Giants Depth Chart: SS
Plus some thoughts on the 5-round draft
I didn’t intend this, but it occurred to me while writing this post that if you looked at the order of all these position depth charts, they correlate roughly to the way I would rank the top prospects at each position. So if you made a list like so:
Alex Canario
Hunter Bishop
Sean Hjelle
Luis Toribio
Seth Corry
Mauricio Dubon
Logan Wyatt
Yeah, that’s a defensible ranking of those seven players. Personally I like Toribio more than either of the Hjelle/Webb tandem at the top of the RHP chart, and I should probably have Bishop and Canario flipped — that explains why I’m not entirely satisfied with the order I published either of those pairs in (but when the posting deadline lingers, you have to pick a lane and drive, you know?).
Anyway, I see now that, consciously or not, the impact at the top of the lists has driven the order in which I’ve moved through these depth charts. But that ends today. Without a doubt in my mind, the potential franchise player in this organization, the lynchpin that turns the wheel, the straw that stirs the drink, is Marco Luciano. But despite that, and despite a pretty interesting depth chart behind Marco, this is as high as I can float the SS list upstream.
And as much as I do tend to believe that impact talent drives the rankings, there are two issues that force me to leave SS behind both CF and C lists: 1) doubts that Luciano will stick at the position; and 2) all the talent here is pretty far away. And with those two questions lurking in the back of my mind, I’m keeping SS back at the #3 position despite the fact that it is headlined by #1 guy in the system.
“The Dude” Tier
Marco Luciano, 18 yrs old, .322/.438/.616, 10 HRs, 178 PA in AZL
It seems like we’ve been hearing about Luciano for so long already, and he’s only played in 47 games as a pro. It’s hard to keep the hype machine in neutral (something you can see I totally failed at with the heading to this section). The teenager was already creating huge buzz as a 15 year old, putting on a very loud display of raw power in, among other places, Joliet, Illinois as part of a Dominican Prospect League international showcase:
When word came out that the Giants were the favorites to land the J2 star it was a thunderclap. They already had the #2 pick in the upcoming amateur draft (soon to be cashiered on Joey Bart) and now they were going to nab the #1 16-year-old-talent on the international free agent market as well. It was a double-shot of my baby’s love for a farm system in need of impact talent.
At Instrux the next winter, scouting reports started dribbling out that were amazingly even more enthusiastic than the amateur reports had been. Eric Longenhagen’s report for Fangraphs perhaps set the pace for the kind of breathless awe that Luciano has inspired:
The Giants dusty, tightly-confined backfields abut a gym with the sort of athleisure-wearing clientele you’d expect in Scottsdale. Last January, when most baseball facilities across the country were dark, just feet away from oblivious Peloton riders and tennis-playing retirees, a lucky few scouts and media folks had a religious experience watching the sweetest-swinging teenager on Earth absolutely roast balls fed to his barrel by a high-speed pitching machine. Because of how close you can sit next to the field there, you can feel the sonic force of bat-to-ball impact radiate into your body. When Marco Luciano connects, you feel it to your core. He is not normal.
The wait to actually see him on the field seemed interminable, but when he got there he put on a serious show. In his third regulation game as a pro he doubled, tripled, and homered, allowing all of us to laugh at people like this:
He liked the experience so much he just kept on whaling at balls — homering in three consecutive games within his first week of play. He hit 10 over all (among 21 XBH) in just 38 games as a 17-year-old in his pro debut. Pretty, pretty special.
And now the questions — how fast is this bat going to move? The last half decade we’ve seen the top bats on international market move to the majors at warp speed: Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero, Fernando Tatis Jr. have all arrived in the majors within a 100 days of their 20th birthday, with none having played 300 games in the minor leagues. Is this the kind of trajectory we might see from Luciano? His bat suggests he has the talent to move like that (sans injuries). But will his glove keep up?
There’s where the reports lost their glow last year. It used to be that if you heard even a hint of “he might have to move off the position” about a player, you could bet your life’s saving that player was going to move to a less taxing position before he saw MLB. In the past decade, that’s been less and less true as teams have been able to use defensive data and positioning to cover player weaknesses, even at the most important defensive positions. Corey Seager, Carlos Correa, and Paul DeJong were all assumed to be players who wouldn’t make it the majors as a SS, in the former two cases because they were so large for the position (in retrospect, given the health record of those two one wonders if the teams did themselves or the players any favors by keeping them up the middle).
Luciano’s issues last year weren’t related to his size, but rather to his hands, his defensive actions, his throwing arm from the different angles that SS requires. None of that is unfixable with enough work (though you’re probably never talking about a maestro). But you have to wonder whether the bat will force the issue, pushing him to the majors before the glove can develop. MLB Pipeline put it like this:
Though Luciano has a plus arm, a high baseball IQ and some quick-twitch athleticism, scouts are split on whether he'll be able to remain at shortstop. He's already a fringy runner and could slow down further as he adds strength, which could necessitate a move to third base or right field. His offensive prowess should make him a star at any position.
For now, Luciano is a SS and the Giants certainly have every reason to keep him there as long as they can, as he could be an annual MVP-type player at the 6-spot. But the value is going to driven by the bat and I won’t be shocked to see him move around during his career defensively. One player you frequently hear Luciano compared to is Alfonso Soriano, who came up as a SS, saw a decent amount of time at 2b, but was mostly a poor defensive LF in his career. Soriano ended his career having accumulated almost 40 WAR, including four different 5+ WAR seasons. The first of those came in his fourth major league season — his second full season in the majors. So the question to you is: how would you feel about a Soriano-esque career for the prodigy? Where do you fall on the scale of “That’s Great!” to “Solid but somehow disappointing?”
Major League Depth
Abiatal Avelino, 25 yrs old, .283/.315/.444, 502 PA in Sacramento
Ryan Howard, 25 yrs old, .227/.277/.316 between Richmond and Sacramento
Tyler Fitzgerald, 22 yrs old, .276/.358/.395 between AZL, Salem-Keizer and Augusta
Avelino had a power spike in his last season in the Yankees’ system that vanished the moment he took off the pinstripes. He hit just 12 home runs in the moon ball environment of the 2019 PCL. Nevertheless, he’s a major league quality glove with speed and solid abilities waiting 90 minutes away from Oracle Park in case of need — something every major league club wants.
I mentioned Howard in the 2b depth chart. He’s seeking to redeem a 2019 season that saw him slide dramatically backwards. He’s historically been an average dependent player with a solid but slightly fringy glove at SS. Last year the average completely dried up and the final line wasn’t pretty. The two-time Giants’ draftee needs to turn the page completely from that disaster.
Fitzgerald doesn’t really fit in this category — he has yet to have a full season (which he won’t this year either obviously) and played just 19 games in A ball last year. But despite being too far away to provide major league depth anytime soon, this feels like the right category for the type of player he’ll be — one not too different from Howard. He has a short, solid right-handed swing geared for contact and he’s a stable presence defensively in the middle of the infield on either side of 2b. The Wow appeal is non-existent here, but a utility profile is reasonably likely. A little more pop wouldn’t hurt though!
The Young ‘Uns
Aeverson Arteaga, 17 yrs old, signed out of Venezuela for $1M in 2019
Anthony Rodriguez, 17 yrs old, signed out of Venezuela for $800K in 2019
Ghordy Santos, 20 yrs old, .314/.398/.430, 98 PA in AZL
Dilan Rosario, 18 yrs old, .214/.254/.364, 201 PA in AZL
Diego Velazquez, 16 yrs old, Giants expected to sign out of Venezuela this year
If you like players too young to have seen a game yet, have I got the group for you! In addition to Luciano, the Giants have injected a healthy dose of SS athleticism into the system through the international market in the last year or two. This is a crop that the casual fan isn’t likely to hear about for another half-decade — if ever — but the complexes have some talent brewing at SS.
The Giants followed up their epic 2018 J2 class with a more subdued effort in 2019, spreading the money around a little more evenly, but Ben Badler was still impressed by the depth. That class was headed by two Venezuelan SS, Arteaga and Rodriguez, who bring different skillsets to the organization. Arteaga is the more advanced of the pair, with the instincts, hands and arms to stick at the position. The son of a professional basketball player in Venezuela, Arteaga’s glove is likely to be his carrying tool, with a solid line-drive bat complementing the game rather than keying it.
Rodriguez has a chance to be the offensive star of the pair though. A switch hitter who makes hard contact from both sides, the Giants can envision him growing into a multi-dimensional power hitter (if you want to dream big, think José Ramirez). Rodriguez lack of traditional speed and quickness might push him off SS, but he has a plus arm which could also profile at 3b if the bat reaches its potential.
Santos, was one of the Giants highest signings in the 2016 J2 class (when they were limited to $300,000 max) and he’s been on a slow burn since. He struggled to hit in two straight seasons in the DSL, though he showed some extra-base ability when he did make contact and a strong predilection for receiving free passes. The Giants were always impressed with his defensive abilities and promoted him to the AZL this past year where he impressed, playing mostly 2b. Santos is a twitchy athlete with quick hands and feet. He’s still working to find a solid base at the plate, but his .800 OPS was a step in the right direction.
Rosario came into the draft with a reputation as a strong defender but light hitter. But Jason Pennini (formerly of Prospects Live and now of the Minnesota Twins scouting department) saw a young player almost exactly the opposite — with the potential for juice in the bat but rough defensively. You can hear Jason and I discussing Rosario in the course of this podcast — if you don’t mind my apparent inability to mute myself while drinking! Assuming the defensive reputation Rosario brought into the draft is still part of his skillset, the power potential he flashed in the AZL makes an intriguing overall package.
And, if you’re the type who is already bored with players like Arteaga and Rodriguez, who have yet to make their pro debuts, perhaps the suggestion that the Giants are attached to yet another Venezuelan SS is your jam. The switch-hitting, defensively-oriented Velazquez has a scouting report that sounds like it came straight out of Ehire Adrianza’s old clipbook — which suggests the making of a decently valuable player.
The Draft, the money, and other things
On Friday, word that the Major League draft was, indeed, going to be limited to five rounds flew around the twitterverse. This wasn’t exactly news, as Kiley McDaniel had said the same thing a week earlier. But the sinking feeling that we had moved from “this is probably going to happen” to “this is the way it is” sent reverberations through all of us who care about baseball development.
There are LOTS of more informed stories you can read about where negotiations sit and what all this means, starting with Ken Rosenthal’s reporting in The Athletic. Rosenthal is setting the standard for following the negotiations between MLB and the MLBPA which are threatening to break apart this week and doom the hopes for any 2020 season at any level (and possibly more seasons than just this one is the ill-will spills over into CBA bargaining). And reading Ken’s work, it’s clear that the MLB owners’ view of their current situation is drastically different from external parties’ view of that situation. Owners clearly see their current situation of liquidity, expenses, and revenue as dire and seem hell-bent on not paying for anything that doesn’t need paying for at this very unusual moment (including player salaries that they’ve already agreed to). And yes, I understand that while literally tens of millions of people are out of work, paying to acquire new talent in an industry that is already seeing furloughs of full-time employees is somewhat problematic. There seems to be little doubt that a small group of quote/unquote small market teams are pushing for draconian cost-cutting mechanisms and shaping the entire argument behind the scenes.
Which leads us to the heavily shortened draft. Again as Rosenthal notes, in the owners perspective, they’re not really losing players, they’re deferring the acquisition of them. The owners see themselves as deferring the costs — of acquisition and development — until some time in the future when they are better able to pay them AND the players are more likely to provide a return on those investments. In their minds, the best of this year’s crop (High School showcase stars or college Juniors) will go to, or stay in school, and will return to the draft another year.
In the longer view of things the people who are going to be cut out of this and future drafts, others who hope of playing in the big leagues someday — the longshots — will have to find other venues to continue their development: more Seniors players in college, independent leagues, the “Dream League” or perhaps other countries like Korea or Japan or Mexico. If those players someday work their way into looking like major leaguers, then MLB can swoop in their checkbooks and pick up a near-ready player. But the days of spending money on developing non-elite prospects appear to be dwindling if not dead in the minds of major league owners. Somebody else can pay that freight. That’s what the elimination of huge percentage of minor league affiliates is about. That’s what drastic slashing of the draft going forward is about — offloading costs that don’t provide what owners feel is a worthwhile return. The fact that most of these costs are minimal and provide by far the most cost-effective method of talent acquisition doesn’t seem to be moving the needle much at the moment. Corona-virus is clearing the way for a world that was already being envisioned in corporate suites and MLB’s head office. But as Rosenthal said: “forgive all the baseball people who consider the message both deflating and self-defeating.”
Almost certainly some future major league players will be lost over the course of shortening the draft (5 rounds this year and I expect 10 next year and 20 thereafter). And some of it will likely be elite. Keith Law used Paul Goldschmidt and Jacob DeGrom as examples of exactly the kind of players that might be lost — college juniors of middling repute who would be forced to either scramble to sign for a pittance (the $20,000 max this year), go back to college for a Senior year (where opportunities for playing time will be extremely limited due to the 35 rounds of draft that don’t exist this year AND the loss of some small school baseball programs due to the financial implications of COVID) or try their luck at Indy Ball. DeGrom wasn’t even a pitcher for most of his college career — some player like this is going to decide this all isn’t worth the effort or the expense and will walk away from the game.
Aside from the stars, it’s my experience looking at the draft and the minor leagues that the majority of late round drafted players who do reach the majors tend to be relief pitchers. As baseball continues to evolve into a reliever-centric game with relief pitchers taking up more and more of both roster space and pitching production, one wonders how many future relief arms won’t find their way into affiliated baseball going forward. Will one unintended consequence of the shortened draft be something like an Expansion Era Scenario, with too few arms to fill out major league rosters and a concomitant explosion in offense?
And then there’s the regressive element of all this. While Rob Manfred has spent virtually his entire commissionership talking about the need to grow the game (both in terms of who’s watching it and who’s playing it), money talks and as Scott Boras says, what MLB’s money seems to be saying right now is
We probably should have bought a billboard that said, ‘Go play other sports after Little League. Goodbye.
And I guess they have should have another billboard noting that if you live in much of this country, you don’t need to think about being able to watch games either — whether in person at a minor league stadium or on TV or the internet thanks to continued blackout rules. It’s all just so, so discouraging.
I come at this from a different angle I think than many baseball fans. To be honest, I’m not a person that’s ever been all that interested in models of efficiency. Oh,I see the value of efficiency when needed, I understand economic realities of trying to usher projects to successful conclusions. But at heart I’ve always guided by the lodestar of gratuity. Its appeal is more basic to me. For several years I worked in TV production and much of daily life was spent trying to hurry the Director of Photography through his lighting so we could “make our day.” Lighting took time and time was expensive. And the DP’s tendency to always want just “one more light” was a constant threat to my ability to do my job, always more time, always more money ticking away. But despite my responsibilities, I sympathized, I accommodated, I found ways to preoccupy our boss while that one more light was found and placed. The desire to add on, to provide the unlooked for element which isn’t strictly speaking necessary — that won’t even be consciously noticed by very many observers — but which makes the moment sparkle with added wonder? I got it. I understood it. I loved it. Adding on more than is necessary to produce splendor is to me a value in and of itself. One to be indulged in whenever possible — especially when dealing with large-scale industries that revolve around spectacle.
I think this is connected to my love of the minor leagues. Yes, they may well be a gratuitous and inefficient way to find big league talent. It’s quite possible that the voices pushing an overhaul or disruption of the development system are right about this. And thus cutting back from 60 rounds to 50 to 40 to 20 makes sense — did you know the Yankees once just kept drafting until the 100th round? Gotta tamp down those free spenders who won’t self-regulate!
A new generation of GMs who believe that efficiency is an a priori good have whispered to owners who will always prioritize cutting any cost that isn’t nailed down, that there are cheaper ways to achieve the same ends. That unholy alliance seems to be leading to a massive tear down of the acquisition and development aspects of baseball that we’ve known for years. Opportunities are the collateral damage. And with them, gratuity seems to be vanishing from baseball — an activity that is itself nothing other than gratuitous. Silly and glorious in its silliness (well, for me and others like me, for some, of course, it’s big money). And the burden of that loss is falling squarely on the ones who love the game most — the scouts, the fans, the fringe players with big dreams. All are being pushed out, or at the very least, pushed away from the game by a big industry that seems to see itself as too small to pay anymore for the delightful surprises that arise in unexpected places.
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What about Javier Alexander Francisco?
I was impressed with the video of Dilan Rosario - looks like the proverbial “the ball jumps off his bat.” If his defense settles down, it’ll be fun to watch his progress through the minors- in whatever form they end up.