Baseball America rolled out its Top 100 for 2021 yesterday, along with its Giants Top 10 last Friday. And both drop interesting tea leaves with which to read the future. So, let’s dig in, shall we?
First the numbers. The Giants once again placed three players on the list:
Marco Luciano
Joey Bart
Heliot Ramos
These are the same three players who were on Baseball America’s 2020 preseason Top 100, and, in large part, this figures, as the loss of the 2020 minor league season created less opportunity for players to press their case up the list, while the shortened five-round draft brought more top echelon talent into professional baseball. I wouldn’t be terribly shocked if we hear that others (Luis Matos, Hunter Bishop) received votes for the back-end of the list but that whatever support they had wasn’t quite enough for inclusion. As always, it’s worth remembering that the difference between the 75th best prospect in baseball and the 150th or 200th is significantly less than the difference between, say the 10th and the 50th.
Thirteen organizations in baseball placed more players on the list than the Giants’ three, led by the Padres’ seven players on the list, and Seattle’s and Toronto’s six. The Padres have had at least six players place in the Top 100 for an incredible fourth straight year. This is the second time in the last three seasons that they’ve had the most players on the list. They’ve poured a lot of those prospects into trades for major league stars (especially on the pitching side). But even with all of those trades, they still have most of their highest end players, including two top 11 players (LHP MacKenzie Gore and SS C.J. Abrams). The Seattle Mariners have two players in the top 4 (OF Jarred Kelenic and Julio Rodriguez), which should have M’s fans drooling with delight, while the Atlanta Braves have two players in the top 10, both of whom have already begun impressing Atlanta fans in 2020, and both of whom were on the Braves’ post-season team — CF Cristian Pache and LHP Ian Anderson.
Of course, this is just one lens among many — Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, and MLB will all be doing their own similar rankings in the coming weeks. But Baseball America is still the gold standard for me and does a great job of reflecting a well-rounded view of industry valuations at a particular moment in time.
Let’s break it down a little further:
The Rise of Marco Luciano Continues
Photo Credit: Zach Lucy/Four Seam Images
Luciano was the only player among the Giants’ trio who actually moved up this year. Luciano moved on up from 17 to the precipice of the Top 10. His placement at #12 makes him the highest ranked Giants’ prospect since 2010, when Buster Posey was Baseball America’s #7 ranked prospect. Madison Bumgarner had been the #9 ranked prospect in 2009 but fell back slightly to #14 in 2010. Luciano is almost certain to become the first Giants’ prospect to be a top 10 prospect in baseball since that epic pair.
From reports, Luciano was certainly taught some lessons by the AAA and major league level arms in the Alternate Site, but lessons are what will help him progress from super prospect to super player. His exit velocities measured up against the very best major league players (think: Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton) despite a relatively small size. He generates extraordinary power and batted ball velocity from tremendous hand strength and plus plus bat speed, and yet still displays solid barrel control, which is why his Scouting Report Card comes with possibly the best of all combinations — 60 Hit/70 Power.
If there’s a negative in the profile, it’s the 40 Run grade (Average) which, along with questions as to whether he can throw from various arm angles, does lend credence to the theory that he might not be a SS long term. It’s true that Brandon Crawford has made himself a sensational career out of his shortstop defense despite only being an average runner, but typically shortstops grade out a little better in their footspeed. Luciano’s 60 grade arm and solid hands do suggest that the fallback option is likely 3b and that he needn’t move all the way down the defensive spectrum to OF.
Regardless, the entire package is one to dazzle the imagination. Here was an answer in Baseball America’s Giants’ chat on Friday to tantalize:
Jim (Newark):
What type of player could Luciano be at his peak?
Josh Norris: A cotdang superstar.
119 MPH!
Joey Bart Drops Down
There are a lot of different ways to look at Joey Bart’s 2020. I took a long look at his season just after it concluded and counted up the various developmental strides he still has in front of him. The biggest ones:
Pitchers successfully pounded him inside
He struggled with velocity
He couldn’t stop from swinging at breaking balls out of the zone
There were a few defensive issues I honed in on as well, but let’s stick to the bat for now because I think the defense is fine and just needs more reps. For the bat, the best way to view Bart’s 2020 is that he did as well as could be expected given the challenge he was thrust into.
But that said, Bart being pushed down this list — from 28 last year to 41 this year — isn’t a result of the new draft class or other external factors. If you look into his tools grades, you’ll see that BA has pushed his Hit Tool grade down a half tick. Here he was in 2020:
and here he is today:
The hit tool has been knocked down to slightly below average — that’s an area where a half a grade on the hit tool can really be meaningful. The chances for an average hitter to thrive in the majors are significantly different from the chances for a below average hitter. Coming into 2020 the scouting report for Bart was that there was a hole on the inside portion of the strike zone that he had to cover — that was the reason he broke his hand twice in 2019 as pitchers even at lower levels sought to bust him in (though without the necessary control to do so). That is typically the first area of weakness that pitchers explore for players of Bart’s size and long arms. And we saw this year that major league pitchers exploited the weakness with ease.
Unlike his defensive woes, closing that hole is going to take more than just reps. It exists, in part, just because of his size, and, in part, because of the way he positions his body during his load. Getting coverage of that area is going to take adjustments and work — and it may not ever be covered completely, which could undermine his ability to get to his substantial power in games. There’s work to be done here. Personally, I think people who are expecting a quick stay in AAA for Bart in 2021 are likely mistaken. I think we’ll see that he gets a solid 500 PA in AAA before the front office looks to promote him — possibly as late as September (though remember, rosters are only supposed to expand to 28 in September this year).
But, hopefully, with that experience, Bart will have made the adjustments that allow us to see this with some frequency sometime in 2022 (though having Buster Posey around in 2022 might also be a good idea for a host of reasons):
Heliot Ramos Falls Slightly Too
Like Bart, Ramos dropped back a fair bit, from 58 in 2020 to 83 in 2021. But in Ramos’ case, the tool grades didn’t change at all, making the change in position less meaningful in my eyes. He still projects as a player who has no plus tools, but no clear weaknesses either — 50s and 55s across the scouting board — the type of player who puts up good solid offensive lines with good hitting and good power, but isn’t eye-popping on either side of the ledger.
There does look to be less belief that he can stick as a CF even while he’s young, and that might account for the drop, though he has the arm and power to be a solid RF as well. There was a mention that he needs to stay on top of his conditioning and that might be one area where 2020 raised concerns for him. Ramos twice was out for extended times this year for soft-tissue issues — muscle pulls or strains. Ramos is an extremely thick-bodied youngster with a barrel-chest and a muscle-bound upper body, which could be prone to strains and tears in the stop-and-start daily pounding of the game. Ramos will likely need to focus on both overall conditioning and focus on increased flexibility to make sure he can stay on the field consistently — an underrated aspect of being a productive player.
All that said, Ramos this year is very much the same excellent prospect as Ramos last year. He’s probably not the CF prospect some had hoped for, but if you picture a player something like Hunter Pence, I think we’re on the right track (I mean other than the fact that nobody’s like Hunter Pence) — a player who produces solid value on both sides of the ball, runs the bases smartly and effectively, and gives you 25 HRs per year. Give him 500 or 600 AAA at bats this year and he, too, might be ready to make his appearance in August or September and challenge for a role in 2022.
Others Under Consideration
I would imagine that Luis Matos was in that 100-150 group who received consideration but didn’t quite make the back-end of the list, even with his standout performance in Instrux. Remember, the Giants weren’t set up to allow scouts into their cramped facilities, so the industry got relatively few looks at Matos this year. It was just a difficult year in which to make big jumps.
Beyond Matos, I wouldn’t imagine Kyle Harrison, Hunter Bishop, or Patrick Bailey received much consideration for the Top 100.
Top 10
Baseball America also revealed their top 10 rankings for the Giants on Friday, most of which we here at There R Giants were able to put together after speaking with Josh Norris.
Marco Luciano
Joey Bart
Heliot Ramos
Luis Matos
Kyle Harrison
Hunter Bishop
Patrick Bailey
Alexander Canario
Seth Corry
Will Wilson
As is typical of Baseball America, Norris hosted a chat on the day the list was dropped, and there were a couple of answers that were particularly insightful for getting a full view of the system (and a sense of the top 30 to come):
Mike (Honolulu):
Where do you see the biggest holes in the system?
Josh Norris: Starting pitching. Your question made me realize that just five of the Top 30 project as starters, and two have them (Harrison, Swiney) haven't thrown an official pitch as a professional.
Mike (Honolulu):
The Giants outfield, other than Mike Yastrzemski, seems to be mostly platoon, placeholder types. When does help arrive?
Josh Norris: Ramos should get there at some point this year (depending on how the MLB and MiLB seasons look), but beyond that Bishop and Canario and Matos are far away.
Neither of these presents any new intel — despite the many things to be enthusiastic about in the Giants’ system, they are clearly much richer in hitting prospects than in pitching prospects, and also the vast majority of their best prospects have still yet to play in full season ball and shouldn’t be considered to be particularly close to major league ready.
My expectation is that Luciano should be the type of prospect who can move rapidly through the four levels, perhaps making it to the big leagues sometime in 2022. Given health and continued development, that means the Giants should be able to integrate their top three prospects into the lineup by the end of that year.
However, with all due respect to my most recent podcast guest Katie Woo, I personally don’t anticipate seeing any of Matos, Bishop, Canario, Bailey, Corry, Wilson, or Harrison (or others like Toribio or Pomares) being ready to compete for big league jobs going into the 2023 season. Without some quantum leap forward (which happens sometimes), I’d expect that all of that group are more like mid-2023, early 2024 ready timeframes. That would mean that for the next few years the team is still going to be highly reliant on acquisitions from outside the organization. And I think that will be particularly true on the pitching side for most of the next four or five years.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing — the current front office has shown themselves up to the task of finding and acquiring big league talent. But I do think that a lot of prospect watchers are probably getting ahead of themselves on the timing of the Giants prospect-readiness. Getting productivity from Bart, Ramos, and especially Luciano by sometime mid-next year will be a big step forward. But there’s still a lot more work to do to make the club a legitimate contender in the near future.
Of course, with luck, health, and a full minor league season, things can change. One more time for those of you in the back: development isn’t linear.