to play in their towns, schools etc. and the scout travels around looking for talent on ball fields? Or is a pickup baseball game fairly rare (like it is in the US, at least where I live) and the scout is more looking for exceptional athleticism and HE steers the kid towards baseball?
Hi PG, in Latin America, most development happens in baseball academies, which are run by trainers (or buscones, in the vernacular). Buscones seek local talent at shockingly young ages and begin cultivating players for showcases with major league teams in time. Historically, most work in academies has been “showcase-based.” In other words, they hit, throw, and run a lot, but don’t always get in much game action. That’s the reason why game-skill levels that I was watching in the Dominican are generally so low. Tracking fly balls, for instance, was truly difficult for a lot of these kids.
That has been changing over the last decade or so, however, as more tournament play has come into being. My last night in the DR, a youth baseball team from Brazil was staying in my hotel — I’d guess they were 14 or 15 from looking at them? Presumably, they were there for a tournament of some kind. One young player I spoke with last week from Curaçao was brought to an MLB run showcase in Arizona, which he said had really helped a lot of kids from his area (this 17-year-old, by the way, was fully fluent in four different languages, as I guess most kids in Curaçao are, putting us Americans to shame). Other players I’ve spoken to from the Hispanic diaspora have played events in Florida and Texas, getting in front of MLB scouts that way. MLB has also helped organize league play in the Dominican and Venezuela, as well as events around the world — including Europe, which has a burgeoning baseball scene complete with decently high-level tournament play (the WBC has really helped spur some of this, by the way).
I suppose the answer is that it’s the local buscones who are on the scout for athleticism among the really young players, and they then take responsibility for initial training. And as players get into their teens, there are a variety of venues that provide scouting opportunities, including such really high-level international tournaments as the Pan-American games and even world-wide tournaments. These are age-based tournaments — you’ve no doubt seen me refer to such things as 15U, 18U etc national teams. These are “15 and under” or “18 and under” teams that are playing internationally against national teams from all over the world. Kyle Harrison and Bryce Eldridge, for instance, were stars on their Team USA 18U clubs, which competed for World Cup Gold Medals. Harrison, if I’m not mistaken, faced off against a very young Adrián Sugastey for the Panamanian national team in that setting, and there have been other paths crossed as well. Djean Macares, who was part of this year’s IFA class for the Giants, improved his standing by starring for the Dutch National team in a Euro-tournament last year, and Josuar Gonzalez played exceptionally well on a national team featuring mostly older players last year as well.
The increase over time of those sorts of ultra-competitive game environments has, I understand, really improved the ability of teams to scout these young players.
Hey, speaking of which, Luis Hernandez, whom the Giants expect to make the crown jewel of their 2026 IFA signing class, had a strong campaign in the Venezuelan professional summer league, winning the award for Top Young Player with a .346/.386/.452 line (this from friend of the site, GPT, who is always on top of international play). Hernandez went 2 for 4 in the league’s championship game to help his team (Samanés), claim the league title. Former Giant, Gorkys Hernandez, was playing on the opposing side, to give you a sense of the level of competition.
Thanks for all your work Roger, loved the info on the DSL and learned a lot.
You alluded to this on your post [last week], but do you know what is holding up some of the high performing prospects in Low- and High-A? I think the slower promotion approach of the Buster era is good and I’m glad players are getting a chance to really dominate a level, but it just seems like between Jordan, Davidson, Hipwell, Christian, etc. there’s a lot of hitters that are just dominating pitching at their level and haven’t moved yet. Should we expect guys to spend a full year at each level at this point? Or are they all being held up for more wholistic reasons? E.g. defense, base running, etc.
I guess “ask and answered” Trevor. We’ve now seen Davidson, Bandura, and Christian move up, and I suspect Jordan would have been this week as well, had a strained oblique not sidelined him for a bit.
To retrospectively answer, however, I do want to add that evaluation of the players themselves is only one part of the equation. There also has to be opportunity available at the team they’re moving up to, and that can be part of the holdup, too. The releases of Pomares and Brown were made to clear room for Davidson and Bandura — which means the team absolutely had to be ready to cut ties to those two players without regret, and I can understand trying to give them both as much leash as possible before making a really difficult decision.
I’d also caution against saying that these players were “dominating pitching at their level.” While the stat lines have been strong in certain respects, if you remember that Down on the Farm post I highlighted earlier in the summer, elevated strikeout rates at low levels, particularly from older players, is often a flag for underlying issues, and several members of that San Jose group do have strikeout rates that bear watching, especially given their age.
Still, I think we’re all excited to see what these guys can do with the new challenge. I certainly have a new spring in my step heading down to Richmond today (well, given the state of my step these days, that’s only a metaphorical spring).
Kent Iverson
Hi Roger,
Welcome back and thank you for filling the AS break with great content! Some time ago, you wrote about the Giants' players at complex level looking smaller and less toolsy compared to (I think it was) the Rangers' squad. I believe that you commented that this might be a reflection of a difference in organizational drafting philosophies. My question is: do the players drafted by the Giants this past week seem consistent with the "smaller and less toolsy" profile noted previously?
My pleasure Kent — glad you enjoyed it!
What you’re remembering is a scout’s description of watching the Spring Breakout game between the Giants’ prospects and the Rangers’. And, yes, I think it’s fair to say that the Rangers and Giants have historically had different approaches to player evaluations (both in the draft and international signings). Rangers’ teams always have massively twitchy, tools-mavens populating their minor league system — kids to dream on. And, I think because of that, they almost always have a better prospect reputation within the industry. But one thing that goes with that is a high attrition rate, and the Rangers’ prospect attrition over the years in pursuing something of a boom or bust philosophy has been pretty appalling. They have “busted” with remarkable frequency and hit pretty seldomly over the years — how long was Leody Taveras populating the upper ranks of Top 100 lists, only to end up waiver wire fodder in the end? And he’s the tip of a very long iceberg.
As for the incoming draft class, they certainly got a lot of up-the-middle players, some of whom have speed. I wouldn’t say that they exactly upped the twitchy quotient much, however, though Cohen and Maldonado both seem to have pretty good athleticism. Of course, those really twitchy guys don’t tend to last long in the draft — you don’t find them hanging around on Day Two!
1) Given their age, experience, and reputation, it seemed like the first handful of draft picks this year might be underslot to try and take a HS hitter later. But then all of the non-first round HS players got drafted anyway—by other teams (like Alec Blair and Mason Ligenza, who unfortunately was taken by the Dodgers). It seems far more likely that the Giants weren’t targeting one of those players anyway given they had the chance to pick them and didn’t. In that context, it really seems they shot themselves in the foot with compensation pick management (I think this happens to be an underrated problem with the recent front offices). Anyway, do you expect most of the first few picks to be under-slot? Do you think they were targeting a HS player who was drafted elsewhere? If not, it seems pretty hard to justify taking the players they did at the picks they did from a naive draft-ranking perspective. Obviously, if the player succeeds it doesn’t matter. So, the explanation is that they think Cohen, for example, can just be that good? I’m sorry, I just don’t buy that.
2) What do you think it says about the organization that so many players were taken from the northeast? Presumably there is one area scout with a loud voice. But it strikes me as a potential problem that a single perspective has so much authority? It would be one thing if that voice had a long track record of success, but as far as I can tell, they don’t.
3) Michael Holmes came over with Farhan, but didn’t leave with Farhan. What do you think the Giants see in his track record to justify keeping him in charge? On what grounds do you think any organization decides to move on from its draft team, if not from an a fortiori regime change justification?
4) I notice in your posts you largely refrain from injecting your personal opinions on certain players when they are negative. Fair enough! But you did express your opinion that the Giants ought to be taking big, high upside, swings in your pre-draft post. I happen to agree with you. I suppose we are both disappointed then that the Giants seem to have the exact opposite view. If you think there is an objective sense in which high upside picks are good for the Giants, presumably you therefore dislike this draft in an objective sense. If so, do you feel it is not your place to say so? Such criticism would be consistent with refraining from judgements about individual players. And why do you think the Giants feel this way, given that the paradigmatic example of the upside play pick is carrying most of the system right now?
Goodness! That’s a lot of questions! Canine, I get the impression that you’re upset!
I want to first and foremost address the issue you raise at the end that I’m not critical of players. I think that’s off base personally — in fact, I wonder sometimes if I’m too critical of players (I can think of a couple that I’ve had to be very mindful about praising and not constantly nagging on certain issues). I think regular readers of mine have a very good understanding of what players I think have the tools and skillsets to move and what players need to work on in order to improve and advance. And I would say that careful readers are never very surprised by releases or players who are let go for various reasons. But my evaluation critiques have some bedrock assumptions behind them:
Baseball is what these kids do; it’s not who they are. Absolutely no character or personal criticisms are acceptable;
Baseball is incredibly hard; all judgements should be leavened with empathy and understanding of the true challenge of the task at hand. No harshness.
Be open to possibility. We’ve seen so many long and weird development stories: Mike Yastrzemski, Brent Rooker, Jonathan Loasiga, Spencer Bivens for pete’s sake. To assume you know how the story is going to end is just close-minded, which I just don’t think is a very interesting way to experience life.
Obviously, I’m not here to bash anybody. I know and like these players and root for their success. But I also need to inform my readers, so I am always aiming to communicate two things:
What skills or profile do players have that give them a path to success?
What are the pitfalls they face in their tools/skills/profile that will need to be overcome? When players are falling further and further prey to those obstacles, I think I always say so.
If my readers have an understanding of those two things with regards to players, then I feel I’ve done my job. Beyond that, I think players who mostly go unmentioned by me… well, that silence is probably communicating something as well.
As for the draft, I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I would like to see the Giants move away from their traditionally college-heavy approach to the draft — an approach that has lasted through many scouting directors, GMs, and even owners. I do believe that it is connected to the generally lackluster impression that other teams have historically had of the Giants’ farm system, which is often filled with players a bit old for their levels, and more “skills-based” than “tools-based.”
But I also recognize other things. For one thing, it’s very easy to crank your personal risk-tolerance up to “YOLO” when you’re an amateur on the sidelines with no real skin in the game. High school players with big upside are also an extremely risky phylum with high attrition rates — which is part of why the industry in general is moving away from them (structural changes are obviously a big part of the story, too — even though the success stories tend to be very big ones. Major league lineups are filled with former college players, and they are, without a doubt, a less risky proposition in the draft, and many of the Giants greatest draft success stories have come from this philosophy (obviously, 2008 being a great example). They also tend to provide a return on investment much quicker. And, the last element at play here is that most of the real highly regarded high school group this year actually moved up because the college draft class en large was considered pretty weak.
While I recently lauded AJ Preller’s approach to drafting (he virtually never selects college players in the upper rounds), I also have to point out there is a lot of what I would call “model jobbing” in his approach. Because age-level is a heavy ingredient in most front offices’ player evaluation models, by drafting young players and moving them aggressively through the farm, Preller effectively inflates their value within the industry — and it is very noticeable that almost none of those toolsy high school players he drafts become (or stay) Padres. He uses virtually all of them for trades — an approach I suspect would frustrate a lot of my readers as well. As much as we all love to dream on tools, I was talking with an international scout last week, and his view was that 1) it’s much harder to find genuinely exceptional athletes in baseball, and 2) a lot of time they struggle to ever get that athleticism to come together into game skills. It’s much harder to hit on those guys then those of us on the outside tend to believe.
Mostly, what I know from years of watching drafts is that making instant judgements (positive or negative) is mostly just a great way to look dumb in a few years. People I’ve reached out to in the industry are generally favorable in their opinion of the Giants’ draft. Joe Doyle told me he liked it a good bit and was considering devoting an entire one of his draft podcasts to it. The Athletic’s Keith Law (whom I did not talk to) said on a recent Rates and Barrels podcast that he “loved” the pick of Kilen (“great pick for the Giants!” he said). Given their tiny bonus pool and lack of picks, people seem to think they did pretty well. And, as I wrote the other day, we definitely saw an intentional strategy at work that I believe is based on an idea of what sort of player will be successful at Oracle. They drafted high-contact, athletic, mostly fast, up-the-middle players. The idea that it it’s easier to add impact to a contact hitter’s swing than it is to add contact to a power hitter’s swing is certainly not out of step with a lot of player development thinking.
I do believe they got the players they wanted — even though I know a lot of people were expecting some sort of “big overslot” pick at some point, they really seemed to play this draft pretty straight up. As Michael Holmes said in a zoom call with media afterwards, you have to take every draft as it comes, and the Giants didn’t believe this draft brought the opportunity to do that. In the end, they had some small underslot savings that they used on the two high school pitchers, but this wasn’t a big overslot deal strategy. As for Cohen specifically, I’m not sure exactly why he was left off of MLB’s rankings, but I have heard from multiple industry sources that there were other teams on him in the 80s and 90s, and one very nearly did select him before the Giants. Yes, I think they drafted him because they think he can be good — and other smart people think that, too.
I’m not against judgements….but I’m not going to make one before the first step of a thousand-step journey has been taken. Was it the type of draft I was hoping for? I don’t think anybody expects me to say ‘yes’ to that. On a surface level, it certainly is easy — probably too easy — to look at it and think of some of the drafts of the early 2010s. Was it a draft that can be a successful one? Absolutely. That’s something we can only know in time, however.
As for your other questions (briefly): the drafting of three Northeastern players and two Stetson players were noticeable oddities. The Northeastern thing is all the more strange because virtually all of their northeastern coverage is new to the organization this year, as some retirements and replacements took place in that area at the area scout and cross-checker level. Carmen Carcone was picked up from the Marlins (who fired their entire front office last fall, not to mention the clubbies) to take over as northeast area scout. But maybe one factor is that the new part-time scout, Colin Sabean, is also located in the northeast area, so twice the eyes and advocacy might have been at work there. (I talked to Jim Callis about this very question on this week’s There R Giants podcast, so look for that as well).
As for Holmes, I will dip my toes very tentatively into the Zaidi waters and say that one of the former boss’s real failings at running this organization was that his circle of trust was really tiny — and yes, even people he hired didn’t necessarily get in it, or stay in it. I think that Posey’s notion in keeping almost everybody from the previous regime is that a lot of good resources can potentially be lost by acting reflexively to eliminate people, and that by widening that circle and empowering the people in it, you can get the best out of them in the future. Certainly, Holmes has a long history of strong talent evaluation in his career. I’m sure that internal evaluation of everybody and every system is constantly going on from top to bottom. But a good manager helps their staff get to their best level of work before moving on to other strategies.
Oh, and as a public service announcement, I believe that Kilen’s name is pronounced: “KEEL-en.”
Perhaps, I should have just folded this final question into canine’s, but…
Did you observe any changes in draft philosophy compared to prior years? It seemed pretty similar to the drafts under Zaidi (and Holmes) and despite all the talk of favoring scouting seemed to go dudes who were analytical favorites.
I do think that exigency plays such a crucial role in drafts that it’s a bit complicated to make any grand pronouncements after watching just one. That said, if you go back and listen to Joe Doyle’s appearance on my podcast last month, he said something that I think turned out to be very prescient:
I don't really know what their type is. You know, there are philosophies in every organization. Like some organizations, the Cardinals, for example, they love taking high schoolers with a ton of power. They just like seeing what falls into their lap. The Padres, same thing. High schoolers with immense athleticism and upside.
The Reds take up the middle players. They are going to take shortstops, center fielders, catchers, and pitchers. And I just think too often you see with the Giants, they're taking corner outfielders. They're taking first basemen. …
I expect to see the team take more Wade Mecklers, to be honest. I know Wade Meckler isn't the sexiest player. He's not going to be someone that gets everyone out of their chairs, but … I've noticed that over the course of the last few years with San Francisco, the reinforcements that they bring in have considerable bat-to-ball issues. … So, I want to see more bat-to-ball skills. And I want to see more … up-the-middle talent that can put the game in motion. Because I think, especially in San Francisco, where it's so hard to hit the baseball out of that ballpark, put the game in motion. Put the game in motion. And I think you're going to see more of an emphasis of that in the draft.
If Joe was quite literally reading from a cribbed internal strategy memo drafted by Michael Holmes, I don’t think he could have been more spot-on in describing the Giants’ approach to the 2025 draft.
The reason the San Jose team has had such a logjam of options at 3b/1b this year is because nearly the entire draft class last year was corner bats — Dakota Jordan may end up being an exception to that, but remember, despite his speed, he spent most of his college career in the corner outfield. The guys they got this year uniformly play up the middle, are mostly fast and athletic, and they absolutely put the ball in play. I think that is the philosophical shift that we saw this year.
As I said above, Doyle told me he is planning an entire episode of his excellent podcast on the Giants draft, so I’d look for that. And, a little closer to home, I’ll have a new podcast episode out later today with the great Jim Callis of MLB dissecting the Giants’ draft in detail. Enjoy that.
Now, it’s time for me to head to the ballpark and renew my acquaintance with Mr. Davidson! Enjoy the games everybody!
I think it was a good draft. Some of the high tools draft guys in the past have just not gotten it together yet. Hunter Bishop, Vaughn Brown, Will Bednar, to name a few have for several reasons just not reached the level we’ve hoped for.
I like the sense of putting the ball in play and middle defense. I’m a firm believer that it’s easier to put a shortstop on third than the reverse.
Outstanding as always. Thank you.