Giants Depth Chart: RHP
It's a tall order
It feels like I’ve spent most of my time in these Depth Charts kvetching about how few guys there really were to talk about at each position. Well, karma comes to town to deliver my punishment today: we arrive at Right-Handed Pitching. It’s not that this is a particularly special group (I do have them ranked 6th in my position breakdown after all) — but, oh my, are there a lot of names that we need to cover. It’s a “muddle group,” I suppose, with a lot of different arms trying to break out of the pack.
That should be true of RHP in general — there’s tremendous attrition and it usually takes maximum inventory to produce value in the end. As has been true of the Giants pitching prospects for the last decade, most of these guys do fit into either the “backend starter” or “potential reliever” buckets — again that’s true of the majority of organizations. Still, there is depth to discuss here.
I’ll bottom line this at the top — one of the real questions I have about the system overall (and consequently the state of the rebuild) is that I’m bearish on the potential for impact RH pitching currently in the organization. Herein we find:
arms here that are highly likely to be major leaguers;
arms here that likely will provide some nature of value; and
arms that can work their way into a big league callup if things break right (though writing that it occurs to me that “break right” is a particularly inept turn of phrase when discussing pitching arms).
So it’s not exactly “depth to excite you” so much as “depth to keep you warm.” If I’m creating an Amazon Wish List for my Giants prospects Shopping Cart — impact RH arms tops my list.
I’ll try to get to all the guys who interest me. But lest I foist some Infinite Pitching Jest upon you, I’m going to have to break this up into a couple of posts. Today I’m going to tackle the top tier starters and give them a fairly deep look-see. Next time I’ll get into the bigger mass of names.
Top Tier
Logan Webb, 23 yrs old, 1.85 ERA, 9.8 K/9 in 63 IP across 4 levels;
5.22 ERA, 8.4 K/9 in 39.2 IP in San Francisco
Sean Hjelle, 22 yrs old, 3.32 ERA, 139 K/ 37 BB in 143.2 IP across 3 levels
Tristan Beck, 23 yrs old, 2.27 ERA, 37 Ks/ 13 BB in 35.2 IP after trade to SF
One good thing about today’s post is that I’m going to skip the “Major League Depth Pieces” category all together. It’s not necessary — the guys in the top tier really are the major league depth, or are soon to be so. Logan Webb has already made his major league debut and was fighting for a rotation spot when last we saw baseball. Hjelle was able to climb to AA in his first full season and lurks in the Giants not too distant future. And even Beck, with some luck and good health, is in a position to move quickly if the ticked-up stuff he brought with him from Atlanta to San Francisco continues to show up. In addition, of course, there are the “post-prospect” types like Tyler Beede, Shaun Anderson, and Dereck Rodriguez, all of whom will be competing with this up-and-coming crop to grab their own share of the Giants' future pitching fortunes.
All of which brings us to Logan Webb who had a long, strange trip in 2019.
Webb entered 2019 as arguably the Giants’ top pitching prospect (depending on your appetite for Shaun Anderson). Before fans could get properly buzzed up about him, however, the distinctly buzz-killing news came through the wire (bumming me out all the way over in Germany) that he was suspended for 80 games for violating MLB’s joint drug policy. Despite the fears that his season was lost, Webb would end up making serious hay with the time he had, earning a quick promotion to the majors upon his return to action. Ultimately, he managed nearly 40 major league innings before the season was over. And so now that we have that small sample of work from which to glean insight, what are we to make of Logan now?
One of the questions in the recent Hank Schulman/Susan Slusser Chronicle Subscriber Q&A asked if Logan Webb might be a Cy Young Award candidate in the next few years. Schulman, seeming to literally throw cold water through the Zoom chat, said he didn’t think the Giants viewed Webb as that kind of pitcher, but rather were trying to build him into more of a solid, complimentary type starter. Now Hank might be misreading the signs there (and Webb might outperform the expectations regardless), but if we dig into the numbers a little, I think we can find reasons to understand why the Giants might view him that way.
First and foremost, there was a noticeable velocity drop for Webb between 2018 and 2019. Following his rehab from Tommy John surgery, Webb was consistently touching 98 out of the bullpen in Salem-Keizer. I saw him blow upper 90s the next spring, and throughout his terrific 2018 season with San Jose and Richmond he was consistently sitting in the 95-97 range in his starts. But in 2019 his velocity had backed down into the 92-94 range. Still respectable, certainly, but a perceptible notch down. Most likely, this was the result of stretching him back out to a starter’s work load. In 2017, he pitched strictly in 1 inning stints and in 2018 he was restricted to 3 innings in most of his starts. Pitching 5 and 6 innings likely degraded some of the hop on his fastball. Other things might have factored in as well — he might have lost the quasi-mythical post-TJ bump, he might not have built his arm up into full season strength due to the suspension, he might have changed his workout regimen in response to the failed test.
But whatever the reason (his heart or his shoes), the difference in a few MPH showed up when he faced major league hitters. By Fangraphs, Webb’s four-seam fastball had a negative pitch value in 2019, which is certainly a bad start for a power pitcher! And you can see trace effects in the way batters responded to all of Webb’s pitches. While batters swung at just 63% of the pitches they saw in the strike zone from Webb, they made contact on 90% of those swings. That’s significantly higher than the Z-Contact rates of the league’s elite pitchers, as was Webb’s overall contact rate against of 80%. And connected to the damage that batters were able to do on Webb within the strike zone, his ability to get them to chase outside the zone (29%) was also significantly lower than the league’s better pitchers — the best of whom get batters to chase in the 35-40% range.
If you look at Webb’s page on the incomparable Baseball Savant site, we can see another challenge that he had in his debut. For all four of the pitches in his arsenal, he failed to throw strikes with even half of his offerings.
Overall, Webb threw strikes with just 46.2% of his pitches (major league average was 49.9%). He was similarly slightly below league average in getting swing thrus (22.8% vs. 24.5%) and at giving up hard contact (measured in both exit velocity and “barrels” per Statcast). So he struggled to get ahead of batters and he took some punishment when forced into the strikezone — a tough combination to be working with.
Of course, 40 inning debuts don’t write anybody’s future in stone. It’s not hard to see where holistic improvements can take Webb to the bright future many of us (myself definitely included) have been expecting. He did have encouraging movement both laterally and horizontally on all four of his offerings. And he did a solid job of staying on the edge of the strike zone last year.
(Seriously, if you haven’t played around with Baseball Savant, you really should — it’s a treat!)
Tighten up the control. Sharpen up the bite and shape of his secondaries so he can increase chase rates. Find a way to miss more bats in the zone (perhaps by using the four seam up more often). If you squint just right, there’s a poor-man’s Matt Cain starter-kit in this package. But to get from the picture on the back of the box to the fully built version, both the command and the quality of all four pitches need to sharpen up. And most of all the fastball needs to be a pitch that he can build off of (especially if he continues to throw it close to half of the time). Adding a mile or two of hops back in again wouldn’t hurt either! Logan Webb sitting 94-96 would likely have a brighter future than Logan Webb sitting 92-94.
One of the challenges of looking at minor league players is to open yourself up to possibilities without being blinded by them. Forecast, but don’t wishcast. Focus on what players can do rather than what they can’t, but don’t forget that their flaws are going to play an important role in their future too.
I say all that to remind myself, because I do feel like my view of Hjelle has consistently been out of step with the hype we hear building for him from the organization — and indeed many scouts and observers who have followed his career for years. In that same Schulman/Slusser podcast I linked to above in reference to Webb, Mr. Schulman went on to say that Hjelle might be the kind of pitcher who could put himself into Cy Young Award conversations in time. Other beat writers have suggested that once Bart, Ramos, and Hjelle ascend to the majors (which we hoped to see this year) the team will have a new core to build around.
And for me that’s a bridge too far. Hjelle can do a lot of things — he repeats his mechanics astonishingly well for a man his size. He throws strikes with multiple pitches. He gives hitters a unique look (if you’re a fan of “asses and elbows” pitching styles, you’re gonna like Hjelle). And he brings just a touch of orneriness and competitive fire that I enjoy seeing in my starting pitchers. But he’s not (IMHO) Bart-Ramos-Hjelle core-worthy. Like Webb, he strikes me as a strong compliment, an innings eater and perchance a #3 starter at his peak. Maybe something like a Giants-era Samardzija in the right world? That’s a useful pitcher. But is it a “build-around” core piece? Or am I looking too much at the can’t and not enough at the can?
Part of the issue with writing about Hjelle, it seems to me, is the “stuff” conversation. Hjelle lights up radar guns pretty well. When I caught him in August last year (in the video above) he was throwing an easy 95-96 the first inning. It didn’t stay there in my view but even when he does maintain that level of velocity it doesn’t necessarily translate into what fans think a 95 mph fastball should be. That is to say that a Sean Hjelle with a 95 mph fastball still seems to be mostly a “pitch to contact” guy rather than a swing and miss guy. He has a strong arsenal, he repeats his mechanics, he throws strikes and knows how to compete. That’s a major league starter — and a valuable one. I don’t know that it’s an intricate piece of a competitive core, however.
That said, in 2019, Hjelle made long strides (see what I did there) with his changeup thanks to early work with the Giants pitch shaping gurus and a low-pressure environment in Augusta. The curve has always been a strength. And while the fastball doesn’t necessarily play as a putaway pitch, it does get on hitters fast and come from a crazy plane. I want to focus on what Hjelle does and not on what he doesn’t do. And I don’t want to be too quick to slap a #4 ceiling on him — consider how much opportunity for “high ceiling” jokes he brings, after all! But I’d like to see a little more swing-and-miss ability in the long run. Because major league hitters will punish guys if they swing and connect often enough.
Former Stanford star Tristan Beck certainly knew how to ingratiate himself to his new organization after coming over from the Braves in the Mark Melancon deal — he almost immediately started performing much better than he had heretofore in his pro career. In his final performance in the Braves’ organization, Beck surrendered 6 earned runs in 5 innings to put his season ERA at 5.65. Five days later he was sent to the Giants where he concluded his season with a 2.27 ERA over six starts with San Jose. That’s good! He allowed just one run in his final three starts of the regular season. That’s gooder!
Not only did the stat line trend northward, the stuff did too. Some of this improvement Beck credited to a change in his delivery that he had started working on with the Braves. Some of it stemmed from a change in pitch usage, and some was no doubt due to improving health (he had missed two months early in the year with an oblique injury).
Beck is essentially a two-pitch guy, with a low-to mid 90s fastball setting up a dandy 12-6 curveball. Injuries have greatly disrupted his development — starting with a stress fracture in his back while in college — and have caused some wavering in the quality of his fastball from time to time. When he was throwing it at 90-91 with the Braves, observers ticketed him for up-and-down or middle relief future. With the Giants he was throwing it more in the 94-95 range. As we saw above with Webb, even a small change in the MPH can produce a big change in the stat line. The Giants also had him utilize his four-seam differently, throwing it up in the zone more to set up his curve ball with better tunneling. Those two developments have the Giants encouraged that Beck can be part of their rotation of the future. The questionable third pitch and the inconsistent history of his fastball velocity (and medical track record) keep him in something of a “prove it” category for me for the time being. But he certainly put himself on the right trajectory in the second half of 2019 and, even moreso, in the Arizona Fall League. It’s hard to ask for more of a return for unloading Mark Melancon’s contract off the books.
And One More For the Road
Gregory Santos, 20 yrs old, 2.86 ERA, 34.2 IP in 8 starts for Augusta
A year ago at this time there were many who believed Santos was actually the #1 pitching prospect in the system and the likeliest candidate to seize a fabled “Top of the Rotation” future. But then came a 2019 which almost entirely passed Santos by — two long stints on the injured list with shoulder soreness overshadowed anything he might have accomplished in his short periods on the active roster.
Santos has a big, imposing pitchers’ frame and outstanding athleticism — though the delivery has some violence which has always led to some “reliever risk” caution with scouts. Between those elements he generates the kind of stuff that incites people to use “filthy” and “nasty” a lot and create Pitching Ninja gifs. He gets to high 90s velocity on his fastball and features a true wipeout slider.
Thus, you’ll see a lot of rabid enthusiasm from those who see Santos live. But then the questions start in: though he features high heat with a natural cutting action, he hasnt’ yet created a lot of swings and misses in his career — somewhat like flamethrower Melvin Adon batters seem to get good swings off his fastball.
He’s also pitched sparingly — over four minor league seasons he’s thrown just 174 IP. And finally there’s those shoulder woes last year. 2020 was going to be his final year before becoming Rule 5 eligible and now it may be wiped out. What does this all add up to? There may not be a Pitcher with the pure electricity of Santos in the rest of the system — but as of yet the big year we’ve all been expecting from him hasn’t shown. He’s only 20, so there’s plenty of time for it to make a grand appearance. The system would greatly benefit if it did so soon.
…
Next time I’ll get to the next tier of starting RHP and perhaps take on the mass of interesting reliever arms (unless there’s a Vol. III in the offing).
If you want to catch up on all the position depth charts, here’s what we’ve covered so far:
On this day in history
Bryce was once again the winner on Wednesday’s lineup (well, as was my brother, but I’m not sure private texts can be the basis for a declared winner!). The 2011 Fresno Grizzlies barely hung on for a 9-8 victory in Tucson. Chris Stewart was the key here, as the defender-supreme was only in the Giants organization for the 2011 season.
Guess the team and year (maybe this one’s too easy):
Fargas, CF
Sy, SS
Garcia, C
Ewing, 1b
Arenado, 3b
Riley, DH
Cain, LF
Callaway, 2b
Ortiz, RF
Reyes, M. SP
2007: Nate Schierholtz had four hits including a game-tying single with two-outs in the bottom of the 9th. Five innings later, Schierholtz would end a marathon 14 inning 5-4 victory when he came home on Fred Lewis’ two-out game winning single. Nate would enjoy his first taste of the PCL, hitting .333/.365/.560 over 109 games. He’d also see the big leagues for the first time, making his major league debut on June 11.
2008: Madison Bumgarner struck out 8 over 6.1 IP in Greenville, allowing just 2 hits and 1 unearned run to pick up the win. Bumgarner’s first month of pro ball hadn’t gone exactly to plan. In his first three starts he’d allowed 10 earned runs in 11.2 innings. But prior to this start he decided to go back to his high school pitching mechanics and it was hard to argue with the results. Beginning with this game he would allow just 1 earned run — total — over a span of six starts. He’d allow just 13 earned runs over the final 21 starts of the year, ending with an extraordinary 1.46 ERA. He capped the brilliant year off with two more outstanding starts the Sally playoffs (14 IP, 0 ER, 16 Ks), helping Augusta to its lone Sally Championship as a Giants affiliate.
2019: After doubling in the 7th inning, Heliot Ramos left the game with soreness in his left knee. He’d be diagnosed with an LCL strain and miss a month. Ramos had gotten off to a hot start, specifically showing improved plate discipline as he’d walked 14 times in his first 19 games. In the last three games before hitting the Injured List, Ramos had gone 4 for 9 with two doubles, a HR and two walks. Ramos would pick right back up where he left off when returning on May 27, hitting HRs in two of his first three games. Overall he’d hit .306/.385/.500 in San Jose as a 19 year old and, despite missing a month, he’d earn a late season promotion to AA.
Last Word
Ben Badler wrote an excellent piece yesterday on prospects from lesser known international markets — which includes a writeup and some BP video of Elian Rayo (whom we covered in the 3b Depth Chart):
And since we’re looking at RHP today, how about Ryan Halstead and his sister Paige (starting Catcher at UCLA and Team USA softball teams) blowing up social media? Nicely done, Halstead Family:
They still need a 3b power guy to solidify the infield
I also did find Hank's choice of future CYA winner to be a little questionable. Right now, I just don't see it in Hjelle because he doesn't yet have that putaway pitch that Cy Young candidates have. But it's still wait-and-see, with his curveball most likely being that putaway pitch. I would've picked Seth Corry instead to be most likely to win CYA.