Photo Credit: Melvin Adon Belen’s Instagram
I was listening recently to Baseball America’s podcast on their Organizational Rankings and JJ Cooper made a salient point about fans: if you’re going to get mad about where your team falls in somebody’s org rankings, remember that part of that is that you have deep but limited knowledge. Our knowledge of the Giants prospects is deep and wide and leads us to think things like, “if Connor Cannon can just do [X], there’s a real chance for him!” But that depth of knowledge blinds us to the fact that every organization has those same guys, and with our focus so devoted to one team, fans go out on Twitter and write things like this:
[Sidenote: don’t go out on Twitter and write things like that]
Point being, this is a very human tendency — to place too much importance on the things we know and too little importance (in terms of both amount and value) on what we don’t know. Today’s post is a small corrective for that tendency. While on Monday I looked at the Giants’ prospects who have received Non-Roster Invites (NRIs) to spring training, today I want to look at the guys from outside the organization whom have the same. These are the guys who were somebody else’s depth prospects, who fans of some other organization once clung to as having legitimate chances to become big leaguers, but who, for whatever reason, ran out of opportunities to achieve that success in their original home. They are somebody else’s Sam Selmans or Donovan Solanos. Or, put another way, they are somebody else’s Melvin Adons and Raffi Vizcainos — both of whom have been re-signed to minor league free agent deals this winter, which is why these two long-time Giants prospects get bundled in with the outsiders instead of the insiders.
And, you know what, as soon as I start dealing with these refugees from other organizations, I find very quickly that I am out over my skis. There are a lot of guys in camp I don’t know much about. There are guys in camp I’d literally never heard of before the Giants signed them. My knowledge is deep, but it’s maybe not as broad as it should be. A reminder! So let’s get to researching and maybe we can learn together about the new faces and maybe even come to love them the same way we do “our own guys.”
The Outsiders Who Are Now Insiders
Unlike Monday’s post, I’m not going to group these guys. Every last one of them is here as potential depth pieces for the season and the vast majority of them are pitchers. But let’s go through the list and find some identifying factors and buckets that we can put guys in.
They’ve Been to the Show, They’ve Seen the Lights
The lion’s share of the NRIs are guys who have some major league time but who haven’t established themselves as legitimate big leaguers yet. Before I get into them, while I’ll probably give some velocity readings as I go through these guys, it’s important to say that that’s not necessarily where the Giants are right now, so let’s get this out here right away:
In a copy-cat league, teams paid attention to the Rays focus on “tough looks” from a diverse array of arm angles last year, and it’s pretty apparent that this is something the Giants are focusing on as well. Farhan Zaidi talked about this at some length after the Alex Wood signing and it’s a common theme that’s been popping up in a lot of the teams smaller signings. Good friend, GPT produced a wonderful graphic visualization of the Giants focus on “outlier release points” recently:
Keep this graphic in your mind as we go through these names because most of these guys sit outside the norm of pitchers in terms of release points, and that’s at least part of the reason why the Giants wanted to look at them. Sequencing variant looks back-to-back is yet another way to keep batters from getting too comfortable in the box.
Anthony Banda: Banda, who was once the star pitcher on a San Jacinto JC team that won the National JC Championship, has gone through a lot of changes in his career. He originally went from a projectible lefty with a fringe average fastball to a power pitcher. Not surprisingly, in an industry that loves power left-handed arms, he’s been part of several trades for big league talent, including being part of the deal that brought Steve Souza to Arizona. At his peak, he was getting his fastball up to 95-96, but after reaching Tampa, it backed down a couple of ticks and was sitting more 92-94. He’s never developed the command to live comfortably at reduced levels, leading to the DFA from Tampa. His pitch mix had also gotten to the point where he relied almost exclusively on his change up and four-seam fastball, with the change making up over half of his pitch mix last year. At this point, he’s basically a reclamation project who sits, like Conner Menez, as tepid depth for the starting rotation.
Silvino Bracho: Bracho would be my front-runner for guys from this list who might break camp with the Giants. He’s a fastball/changeup guy with average 93-94 mph fastball velo and neither his spin rate nor vertical movement (which has been shown to be most effective at missing bats) has been particularly notable thus far. Bracho spent parts of four years in the Diamondbacks bullpen, and appeared to be coming into his own in 2018 when he had career bests in ERA and FIP and had an excellent 27% K rate, driven mostly by a terrific changeup. In 2019, however, the knife fell and he missed most of the last two seasons recovering from Tommy John surgery. He returned briefly at the end of 2020 and looked healthy and effective in the Dominican Winter League. This could very well be another effective arm picked up at no cost.
Do this a lot and Giants fans will love you Silvino!
Rico Garcia: Hey, here’s one we know! Garcia was last year’s cheap minor league FA pickup. Rico has long been on prospect watchers radar as a guy with solid-average stuff who was hurt his entire career by Colorado’s extreme hitter-friendly affiliate parks. He was at his best with the Giants last year when he placed his 95-96 mph fastball above the zone and enticed hitters to chase. When he throws the ball in the actual strike zone,the results aren’t always quite as effective. Garcia’s probably not a candidate to open the season in the Giants pen, but he’s a solid depth piece to store in Sacramento while waiting for the inevitable IL stints or bring in when a fresh arm is needed.
Jay Jackson: Jackson is a former Top 10 prospect in the Cubs system, who, at one point, was on the back-end of Baseball America’s Top 100 list (#98 way back in 2010). After stalling out at as a starter in AAA, he bounced around various organizations for much of the last decade before eventually moving to Japan for three seasons. He returned to the US in 2019 and spent time in Milwaukee’s terrific bullpen. Jackson comes in as basically the poor man’s Matt Wisler of the winter. He brings a heavy dose of hard sliders (55% in 2019) and given the disparate effectiveness of his slider (.228 wOBA on 294 pitches in 2019) and fastball (.433 wOBA on 222 pitches), I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Giants suggest he bump up the percentage of his slider usage and rely on the pitch that misses bats. You may not be surprised to know that his relationship with the strike zone isn’t quite as intimate as one would like.
Dominic Leone: The 29-year-old former-D’back, former-Cardinal, former-Blue Jay, former-Cleveland-baseball-team pitcher has a history of missing bats at the big league level. His fastball is perfectly fine (average velocity at 95) and he throws his slider a lot (33% in 2019. Sounds familiar! Leone has by far the most actual big league success of anybody on this list — his 2017 season with Toronto was a legitimately fantastic year (1.5 fWAR!). The career K9 of 9.6 tells you he has big league stuff, though he’s had his issues with home run-itis over the years. But what better cure for that disease than Oracle Park? Leone’s yet another guy the Giants might want to see increase his slider usage. “Too many pitches” is apparently the new market inefficiency.
Zack Littell: Littell has an interesting history. A 10th round draft pick out of high school with a somewhat fringy, high-90s fastball, he was traded twice for big league talent before his 22nd birthday. There was always something there that caught scouts’ attention. After winding his way from Seattle to the Yankees to Minnesota, Littell spent most of the last three years in the Twins bullpen. He was at his best in 2019 when — wait for it — his slider usage bumped up to 48% and dominated hitters to the tune of a .194 wOBA. Last year, that slider usage dropped, and it wasn’t nearly as effective, leading to his demotion to the Alternate Site and, ultimately, the Twins dropping him. But he gets tossed solidly into the Matt Wisler-blender as well: crank up the slider usage and see who suddenly transforms himself into a bat missing monster that nobody saw hiding under the bed.
James Sherfy: Here’s where we really do get into that “tough look” funkiness. The under-sized Sherfy is the rare RHP who sets up on the extreme 1b side of the rubber, giving his slider a real funhouse-mirror vibe, like it’s breaking the laws of physics with its every move. He doesn’t throw it particularly hard, but, somewhat like Tyler Rogers, the bizarre approach angle — like he’s a RHP throwing from the LHP spot — combined with the sharp cut seems like it should break a batter’s brain. Of course, he was also on the minor league release list last year, so what do I know? The Diamondbacks released him last August due to some health issues with his elbow and he may have had some surgery, so his health needs monitoring.
Seeing Other Teams Prospects
Daniel Alvarez: The Yankees are one of those teams with such a true 40-man traffic jam that they leave a trail of interesting talent behind them like bread crumbs. And the Giants are just the kind of hungry pigeon waiting to pounce on that trail. The 24-year-old Alvarez has never been a prospect of particular note with the prospect-rich Yankees. Since signing out of Venezuela in 2014 he’s mostly been an innings-eater starter with solid/fringy fastball velocity. But in 2018, the Yankees moved him to the bullpen and his performance picked up notably with the move. He was the closer on the Trenton Thunder Eastern League championship team (the last Trenton Thunder team in affiliated ball, as it turned out), where he posted an extremely impressive K/BB ratio. His 11.73 K9 and 31% K rate were both career highs, and he held AA hitters to just a .189 batting average. Not good enough to get noticed in the Yankees’ system, but there’s definitely something interesting here. Not surprisingly, that something might be his slider, which we can see in its nascent form in this clip from his rookie league days:
Sam Long: As a 25-year-old who’s yet to get out of A ball (where he’s spent the last three seasons and two organizations), Long is a unusual dumpster dive target. But as a left-hander who struck out 112 batters in 97 innings the last time there was a minor league season, he makes a little more sense. A product of the incredibly productive Sacramento high school baseball scene, Long spent much of his time in the Rays system as a low strikeout/high walk guy, which is never good. He turned that around in 2019 with the White Sox thanks in some part to his work with a private pitching lab and Pitching Ninja’s @FlatgroundApp social media outlet, as is the standard baseball story these days.
Yunior Marte: If you listened to my Rule 5 preview podcast with GPT in December, then you heard possibly the first mention that the Giants were interested in Marte. The RHP is mostly a fastball guy, with an exceptionally fast arm and velocity that gets up to the 97 range. His control hasn’t been great and he got knocked around in his first look at AAA in 2019, but he’s posted consistently high strikeout rates in the upper minors. The Royals mostly kept their Instructional camp to themselves in Kaufman Stadium, so it’s hard to know what recent information the Giants had on Marte. Ironically, the last time the Giants really got a good look at Marte, it was a hitters’ feast!
You Know Them, You Love Them, They’re Back
Melvin Adon: Ah, here we get back to the question of whether we most love the prospects we are most familiar with or if, on the contrary, familiarity has bred contempt. Have you nurtured hopes for the fireballing Adon over the years that you can’t let go of and need to see fulfilled? Or are you over Adon thanks to years and years of hearing about how he was on the verge? Though he throws harder than Marte, there’s decent reason to see the pair as somewhat similar in value. They both have reached AAA and had a tough time there. In both cases, their stuff plays down due to subpar command. They both bring strikeout stuff at their best but are inconsistent at performing at their best. Personally, I probably fall in the former category. After years of watching his progress, I feel invested in Adon’s success and would love to see him get the chance. You may remember that his Dominican Winter League ended quickly and suddenly with what looked to have been a painful injury. But it seems to have just been a scare, as he’s in Giants camp and (as seen above) looks ready to go. The Giants non-tendered him in the winter as a way to open room on their 40-man, no doubt having already agreed with him on an above-normal-paygrade minor league contract. That seemed to suggest that his star was dimming in the front office’s eyes, but here’s hoping 2021 turns that around.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Guess Not! Just saw the news from camp that Adon did indeed have shoulder surgery this winter. In addition, Raffi Vizcaino has disappeared off camp list as well and he, too, appeared to leave his final LIDOM game this winter in pain.
Raffi Vizcaino: I just wrote an entire piece on Raffi, so, if you want the long version, you can check that out. Suffice to say that he’s another player like Marte: excellent stuff, suboptimal command, inconsistent as a performer. But the stuff truly is quality, which means that there’s always a chance things come into focus.
Sam Wolff: You’ve heard of two-sport athletes? Wolff was the ultra-rare four-sport athlete as a high school student in South Dakota. And though he was drafted out of high school, he ended up going to Junior College and finally New Mexico State (getting drafted twice more), before finally signing a pro contract. That seemed to set the standard for a career that has been oft-delayed. Wolff seemed on the verge of a big league call-up during a breakout AAA season with the Rangers in 2017 when he tore his flexor tendon. He came to the Giants that winter in the Matt Moore trade and, though he’s flashed big league stuff when he’s been on the mound, injuries have piled up for the soon-to-be 30 year old. Wolff spent 2020 at the Giants Alternate Site in Sacramento and reports on his work there were strong. The Giants moved quickly to re-sign him at the start of the offseason. If he can stay healthy, there’s an up/down arm or better. Once again, hoping this is the year that the health holds up.
Hey Look! Dudes Who Can’t Pitch!
Arismendy Alcantara: Alcantara was supposed to be part of the young wave of talent that finally brought an end to the Cubs championship drought. He had the athleticism, the aptitude, the flexibility. He was part of an exciting Cubs’ Top 10 in 2014 that included Javy Baez, Kris Bryant, Albert Almora, and Jorge Soler. Then he went out and hit .189 over 450 major league at bats and….well, as Dorothy said, “people come and go so quickly here!” Alcantara’s something of an odd choice for the Giants, as he’d always suffered from a poor approach at the plate that drove strikeouts up. In his last MLB appearance with the Reds, he posted a comically bad K/BB ratio of 38 to 2. But he showed progress on his walk rates in three years in the Mexican League. He’s still just 29 and can play all over the diamond. He’ll head to Sacramento and give the team some depth.
Jason Krizan: Krizan is a two-time selection in the Minor League portion of the Rule 5 draft. That has to mean something, doesn’t it? He’s also a guy who’s spent a good deal of his minor league career walking more than he struck out. After more than 1000 games as a minor leaguer, he brings a pristine 436 BB to 436 K career record to the Giants. We know how they like a good K/BB ratio. The 31-year-old Krizan is purely minor league depth though. He does many things well, nothing particularly great, and will fill a lot of roster needs capably for the River Cats.
And there you have it….The Other Guys! Are you ready to love them as much as your very own now? Did I miss anybody? I’ll bet I missed somebody. Hang on a second, better run and check Twitter to see if they’ve handed out any more NRIs while I was writing this. Be right back…..
Enjoy spring training everybody. Baseball is Back!