"Gentlemen, Start Your Engines" edition of the Free For All Mailbag

Photo Credit: Richmond Flying Squirrels

The minor league season is now off and running. Although “running” might not be the correct term for the Giants’ affiliates, who got off the blocks in a bit of a stumble, winning just two of 12 games this weekend. They were also the victims of the #1 (Nick Kurtz) and #2 (Travis Bazzana) prospect performances in the minors this week, according to Baseball America in the inaugural Hot Sheet of the 2025 season. That’s a tough opening act!

Still, baseball is back, the Giants are wining, and there is much to be excited about and optimistic for. So, with a praise of gratitude, let’s get to the bag — which is much lighter than normal this week, and mostly obsessed with a single topic. Let’s see if I’m capable of answering a one-question mailbag in less than 5,000 words, shall we?

Before we get to the questions, a big congratulations to Carson Seymour, who was named Pitcher of the Week for the PCL yesterday. Seymour threw five scoreless innings last week with two hits allowed and five strikeouts

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Actually, I guess there were a couple more questions in here this week — though the fifth starter topic does appear to be foremost on your minds, so we’ll spend the lion’s share of the time on that one.

Kent Iverson,

Hi Roger, I am loving the daily TRG content, thank you! As unpredictable as baseball is, is it inevitable that the major story for the Giants' farm system in 2025 be success or lack thereof of the teenage signees (Marco Luciano, Bryce Eldridge, Josuar Gonzalez, Jhonny Level, Rayner Arias, Walker Martin)?

Thanks Kent — I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the support and encouragement I get from my readers on a constant basis. It really buoys me and my work.

As for your question, I started by circling two equipoised words here: “unpredictable” and “inevitable.” Of the two, I think I side with the unpredictable nature of baseball. All of the players you’ve listed here are certainly important to the organization. But they are not the only important development stories going on at any one point in time. Pause a moment to think how little concerned most Giants fans were of Landen Roupp or Hayden Birdsong or Ryan Walker at this point in time in recent seasons. And there have been other pop ups along the way — Keaton Winn, Vaun Brown, Wade Meckler, and others, who haven’t necessarily sustained their forward bursts, but certainly have played major roles on the farm in recent years.

There will be surprises, good and bad. There may be players of whom much is expected who deliver little this year, and there may be players of whom little is expected who deliver much. Such are the vagaries of life. The player who ends up demanding our attention most of all this year may be someone you’re barely thinking about today — Boston’s Kristian Campbell would be a great recent example of this sort of unexpected development happening in a different organization. There are several Day Two or Three members of last year’s draft who I’m interested to see perform this year in their debuts (Jakob Christian, Hunter Dryden, Robert Hipwell, Zander Darby, Niko Mazza, etc.), and any of them could turn in a surprise breakout performance.

But since your question is keenly focused on teenagers, Kent, let me leave two quick thoughts:

1. Beware of undervaluing players with a “2” at the start of their age. James Tibbs III and Dakota Jordan and Joe Whitman and Carson Seymour and many others are all vital players for a healthy organization to develop as well; and

2. Beware of over-reacting to the predictable struggles and ups and downs of a teenager’s development Let Heliot Ramos’ circuitous journey stand as the lesson for that one.

Jason S

How do you expect the new regime to approach the draft? I wonder how their emphasis on finding guys that can impact the game in multiple ways will come to fruition in the draft. Would you expect that to lead them to draft with an approach that leans towards twitchy higher ceiling players with more volatile outcomes or more well-rounded players with higher floors?

This is a great question, Jason, but it’s a tricky one as well. Spotting changes in draft philosophy is best done over the long haul, because drafts are such unpredictable things. The behavior of any one organization is dependent in crucial ways on the behavior of 29 other organizations, not to mention agents and other influencers, health concerns, the specific makeup of a draft class, and all manner of contextual issues. And, although organizational preferences will influence how a club lines up their draft board, when faced with facts on the ground at any specific draft spot, the club may well feel forced to go a different direction.

Still, our brains thrive on pattern recognition, and it’s natural to be on the hunt for clues as to what pattern may emerge in time. Giants’ GM Zack Minasian, in a recent appearance on Tim Kawakami’s podcast, said this when asked about changing organizational priorities:

I think what our philosophy has been in the past has surely been discussed a lot. Farhan brought me in here in 2019, and I’m forever grateful [and have] a lot of respect for him. I learned so much [from him]….Some of the philosophy that we had at that point was basically: winning the strike zone, both on the mound and at the plate. And, you know, a lot of those things are industry-wide. It’s not that we have changed and now we don’t want to win the strike zone. There may be some subtle differences that I think we, as an organization or fan base, start to see as the season goes on.

The example he gave immediately following that quote was that he expected the team to steal more bases this year (which, indeed, they certainly are — the most this early in a season since 1982).

Reading between the lines, it certainly seems that Minasian is saying that well-rounded athletes who can help the club win in multiple ways are going to be an important part of the club going forward, and things like low chase rates, excellent BB/K rates, and strong swing decision metrics — while certainly still important — will not be the primary lens through which to view all player acquisitions.

Again, I don’t want to go crazy with this notion. I think it’s hard to make the argument that a front office that oversaw the drafting of Hunter Bishop, Grant McCray, Tyler Fitzgerald, Vaun Brown, Donovan McIntrye, Vance Honeycutt, Wade Meckler, Maui Ahuna, Jose Ortiz, Dakota Jordan and Andy Polanco didn’t value well-rounded athletes, and wasn’t willing to bet on athletes whose swing decisions weren’t their strongest attributes. And it’s possible, given that most of the scouting infrastructure and Scouting Director remain the same, that we’ll see a lot of similarity in future drafts.

Still, I think the Giants know that they could stand a greater presence of dynamic, up-the-middle athletes in their system. They could use more twitchiness, and they could use more players who can help the club win with multiple aspects of their game. And, in time, I do suspect they shift some of the balance of their drafts away from corner bats who come with limited defensive or baserunning value attached.

Of course, that all depends on such players being available. I remember rather naively announcing to John Barr one time that I always hoped they’d draft high school shortstops who can hit in the 1st round, only to get a horselaugh and a “yeah, cuz those guys are so easy to find!” in response.

We’ll see with the accumulation of years. Who knows? Given Buster Posey’s simpatico connection to Brian Sabean, perhaps they’ll go back to selecting pitchers at the top of every draft. And if Buster can find himself a Dick Tidrow for a wing man, that might not be such a bad idea.

Henrique Goncalves

As always, thanks for all you do, Rog! The offseason is much better with your many, many pieces!

What do you think is Melvin/Posey’s plan for the 5th starter spot? Assuming no injuries or other unforeseen circumstances and everyone pitching well, is it Landen Roupp’s to lose now or is he keeping the seat warm till Kyle Harrison is fully recovered? I imagine Roupp can’t go a full season as a starter yet given his recent history, but I’m a big fan of his so I’m hoping he proves he’s a major leaguer for life now.

Relatedly, what seems to be the plan for Hayden Birdsong?

MikeH

Recent comments suggest they're looking at Birdsong as a reliever and not stretching him out? Personally, I think this is a waste of his talent

Henrique Goncalves

Agreed! I hadn’t seen that until Pavs tweeted it last night. It could be the Sale/Crochet route the White Sox like to use, but I don’t like it either

MikeH

For me, they have Sean Hjelle and Tristan Beck who could fill in that role and keep Birdsong stretched out. I'm sure they're gonna need to give Roupp a bit of a break

Henrique Goncalves

Exactly, and both Hjelle and Beck did it well, plus you could also use Black or McDonald if needed instead of Birdsong. That’s why I wonder if, barring injuries, the Roupp spot will go to Harrison whenever he gets tired and Harry is back to full strength.

I included Henrique’s and Mike’s back-and-forth on this topic, because I’ve seen a lot of these sentiments in other areas of the Giants’ following world, and I know that Birdsong’s situation, at the very least, is currently a hot topic among fans. There’s a whole host of interrelated personnel priorities embedded in this web of questions, so let me try to tease them out one by one.

Let’s start with the fifth starter portion of this question, because I think it’s the most straight forward. The Giants announced coming into camp that this was going to be a competition, and they announced at the end of camp that the competition had been won by Roupp. He now has a spot in the rotation to hold down for as long as his performance merits it. I don’t think there’s any ambiguity there, nor any remote implication of seat warming. If Roupp goes out there and performs, that spot is his.

Beyond that, there is a question of managing Roupp’s workload for the year, and that will be fascinating to watch as the season goes on. Roupp pitched 76 innings last year, after throwing just 31 the prior year. His professional high point was 107 innings, back in 2022. I would imagine they have a target in mind for him and some sort of blueprint for getting there — which could be lowering the innings per outing (Garrett Crochet, for instance, spent all of last year “starting,” but never threw more than four innings in a game after July 1, and sometimes threw as few as two. They could also skip his turn when off days make that amenable. Or they could use the IL to give him a breather at some point.

However, it’s possible that they’ll just watch him and see how he’s pitching and adjust off that. If you want a recent example of a team that didn’t feel it necessary to keep a tight leash on a pitcher coming off a low innings count, look at Scott Harris’ Tigers last year. Tarik Skubal had thrown just 80 innings in 2023 coming off of flexor tendon surgery that had ended his 2022 season early. His professional high was 149 pre-surgical innings back in 2021. And yet the Tigers were apparently comfortable in pushing him past the 200 innings mark (including post-season) last year, because he was strong and obviously throwing well. So it could be that Roupp is allowed to throw a more or less normal season (say 130-140 innings?), so long as he looks healthy and strong. The bottom line is that it’s a good problem to have if they do need to curtail his innings, because it means he’s pitched well enough to hold onto the spot.

It’s Birdsong’s part in this story that I know has fans a little worked up, and I know a lot of people believe he’d be better off down in Sacramento, throwing four to six innings once a week, than up in San Francisco getting limited work.

I’m going to take the contrary opinion here. Simply put, I think there are two sets of questions we can ask here. First:

• Is Birdsong one of the best 13 pitchers the Giants have?

• Can he help the club win games right now?

I think the answer to both of those questions is “Yes.” And I think that’s why he’s currently on the roster. So then, let’s ask the opposing set:

• Is pitching against PCL hitters a better development environment than pitching against major league hitters?

• Is there some long-lasting harm to Birdsong to be pitching as a reliever right now?

• Will it be difficult to get him stretched back out relatively quickly?

Again, in my opinion, the answer to all three questions is a firm “No.” Birdsong has done a great job of pushing his development, and I think, talent-wise, he’s at the point where he needs (and arguably deserves) major league hitters to test himself against. I really don’t believe that there’s a great advantage to hauling his talented arm to El Paso and Albuquerque and all the other Moon Ball environments of the PCL and pitching against inferior hitters. There’s also the question of whether piling innings on him in Sacramento is a good thing — a lot of teams are fearful of wasting those bullets in the minors, as they should be.

But more than that, I just don’t think that getting him stretched back out again, whenever that should be a need, is likely to be an onerous process. In part, that’s because MLB starters don’t generally “stretch” all that far these days to begin with. Just to take one obvious recent example, the Giants kept Roupp as a reliever last year and used him exclusively in one or two inning stints. And yet, at the end of the year, when they wanted to turn him back into a starter, they didn’t need to send him down. He went from one inning on September 1st, to four innings on September 5th, to a five-inning start on September 10 — and then just kept starting. Here’s his game logs for the final two months of the year:

I think the Melvin quotes, referenced above, are mostly an indication that the original plan — to use him for long outings as a piggyback “starter” — simply haven’t come to fruition. Facts on the ground always win out in the end. And, since the club can’t really afford to have a pitcher on the staff who isn’t being used (check out those game totals for all the other relievers on the staff), it follows that Birdsong, for now, should be part of the mix and carry his full load of responsibility. Going back to my first set of questions, I believe he’s got the ammunition to handle that responsibility quite well — and when the time comes to return to a starting role and take on even more responsibility, I think he’ll do well with that, too.

Which maybe takes me to the final part of this discussion — whether the Giants have other arms in Sacramento who would do just as well as an eighth arm in the pen. I’m not sure that they do. I would say that Hjelle’s and Beck’s performances the past couple of years fall more into the “fungible relievers” category than “circle of trust.” They’ve thrown well at times and less well at other times. But one thing that has jumped out at me this week is that neither is throwing as hard as we’ve seen them in the past — Hjelle has been sitting 92-93 on his fastball in his first three outings, which is a solid tick down from the 94.6 mph that he averaged in the majors last year. It might not sound like much, but that’s an important two miles in the context of a big league reliever! Beck, who of course is coming off a year lost to a major (and scary) surgery, is also down a tick from where we saw him in 2023 — and strangely only threw one fastball at all in his most recent outing.

At some point, the Giants might decide that Birdsong isn’t getting in enough work. Or they might develop a need in the rotation and send him down for a start or two to stretch out while somebody else (Harrison, likely) steps in. But for right now, I think the club is carrying the best 13 arms they have, and the pitchers most capable of helping them compete and win — which to my mind should be the priority for making roster decisions. And I don’t believe that they are costing themselves in the long run. Bringing up starters to get their feet wet out of the bullpen has an honored tradition in MLB — just ask any Earl Weaver fan.

And, as that really is all the letters that came into the post-office this week, I will close up a relatively light mailbag.

I also have a few other things coming your way today — another player interview video and potentially another short video of my thoughts. I’ll also have a new podcast episode either this afternoon or tomorrow.

On with the games!