Free For All Mailbag: Let's Get it Started Edition
Need to think of a better name for these things!
The response to the Mailbags has been strong so far, so I wasn’t able to get to everybody’s queries today. I got more questions than I thought would reasonably fit into one mailbag (especially the way I go on), so I’m holding some in reserve for next week. Go ahead and keep sending them in to last week’s call and let’s see if we can make this a regular event!
And, of course, if you enjoy the weekly free for alls, you might be interested in becoming a regular There R Giants’ subscriber, to get the daily posts and keep you up to date with all of the action on the farm!
And with that, let’s see what the faithful There R Giants’ readers are interested in this week…
Could we get an update on who is on injured lists or in extended spring?
What happened to Colton Welker? Connor Cannon?
Oh, goodness! That’s a list alright! I don’t think I can give you a comprehensive list, but guys who I know for sure are currently rehabbing in Scottsdale would include the following:
So, yes, quite an assortment of injured players and the timelines for these guys are all over the place. I’d expect Marco Luciano and Landen Roupp to be the first from this group who see assignments to full season ball, but others are taking part in games in extended, including Colton Welker and Vaun Brown. Others are in more of a long term rehab mode (Joe Ross for instance, who will be gone the entire year), and some of these folks might start to appear later in the summer. I think that’s the timeframe that Conner Nurse is on, for instance, and possibly we’ll see guys like Seth Corry and Rohan Handa throw a few innings before the year is out, depending on how the rehab goes for them.
Some of these guys, I don’t really know much about what’s holding them back (Trevor McDonald, for instance, is a guy I have no info on), and some I do, but in general, I think it’s best to let rehabbers rehab and report on them when they’re back, because it’s a long, hard grueling part of a player’s career, and things can always go sideways in a rehab at any point. So beating the drum of anticipation too much can have deleterious impacts. I do know that Welker and Cannon were appearing in spring games while I was there, so whatever bumped them into rehab must have happened fairly late in camp (that was also the case with Rodriguez, who injured his left shoulder very late in camp).
As for the other players in extended spring training, that would be the players who are awaiting the beginning of rookie league in June — guys from last year’s ACL teams who didn’t get full season assignments (like Javier Francisco or Jediael Maduro), or players from last year’s DSL clubs who were transferred to the domestic roster and brought to spring training (e.g., Juan Perez or Lazaro Morales). There are even a few players who might be there waiting to make their professional debut in the ACL (Rayner Arias, Yosneiker Rivas, and Chen-Hsun Lee).
The Farhan Giants get a lot of shit for "obsessing over 4A players," and I worry that this has somewhat infected their dev system. Their first round picks haven't turned out so far, yet they continue success with the Matt Duffy archetypes like Bryce Johnson or David Villar. What is the biggest impediment (I guess outside of luck) that is preventing the Giants’ system from developing top end talent, let alone stars? Is it an issue of institutional focusing being on the low floor players or expecting too much (encouraging the slow dev) of the high profile players being held in lower levels? Or is everything null because the process of development is inherently hard and generally unsuccessful and that's something that needs to be accepted.
Broader question about the Giants’ approach to drafting developing:
They seem to still really value underslot deals in the first round, going after guys who have more questions about strikeouts or pitchers with a short track record. Taking a look at the Fangraphs top 100 prospect list, by and large the vast majority of them are 1st rounders or J2 signees w/ large bonuses. Are the Giants shooting themselves in the foot with this approach and avoiding the top talents? Or is this a development issue that the Giants just aren't very good at figuring out strikeout issues w/ position players?
Also looking at the rosters announced so far the Giants seem to be favoring stocking up on reliever types in the minors rather then developing starting pitchers, even more so than other orgs. Is this a concerted trend or just pitcher attrition?
Let me take these two questions together, because they seem to be getting at a lot of the same things — or to put it another way, they voice some of the over-riding concerns of that segment of the Giants’ fanbase that has a lurking fear-slash-suspicion-slash-conviction that things are trending in the wrong direction, or that they haven’t gone in the right direction nearly fast enough.
Which is totally fair! I think we’ve heard enough comments over the last year from people with steady access to Farhan Zaidi to believe that folks inside the organization have some of those lurking fears-slash-suspicions-slash-frustrations as well. Indeed, Chairman Greg Johnson voiced those exact frustrations specifically to The Athletic’s Andy Baggarly earlier this spring. So, let’s try to take some of these (many!) questions and see what we can make of them.
First off, we do need to keep in mind Zach’s last line. Player development isn’t a science, and it can’t be made to work with the consistency of a true assembly line. Pick an org that is renowned for their player development success and I come up with a recent high profile PD failure pretty quickly. So, that’s always a good reminder: player development is mysterious, and depends on a lot of different factors, some of which are in a player’s or organization’s control and many of which aren’t.
Luck, too, is part of the story — certainly health luck, which the Giants frankly haven’t had much of lately. That has had such a huge impact in many cases (Hunter Bishop and Will Bednar being obvious examples), and smaller but still significant impacts in other cases (Luciano or Luis Matos, for instance). Perhaps the Giants and 49ers medical staffs need to get together for a group hug, but health is a real gray area that doesn’t offer up obvious solutions very often.
Another important part of the equation is simply time. Two years ago, most of the Giants’ best prospects were still waiting to start their full season career in the wake of the lost season in 2020. Now we’re in a situation where some of the very best prospects in the system are in the upper levels, with Kyle Harrison, Casey Schmitt, Patrick Bailey, Luciano and Matos all just small development steps (or contingency needs) away. Before the pipeline can start gushing, you gotta prime the pump. Of course, it’s an absolutely fair counterpoint to note that a couple of years ago the top prospects in the system — Joey Bart and Heliot Ramos and Sean Hjelle — were already in the upper minors, and if any of that group had successfully begun to deliver on their promise, this entire conversation might not exist today.
So far, that hasn’t happened, and it’s led to some significant issues on the major league roster. The fact is that the Giants are on a real bender when it comes to 1st round picks — one that straddles the current and previous regimes — and until that streak is broken, there are going to be valid criticisms about how the org is conducting its business.
That leads us to many questions-slash-critiques of the drafting philosophy, and full disclosure, I’ve been critical of their approach to the top of the draft over the years as well. However, I don’t think the “low floor” framing is fair, to be honest. Bishop was a huge, high ceiling swing of the bat, as was Reggie Crawford last year. Those are two big high variance gambles that haven’t worked out so far. But their failure to work out hasn’t been based on not valuing star talent enough.
The question about how underslot deals factors in is interesting, but one thing that the Houston Astros front office made clear when they were initiating this strategy is that you can’t take a player you value less with an underslot deal and have the strategy work out. It needs to be a deciding factor between two equivalently valued players (you can read about the Astros’ strategy in Winning Fixes Everything, by Evan Drellich. Book tips!). However, “equivalently valued” can take in a wide swatch of different outcomes, because a large part of how models value players depend upon an organization’s appetite for high variance — or risk tolerance. One team’s model might place more value the potential for sky high ceilings while another’s might value likelier outcomes as a solid player more. That’s something we don’t really know about the Giants’ model.
What we do know however, is that the team shows a clear preference for college players. Whether this is due to the higher and longer track record, or the more developed physicality, or the greater “certainty” that college players offer — and this can be what rb is getting at. The top high school players picked are, after all, the first bite of the apple for their age group, and the very best physical profiles tend to go in that first bite. Patrick Bailey is undergoing a real renaissance in prospect status, and I think the chances are strong that he’s going to be a major league player who provides value. But Tyler Soderstrom looks very much like a star in the making (and there are pretty good reasons to believe that the Giants did have a conversation that centered on those two players at the top of the 2020 draft). So a model that prefers older, more established players to younger mounds of rich, raw clay, and yes, seems to prefer pitchers (whose pitch data is a more reliable predictor of success than any equivalent hit data that currently exists) could well be contributing to the current state of affairs.
My answer then, I guess, is that there’s no clear answer to all of this. It’s luck, it’s health, it may be some of the inputs that are built into the valuation model that need tweaking, and it may just be that time is all that’s required, and a year or two from all of this will seem like needless worrying. The 1st round worm needs to turn, however. I think everyone agrees on that.
Oh, and as for the relievers vs starters part of your question — I don’t know, it seems like they have more starters than rotation spots at a few affiliates, which is why we’re seeing so much piggy-backing from the top of the org to the bottom. I suspect that tells us something about the philosophy of pitching usage that this front office wants to pursue — which seems to be less of a traditional starting pitcher model and more flexible swing or piggy back-style “bulk innings” pitchers. (And while I certainly have a few “old man yells at clouds” thoughts on that issue, I’ll save them for the time being).
Whew! That was a bear, let’s try to get in some short ones…
As a local baseball fan who also follows the local college teams, I've found it interesting that the Giants have (or have given shots to) a fair number of Stanford alums recently (Austin Slater, Stephen Piscotty, Tristan Beck, Erik Miller, Alex Blandino). Has this been intentional, or just coincidence? If intentional, any chance the Giants take a flyer on Mark Appel, who was pitching well last year but just released by the Phillies?
The Giants absolutely, positively seek out players with connections to northern California, whether that’s guys who have attended local colleges (not just Stanford), or players who grew up in the area. They’ve been vocal about that strategy, which I think is intended to bring in players with ties to the area and the community — and maybe who want to stick around long term (like Logan Webb!).
As for Appel specifically? I suppose anything’s possible! But I wouldn’t be expecting it.
Hi Roger, I remember a report of some kind a year or two ago about pro scouts killing Patrick Bailey for his body language. Do you have any insight into what that was about or whether it's still a concern?
I’m going to answer this question because I’m here to serve my readers. But I’ll be honest: I don’t really like responding to it. Inferring player or personal qualities from body language is, by far, my least favorite part of scouting talk. It’s too broad, too general, too vague, and too liable to be affected by various kinds of bias or prejudice, in my opinion, to get much value from it.
That said, I think you can say that these criticisms for Bailey have two specific thrusts. One, he seems a low key guy on the field, with something of a laid back feel, and that can get tarred with the “low energy” brush. That, I think, is unfair, as Bailey gets a lot of credit from his pitchers for the work he puts in helping them be the best they can be — and the work he puts in on the physical elements of catching, blocking, and throwing, as well. The second issue, and I think there’s more merit to this, is that Bailey can be a player who gets visibly frustrated on the field — whether that’s with umpires (which it often is!) or himself, he can have that “slumpy shoulders” look on the field, and there’s honestly little that old school scouts dislike more than that.
Are either of these things major development detriments? I wouldn’t think so. He’s an excellent defensive player, and his pitchers love working with him. If he hits, nobody’s really gonna care about his perceived “energy level.”
Maybe not a Giants-specific question, but do you think we could get periodic updates on guys like Frankie Tostado or Armani Smith, who got plucked during the Rule 5 draft? Would be nice to know about their journey. Also, is there a mechanism for those players returning to the org besides free agency?
Well, I suppose today is a period! If you were reading this week’s post, I actually showed you Frankie Tostado’s first AB of the year — in which he smacked a HR off of Carson Seymour. But yes, let’s go ahead and offer up the very early results for the players lost this year. As for mechanisms for return — well, those guys are now controlled by their new organizations, so other than eventual free agency, I guess it would have to be a trade. In any respect, it’s a pretty rare occurrence for a club to let a player go in the minor league portion of Rule 5 and use resources later to reacquire them.
Here’s the update on recently lost players. I even added in Diego Rincones, who left as a free agent, and Jake Wong, who was the player to be named later used to acquire Blake Sabol as a Rule 5 player:
“HNP” is “Has Not Played.” Rashi is likely out for the season after having shoulder surgery last year. Not sure what’s up with Huang. The Reds appear to be trying Wong out as a closer, which is going well so far!
One more time, here’s Toasty going deep!
Can you explain what 'ABS' is and what the controversy might be about its use this year?
“ABS” stands for “Automated Balls-Strikes,” commonly referred to as “Robo-umps.” It’s a system using Hawk-Eye technology (which is the multi-camera technology that powers all Statcast info and was originally developed for the replay system used in professional tennis) that sets a defined strike zone parameter, and calls balls or strikes based on that parameter, instead of using the home plate ump and his oh so fallible humanity to do the trick. In Triple A this year, they are currently using ABS to determine whether pitches were strikes in the first three games of the week, and letting umps call them the second half of the week. This not only gives some basis for comparison, but also keeps the Triple A umps sharp for when they are needed as fill-ins at the major league level. At some point this year, they will move to a challenge system for those final three games every series (it sounds as if the technology is not quite in place in all the PCL parks for the challenge system to operate just yet).
As for controversy, I suppose that depends on who is asked. The umpires union might find it controversial to use ABS at all, while some fans probably think it’s controversial that it hasn’t been applied at the major league level yet. You may be referring to comments that the zone has been calibrated to be smaller than the major league strike zone, leading to a high amount of walks — that’s something I’ve heard a few times this spring, though I can’t see that MLB has corroborated the accusation as of yet.
What does a successful year look like for Manuel Mercedes? Is there any chance he could be this year’s Prelander Berroa?
How far can Carson Whisenhunt be pushed this year? Is he on an innings restriction this year after missing a college season?
How can Luis Matos regain his status as a top 100 prospect?
Ok, first off, that’s not one question!
But let’s take them in turn. I’m not sure that Berroa is a great comparison for Mercedes, since Prelander is a starter who can throw his fastball close to 100 mph, while Mercedes has gone to a sinker-based approach that he throws more 92-94. But I would say, now that he’s 20 years old and returning to the level for the second time, a successful year for him looks like a successful year. One that doesn’t need any “yeah buts” or squints or “if you cock your head just so’s.” He’s got the experience and the stuff to do well in this league and, I think, should be evaluated by his results on the field. If he’s one of the better pitchers in what has been a pretty low level environment for pitching the last couple of years, that’ll be good. If he struggles to throw strikes or get batters out, that’s not so good. The potential is certainly there!
Yes, Carson Whisenhunt is certainly on an innings limit after throwing just 30 total innings in all of 2022. That said, I don’t think it’s crazy to imagine him getting in the neighborhood of 90-100 innings.
As for Matos regaining Top 100 status? Of course! Guys fall off and back on lists like that all the time. If he goes out in Double A and reproduces something close to his San Jose line, you’ll see his trend lines point up in a hurry!
Luciano, Brown, Hilson - ETA?
I’m going to assume that this is ETA to playing this year, and not the traditional “ETA to the majors” question that is often asked about prospects. As noted above, it’s always tricky to try to guess at injury rehabs, because they can change (sometimes dramatically) from day to day. Generally, they always last longer than you expect, and 100% of the time they last longer than you’d like.
That said, I asked Farm Director Kyle Haines about all three of these players near the end of camp. His feeling at that point was that Luciano was ahead of the other two and should return fairly soon. He was getting steady game at bats as a DH in mid-March, with the next steps being to get in games defensively and then be able to play back to back games. He might be able to show up by the end of the month.
Brown got a few ABs early in camp, but had to build himself back up after a fairly lengthy halt in his progress when his knee acted up. Hilson had wrist inflammation that prevented him from even taking BP until pretty late in camp. It is noticeable that he was put on the Development List, rather than the IL, which might be a good sign.
All three of these players have been taking part in games in extended spring camp, so they’re all on the road to the active list. I think there’s a decent chance that all three will be active by the time we get to June 1.
Obviously, performance is the biggest determining factor on whether a guy makes it to the big league club and gets embraced by the fanbase. Assuming that, are there any particular guys currently in the system you could identify that might one day become fan-favorites in San Francisco-- based off their personalities, work ethic, eccentricities, etc?
Ooh, that’s a good one! I’ve said this a lot over the last couple of years — the Giants do a great job at getting really good kids into their organization. I would say that every player I’ve spoken to has been gracious, thoughtful, and engaging — and makes doing my job both easier and more pleasurable.
I haven’t made any secret of my love for Ismael Munguia’s game — I don’t call him the Most Entertaining Player in the System for nothing! He would absolutely grab the fanbase if he made it to the bigs. Another clear answer for me is Hunter Bishop. Sadly, I’ve never gotten to speak with Hunter because of his frequent injuries. But I’ve never spoken to anyone who interacted with him who didn’t rave about his engaging personality. The local kid would definitely be a fan favorite.
I also think Casey Schmitt’s lovable goofball personality would make the fanbase quick to fall in love with him. And Vaun Brown’s driven energy would almost certainly be popular as well. Mason Black is gregarious and affable. Luis Matos has a flair for the dramatic and just the right amount of swagger. Melvin Adon pushes the radar gun to triple digits. And Marco Luciano hits the ball really REALLY far!
Honestly, the correct answer is that this fanbase is hungering for the next wave of homegrown talents, and I’m sure will be eager to embrace whichever of these kids can ride the big waves and arrive safely on the beaches of Oracle Park.
Appreciate it is a REALLY small sample size, but do you see Teng getting a promotion to AAA given his positive start and that he's repeating AA?
I mean, every player can work their way into a promotion to the next level, so sure! I wouldn’t anticipate that coming this week, but Teng can certainly force the issue with the org if he continues to perform well.
MikeH
One last question (promise) ...are the Giants committed to two teams in the ACL ? I can't think they have enough players to field two particularly with the lack of position players drafted.
Do you really promise?
The Giants currently have two full coaching staffs for ACL teams, so I’d say they’re committed to it for this season at least. With the Minor League CBA negotiating a decrease to a maximum of 165 players on the domestic list in 2024, however, I don’t see how any club will be able to field multiple rookie league clubs. The logistics just fight against it. I know there is some thought in the industry that the youngest kids shouldn’t be playing quite so many games while working on building up their bodies and their games, and yet competing is what’s really at the heart of what athletes do — nobody wants to be in practice mode all year. It’s going to be really interesting to see how teams adjust to the new rules, but I would say that it’s going to be harder for international players and high school kids to move up the ladder.
I re-read Baggs great 2021 piece about Luis Matos and found myself wondering if he's still playing the drums?
I’ll ask!
And with that, I’ll draw a close to this week’s mailbag. If I didn’t get to your question this week, it goes to the top of my queue for next week. We’ll just keep doing this until you folks run out of things you want to ask me.
And, of course, if you want to follow the daily progress of all of these players, just become a There R Giants’ subscriber to get content Monday through Friday (and sometimes Saturday, too!)
Roger, just wanted to say thank you for answering my question about body language even though you didn't want to! It was a thoughtful response, and I'll keep in mind what you said the next time I encounter some attempt to interpret a player's body language
Thanks for answering my question regarding ABS. One thing about it I've been wondering, Is the thing adjustable up and down? E.g. is the grid position for 6' 5" Hunter Bishop the same as for 5'8" Brett Auerbach?