During spring training of 2022, I was at Papago Park talking with the great Will Clark, who spends so much of his time with Giants’ minor leaguers, helping teach them what it takes to get to the big leagues. The Thrill was listing off guys who had most impressed him, when he nodded in the direction of a player heading out to a field. “That guy is going to be a a big leaguer,” he said. “He has some things to figure out, but when he puts it together he can play in the big leagues.”
I looked up and saw the figure of Carter Aldrete crossing the field. The 2019 15th rounder certainly would have been familiar to Clark, who spent three seasons as teammates with his uncle, Mike Aldrete, starting in 1986 when both were rookies with the Giants. At the time, I was somewhat surprised that Aldrete would be singled out for such praise from Clark, but over the coming months, the multi-positional talent, who was drafted out of Arizona State (several rounds lower than his more famous teammate, Hunter Bishop), would have an explosive return to the NWL and begin to impress himself on the consciousness of Giants’ fans.
Last week, Aldrete’s Richmond manager, Dennis Pelfrey, issued a very similar sentiment to the one Clark had given me a year earlier. “[Aldrete] is what I call a ‘sneaky big leaguer,’” he said. “It’s gonna take him a little more time to get there than some of these other guys we’ve got, but I think he’s eventually going to get there at some point, and he’s going to be a really, solidly impactful player in the big leagues.”
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.