Happy Labor Day everyone! Things are winding down. Eugene just played their final regular season home game of the year — and did it up right….or Wright, as it were!
Yep, that’s DH Max Wright giving the home crowd a thrill with a three-run, walk off homer to finish the home schedule with a flourish. Put win #76 in the books!
Hope you don’t mind a slightly later post. While, for me, the holiday means the final tent post in the baseball calendar, for my wife, who has an actual job, it meant the rare opportunity to get out for a little Monday morning nature walk to catch some early migrators. One thing players are always teaching me: be present in the moment and enjoy the day at hand! It’s the gift we’re given anew each morning.
Anyway, let’s start by catching up on some prospect stuff that’s hit the internet over the last week.
This first one is only quasi-prospect related I suppose, but ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel (also co-author of Future Value, which is one of my go to references at There R Giants) put out a much-discussed post last week, ranking the 30 MLB franchises in terms of “core talent” for short-term windows. McDaniel looked at every team’s group of talent controlled through the 2024 season, and packed them into three tiers of talent: elite (think 5+ WAR players), above average (3-5 WAR players), and solid (2-3 WAR players).
Short story: the Giants didn’t do well in this exercise, ranking 28th.
It’s important to note that the exercise tilted heavily towards players who have already proven their value at big league level, rather than speculative value for highly regarded prospects. The prospects who did appear on team lists tended to be near big league ready and already in the upper minors, and only one player who has not yet appeared in the majors, the Yankees’ Anthony Volpe, was ranked in the “above average” category. Two others who have just been brought up, Diamondbacks’ OF Corbin Carroll, and Orioles infielder Gunnar Henderson, were also placed in the “above average” category. Not so coincidentally, those are the top three prospects in the game on McDaniel’s latest ranking for ESPN.
For the Giants’ ranking, prospects were doing a lot of the heavy lifting, as Kyle Harrison, Marco Luciano, Luis Matos, and, oddly, Patrick Bailey all filled out the “Solid” category. But since only one of those players has moved beyond A ball, it’s hard to see the group having much impact until late 2024 (at best in some of those cases). That puts the bulk of the next two seasons’ fate on the major league squad, where only Logan Webb was counted as “above average” and no players rose to the “elite” level. The obvious inference? The Giants face an incredibly challenging off-season that is going to demand some bold maneuvering if the franchise is to have much relevance in the baseball world over the next couple of seasons.
Moving to a pure prospect story also in the news, this week saw one of my favorite annual exercises pop up on Baseball America’s site: their annual survey of managers across minor leagues on the players with the best tools in those leagues. Every minor league manager votes on a wide variety of tools-based categories for their leagues from the granular (best defensive player at each position) to the bird’s eye view (best pitching prospect, most exciting player). Simple majority: whoever captures the most manager votes in their league gets the honor.
The Giants’ didn’t exactly dominate this year’s lists. However, they did take one of the big prizes: Harrison was named the Best Pitching Prospect in the Eastern League (though not the NWL, interestingly enough). That’s fitting in a year when Harrison was, by far, the best prospect story on the Giants’ farm. There was a supplementary piece to the Best Tools lists that noted that minor league managers surveyed have been especially prescient at predicting future big league success in the “Best Hitting Prospect” and “Best Pitching Prospects” categories — cumulatively over 40 years, the winners of those two categories in the various minor leagues have accrued more than 10,000 WAR in their careers! That’s a big number!
The Giants also produced the “Top Relief Prospect” in three of their four affiliate levels: R.J. Dabovich in the EL, Nick Avila in NWL, and Jose Cruz in the Cal, which I think accurately reflects one of the real strengths of the Giants’ system. Sadly, the über-toolsy Vaun Brown was entirely shut out of the tools lists — there may come a day when that doesn’t look so good, league managers!
The full list of the Giants’ prospect mentions in the Best Tools Lists:
Kyle Harrison: Best Pitching Prospect (EL)
Frankie Tostado: Best Defensive 1b (EL)
Tyler Fitzgerald: Best Infield Arm (EL)
R.J. Dabovich: Best Reliever (EL)
Nick Swiney: Best Changeup (NWL)
Nick Avila: Best Reliever (EL)
Casey Schmitt: Best Defensive 3b (NWL)
Landen Roupp: Best Breaking Ball (Cal)
Jose Cruz: Best Changeup AND Best Reliever (Cal)
Aeverson Arteaga: Best Defensive SS AND Best Infield Arm (Cal)
Grant McCray: Best Defensive OF (Cal)
Lipso Nava: Best Manager Prospect
Despite winning the league championship, nobody on either of the Giants’ two ACL teams received notice in BA’s ACL Top 10. Once the season winds down, I’ll have my own recap of every level, starting with the rookie leagues, where I’ll go in depth on the prospect value that I see on these four squads.
Now to the weekend! The pitching-heavy class of ‘21 has delivered a rich tapestry of first-year outcomes, from disappointing (top picks Will Bednar and Matt Mikulski) to disappearing (Rohan Handa still has yet to make a pro debut, while former Cal closer Ian Villers threw just three innings this spring before spending the season on the IL). But in between those outcomes, there have also been the pitchers who have surged in their first full season, and two of those guys delivered such bravura performances this weekend, I can’t even choose one above the other for my honorifics:
HITTER of the Weekend: Damon Dues (SJ), 6 for 12, 2b (7), 3b (4), 4 BB, 6 R, 3 SB (12)
CO-PITCHERS of the Weekend: Landen Roupp (Ric), 6.0 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 10 K, HR and Mason Black (Eug), 6.0 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 9 K
Nice going, guys! Way to represent the class of ‘21!
Let’s go learn some lessons from the weekend!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to There R Giants to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.