Happy Harry Day Free For All Mailbag
Happy Harry Day, everybody! The mother of all call ups has come! Kyle Harrison makes his major league debut tonight. And as soon as I hit “publish” on this baby, I’m hopping in my car to head off to watch it. Seems like just yesterday I was watching the 19-year-old version of this kid in A ball! Or breathlessly reporting on his dazzling debut in Double A at just 20. Now a 22-year-old (he missed becoming the third 21-year-old on the squad this year by just 10 days), it’s time to see what that swing and miss stuff can do in the big leagues. It’s a lot to put on his broad young shoulders (the appearance of helping save a season in free-fall can’t be avoided given the timing of the move) — but they are broad and strong. Knock ‘em dead, Kyle!
And now, let’s see what’s in this week’s mailbag!
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Hi Roger, I had more personal questions this time, if you don't mind me asking. I would love to know more about what covering the farm system day-in day-out is like. We're pretty spoiled with the amount of content we get daily, so how much time does it take to do the write-ups, answer mailbag questions, do the podcasts, travel around etc.? What would you say is your favorite aspect of doing There R Giants?
Goodness! How much time does it take to do the writeups? I’m sure there are many of you out there reading who think I take entirely too long and use entirely too many words. In fact, when I started this post, I had a very strict desire to publish every morning at 10 am my time (7 am to you west coast readers). As you can tell, I have not stuck to that strict deadline very well.
A lot depends on where I am. When the Squirrels are in Richmond and I’m driving down, I basically try to start writing by 8:00 in the morning if not earlier, and try to get posted by 11. That gives me about an hour to clean up, eat lunch, play with the cats, whatever, before I have to hop in my car by about 12:30 in order to get down and settled in Richmond in time for In/Out, BP, and grab an interview with some player or coach. After that, I usually have an hour or two before the games in which to start preparing the next day’s post, write up the DSL games, etc., as well as chat with any scouts who are around for the game. Typically, as I drive the two hours or so home, I’ll listen to the audiocasts from the west coast teams, popping around between San Jose, Eugene, and Sac as my fancy takes me. I usually get back home around midnight, give or take, about 12 hours after I started, start ingesting the footage from my cameras that I have set up, and go to bed for about 6 or 7 hours before I get up and do it again.
When Richmond is out of town, I get to cut all the driving portion out of my day (as well as a lot of my access to the team, unfortunately), but it’s mostly the same, just with watching all the games on my laptop or Smart TV rather than driving to one in person (and, generally, less fatigue from having 5 or so hours in the car every day). As for podcasts, the hardest part is lining people up (which I’m somewhat lazy about). I don’t tend to spend a ton of time editing them (perhaps it’s all my past years of being a videographer that give me some antipathy to really obsessing with the audio quality — I know if I let myself get drawn in, it’ll be a wormhole that really sucks my time away).
And I do try to reach out to various Giants’ officials and scouts from teams regularly to keep getting new and various perspectives on players — a process that I continue into the off-season. Come March, I eagerly plan a 2 or 3 week trip to Spring Training and start it all over again! Somewhere in all of that, I try to sneak in non-baseball activities to round out my life, interests and mental activity (my wife and I are fans of theatre, art, music, traveling, and dining so those are the non-There R Giants’ worlds that I inhabit).
Do you think the Giants will ask Hayden Birdsong to develop a traditional windup motion this offseason, or does his quick upward progress suggest they think he’s best suited out of the stretch anyway? A couple different announcers have said that Hayden works out of the stretch just because it’s a vestige from when he was a reliever, but I don’t know pitching well enough to know if there’s some velocity or stamina uptick he could expect to gain by throwing from a full windup.
Great question! Typically starters do work out of a windup to get a little extra force into their delivery, but Birdsong has stuck with what’s worked for him in the past. I actually just asked him about that the other day, and it doesn’t seem as if a change is in store for him. Birdsong is not the only Giants’ starter who works strictly out of the stretch, by the way. Carson Seymour does as well. So, it doesn’t seem as though it’s anything that the Giants are bothered by or necessarily want to change. If it’s working — and in both of those cases, it clearly has been — why change? And honestly, no pitchers today use the big windup of the past. A modified windup that is barely perceptibly different from a set position (and often appears to my eyes to be a balk) has long since been the defacto motion.
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Do you feel like the Giants are promoting as many rookies as they are because:
1) they are grasping at straws trying to find the same magic when Bailey and Schmitt were promoted.
2) they truly need help from their minor league system due to injuries and lack of performance.
3) they are turning to the people who they want to be their starters in the future and moving on from the vets who are not going to be around much longer.
My basic response to these three questions is: Yes!
However, if forced to fit them into some sort of ranking priority, I guess I would answer in the following order: 2, 1, 3. I suppose I could be mean-spirited and putting the grasping at straws one first, but honestly, the amount of difference between “truly need help” and “grasping at straws” is pretty minute.
And I think it also needs be said that “grasping at straws” is essentially the modus operandi for every GM or head of baseball operations in August and September. The trade deadline is past, the IL lists are piling up, and the ability to deal with depth needs — or heaven forbid, more than that — grow thinner and thinner. You may remember a year at the end of the championship run (2015, I believe), when the Giants improbably found themselves somehow hanging around the periphery of the playoff race in September, but fell into such a run of injuries that they ended up bringing several non-40 man members to the majors after the minor league season was over and they had all started their off-season vacations. If I recall correctly, Mac Williamson was on a fishing boat somewhere off the coast of Florida when he found out he was needed. I believe that was also the occasion that brought Kelby Tomlinson into the big leagues.
The last two months of a big league season are a war of attrition. Desperation is nothing to sneer at — it’s the universal condition during the Dog Days of Summer.
I’m seeing our 2023 draft picks way high on people’s updated rankings. If you were doing a top 30 like most of these/where/why do you place our greenhorns? Peace my dude!✌️
Well Jason, thanks for reminding me that I need to start thinking about my Top 50 and how in the world I’m supposed to figure out a way to mix high school players who have barely been on a professional field as of yet (or not at all) in with guys with multiple years of pro ball on their record, and all of the connected data that can be parsed through.
I’ll be getting to the Depth Charts series for the year probably sometime in October I would guess, and as I start mulling that project, I will say that I don’t foresee a lot of 50 grades (which is to say, major league regulars) being handed out. I can see an awful lot of 40s and 45s, and a truckload of 35 types, but right now, I’m not really convinced there’s a ton of quality starters in the org. My guess is that other outlets feel that way, too, which is why you’re seeing the top two or three picks being inserted very high in rankings.
As I’ve explained before, my issue is that I tend to be extremely conservative about kids who haven’t shown up in pro ball yet, and I ding them for not having shown what they can do against this level of competition yet. I’ll definitely reach out to sources to try to get more info on kids like Walker Martin and Maui Ahuna, but I’ll probably knock them at least half a grade until I see what they look like next year.
Maybe that’s a flawed process on my part. It’s the reason, after all, that neither Wade Meckler nor Birdsong was in my Top 50 last year, even though I knew the Giants were excited about both of them — and that doesn’t look like so great of a process a year later (I cringed at the time and its plainly embarrassing to me now). I have things to think about and maybe to tweak. But I definitely think that there are five or six guys in this draft class who merit strong consideration for the Top 50 and the top three picks are clearly going to be part of the top 15 for sure. I would say that Eldridge, Martin, and Rayner Arias all have a pretty strong case for my Top 10, and Joe Whitman has to be in that mixture of arms that will likely make up the 8-15 range.
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With the Giants' ACL season coming to an end,who do you see helping San Jose (or Eugene!) down the stretch? Would it be too much to expect Eldridge, perhaps just as a DH?
Honestly, I’d be a bit surprised if Eldridge and Whitman didn’t both turn up in San Jose. And, since San Jose’s current roster is several players under the maximum, it’s possible we could see other players join them as well. I’d think that Quinn McDaniel, Josh Bostick, Charlie Szykowny, Timmy Manning, Tommy Kane could all be potential candidates for a taste of A ball, as well as some of the international contingent, like Guillermo Williamson, Ubert Mejias, Christian Avendano, or Alix Hernandez? Perhaps even a return of Jose Ramos — he’d make an excellent pinch runner!
That’s a long list of names, because once you get past the top two guys, you quickly get into a group without a ton of definition (at least, that we can see from our removed perspective — I’m sure the Giants themselves see all sorts of distinctions among that group). But I do think that Eldridge and Whitman should join in for the Cal League playoffs. I guess we’ll find out soon, since the ACL season comes to an end today. And, honestly, I don’t see why Eldridge wouldn’t play in the field if he does go up.
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Eugene, of course, is in dire need of arms to cover innings, as was discussed in yesterday’s post, but I’d imagine that older players like the rehabbing Ljay Newsome or perhaps Seth Corry are the most likely if any cavalry at all is coming. However, if the Emeralds continue to fall out of the playoff race, and Richmond continues to stay in it, maybe we might see Grant McCray and Aeverson Arteaga end their years back east?
How many of the AA/AAA pitchers will we see heavily factoring into next year’s rotation? (I’m sure TBA will be a mainstay in the rotation!). Seems to me like they have 4ish spots semi-filled with Webb, Cobb, Disco, and Strip (don’t think he ops out). Wood is gone imo and I would think Manaea is pitching his way toward opting out. With Cobb, Disco, and Strip being free agents after 24 it seems like we would want to give Winn, Beck, Harrison, Black, etc. a good shot at establishing vs. signing some back-end names. Any thoughts?
My primary thought is that the Giants’ rotation is more fantasy than reality and, despite protestations to the contrary by the PoBO, I think that’s the way they prefer things (though I suspect a decent spectrum of the fanbase wishes that weren’t so, myself included). I think we will see Logan Webb, Alex Cobb, and, if all goes well, Kyle Harrison making steady and consistent starts next year.
Beyond that, I think anything goes. Anthony DeSclafani’s health precludes penciling him in the rotation in any sort of permanent ink, and I don’t even think he’ll be in a position like this year where “as soon as he’s healthy he has a place.” Ross Stripling may or may not be back, but I don’t know that we’ll see him regularly going out to the bump to start the first all season regardless. Same with Sean Manaea (who I agree, looks like an opt out at this point.
I think you can (and others have) legitimately point to Tristan Beck and Keaton Winn as guys who could be given chances to proven themselves legitimate starters, and I think Mason Black and Carson Seymour could be in a position to play the Beck/Winn roles next year (Landen Roupp might be, too, if he could stay on the field).
But do I think they’re going to turn to any of these non-Harrison types and say: we’re penciling you in every fifth day for the next month, the job’s yours to run with? No, I do not. I think they prefer, in their heart of hearts, to piece the puzzle together and try to find marginal advantages from inning to inning and at bat to at bat. Perhaps the one exception to that might be Carson Whisenhunt, who the brass might see as more of a classic starter than some of the others (as is the case with Harrison), but his current injury status muddles his future a bit.
I’m wondering how concerned I should be about the recent slides into AAA by some of the more promising rookies. You noted that any moves down are not historically helpful to overall development. There are exceptions of course, and these are (mostly) really young players we are talking about. I know your crystal ball is no better than mine, but would appreciate you weighing in.
What do you think the Giants have in Luis Matos? For such a highly regarded prospect, I was expecting to see better defense and speed on the bases. His ability to make contact got him promoted, but that contact seemed real soft. Experience and strength should improve his quality of contact, but what is a reasonable expectation for the kind of player Matos might become?
I lump these two questions together because they both have that tinge of recency bias which is always a nagging doubt tugging at the back of our dumb old brains. We get excited about prospects until they reach a level where we see them fail and then the blow-back settles in. It’s hard to avoid this reactive impulse in our brains — I did it last year when I dropped Luis Matos several spots in my Top 10 after watching him struggle in Eugene, and everybody is doing it this year after watching Casey Schmitt, Matos, Wade Meckler and others get knocked around by Big Boy pitching. (A weird aside, when guys get off to good starts and then struggle, our brain takes a lot longer to react, which is why I think Blake Sabol is mostly exempt from this angst despite his having been a well-below average offensive player in his rookie season).
As much as we want to see guys come along and instantly succeed, that’s not the reality for most major league players. Now, it might be more of a reality for most superstar type players, and maybe there’s a lesson to be gleaned in that. But all over the majors we can find players who came up, scuffled, got sent down, came up, scuffled — repeat as often as necessary until things started to slow down and click and they get comfortable. Sometimes, it takes getting cut adrift and picked up somewhere else for that to happen (as we’ve seen with our own Thairo Estrada or LaMonte Wade, Jr., or repeatedly in LA with guys like Max Muncy or Justin Turner), and sometimes they ultimately find a spot in their hometown lineup (go check out how many times Matt Williams was sent back down to the minors over his first three seasons sometime).
What’s really tricky about this narrative is that while everything I’ve said up there is perfectly true, it’s equally and abundantly true that for many, many others that moment of clicking in and finding comfort never comes, no matter how many chances they get. Some players — maybe most players really — never quite make it over the hump and become good major league starters. Some become what we call “second division starters” — they have a tool that keeps them bouncing around the majors but no truly competitive team really wants to devote a lot of ABs to them — and some just ride the DFA shuffle for as long as it’ll take them.
And the fact is that until somebody PROVES they belong, you just never know which future they’ll fall into. There are prospects whose minor league histories I can stare at for hours and think: how did this guy miss? But until they do it, you just don’t know for sure if they will.
With all that said, what I think the Giants have (or what the Giants themselves think they have) ultimately will have to be proven out by the players as they figure out how to respond to the power, the speed, and the ferocity of the big league game and find their places in it.
Specifically with Matos, I see pretty much the same extremely gifted player I always have — and pretty much the same one that Giants Senior International Scouting Director Joe Salermo described to me as scouting way back when he was a 14-year-old. I see a player whose physical gifts don’t jump out at you — with two crucial exceptions — but whose feel for the game and Baseball IQ make everything play up. He’s not a particularly fast player, but he is a very instinctual runner and fielder. He’s not big and strong, but can crank out mistakes. Matos has two genuine elite tools: his electric batspeed, and his extraordinary bat to ball gift. Beyond that, it is his instincts for the game that allow the whole to become greater than the sum of the parts.
Without question, his inability to create hard contact is a real weakness in his game right now, and if that doesn’t increase in the future, it will threaten his ability to be a big league starter. I have some of the same questions about Wade Meckler, but Matos has an advantage that Meckler doesn’t: he’s only 21, and will naturally gain some strength simply through the process of turning 22 or 23. But I suspect that Matos will always be a player who has more game power than raw power. He doesn’t hit moon shots in BP, but give him a pitcher throwing a 95 mph heater on the inside and he can beat the ball to the spot and let the pitcher provide the power to ride it out of the park.
As for the defense, I don’t have a great deal of doubt about his ability to play CF — at the very least he’s capable of Austin Slater/Mike Yastrzemski levels of CF defense. I think the issues we saw this month were mostly about a young player who wasn’t at his most confident — which matters on defense the same way it does at the plate. Remember that before two months ago, he’d never played in a stadium with a 3rd — or 4th or 5th level. In minor league settings, fly balls get up into the night sky almost immediately. In the majors, they tend to come out of the fans in the 5th deck. That’s different!
With some patience, with some maturity, adjustments and time, I suspect what the Giants have in Matos is something very like what Salermo described seeing as a young teenager: a player “who doesn’t wow you with his tools, but, when you watch him play, he’s an ‘80’ between the lines.” But, as with all of these young players, he’ll have to make that future happen.
In San Jose, Foster is playing SS and Velasquez is playing 2B. Does it look like this is a pattern if they both progress? Is Foster a better SS defensively or just more experienced?
I don’t know any evaluators who believe Diego Velasquez is a future shortstop. The general view is that he’ll need to work on his footwork and lateral quickness to ensure that he can stay in the middle infield. His best-case outcome is probably an offense-minded 2b, or, if he can grow into more strength, potentially a 3b. The most likely outcome is a matchup utility guy. But he’s also just 19, so we’ll see how things progress with him.
Callis/MLB.com ranked Ramos very low in the top 30. Has his recent performance with the Giants changed your opinion about where he should be ranked? Do you think it has changed the Giants' opinion about his future with the team? (I was at last weekend’s games against the Rangers, and he looks impressive in person.)
There was a strange little media cycle last week, coming out of a post-game media scrum with Gabe Kapler, regarding a couple of different bases-loaded situations with Meckler coming to the plate. In the first of those, with Heliot Ramos on the bench, Kapler chose to send Meckler to the plate, later saying the team wanted to develop everyday players who didn’t need to be swapped out for platoon advantages. Two days later, with Slater available, Meckler was, indeed, pinch hit for. In the media clip, Kapler coyly asked the questioner if he understood the difference between those two situations.
To spell it out clearly, the difference was Ramos vs Slater. And, I think it was very clear from Kapler’s comments that in the club’s internal evaluations, the “Trust” pecking order there was: Slater > Meckler > Ramos. In fact, Meckler’s elevation to the 40-man was, to some significant degree, a statement on the team’s lack of trust in Ramos’ turnaround.
In one sense, I get it. Ramos’ swing decisions and chase rates — a couple of metrics the team takes very seriously — haven’t been great this year. His 36% swing rate outside of the zone in Sacramento this year is very much on the high side (though it’s also below Schmitt’s, and barely above Matos’). On the other hand, in the week leading up to the Meckler promotion, Ramos had literally scalded three of the hardest hit hits of the year for the Giants. If you’re grasping at straws, it seems to me that it makes sense to go with the one that’s already in your glass for a bit.
It feels to me like Ramos’ time with the org is running down, just as it is with his good friend Joey Bart. Hopefully, a year from now, we won’t see his improvements come to fruition with some other club (the way we have this year with Gregory Santos, another player who didn’t really fit the mold of what the club values, but still had major league skills).
Two quick Flying Squirrel questions:
Much of Logan Wyatt's potential is determined by his bat, but what do you think about his defense at 1B? (I only saw him play a little bit in SJ)
Wil Jensen has quietly, consistently put up his fair share of zeroes at every level. He doesn't have knockout stuff, but how might you envision a path to the bigs? If he can keep it up, I imagine somehow, somewhere he will at least get a shot.
Sam, I’ve thought and thought about your first question, and come up with very few impressions to be honest with you. I have seen him whiff on some balls this year to his glove-side (including letting a grounder get by him for a three-run error in the 9th inning of a very tight win last week), but I would say that overall, he hasn’t left me with much either in the way of positive or negative memories. Perhaps it’s an artifact of watching Frankie Tostado, who seriously was a Gold Glove worthy defensive 1b, for the last couple of years, but generally I would say that Wyatt, who is a really big guy and maybe doesn’t move extraordinarily quickly, probably isn’t going to have a lot of defensive impact.
As for Jensen, yes, he’s a real sneaky potential major leaguer, I think. It’s definitely not a sexy package. Jensen doesn’t have an above average pitch anywhere in the repertoire — maybe not any average ones. But he throws strikes, sticks to the edges, lands the backdoor slider a lot, and, as you say, he’s piled up a lot of good results, with his first experience at Double A being the only time he’s really faltered. We’ll see what happens with Triple A — there are a lot of similarities with Matt Frisbee in Jensen, and we saw how the PCL went with Fris when he was on his way up. I don’t think there’s enough to stick in the big leagues, but as a guy with options who can come up and absorb some low leverage innings — similar to how the Giants are using Sean Hjelle this year — I can see Jensen working his way into that sort of role. And, of course, once you have your foot in the door and a chance to run with success… who knows what can happen?
Out of all the Giants' MLB debuts this season, whose do you feel Farhan Zaidi is privately most proud of? Obviously, it'd be like picking between his children, but I thought a whimsical question would be fun given the variety of paths to the debuts. My take is that Farhan would lean toward an underdog prospect creatively acquired under his watch, and someone his staff guided through an arduous development. No one exactly fits that bill ... but I think Tristan Beck would be closest.
I’m not really sure that Farhan Zaidi cares or thinks of such things, but I suppose I’d say either Blake Sabol or Patrick Bailey. Sabol, of course, represents a phylum of player that Zaidi seems perpetually trying to acquire — the hybrid catcher/something else who hits left-handed with power — and he was able to get him virtually for free. Bailey, for the past two years, seemed to be part of a run of disappointing 1st round picks under Zaidi’s regime — a prime reason why the farm season seemed to be taking so long to bear fruit — before blossoming into a foundational player for the team this year. Those are two pretty good sources of pride.
Roger, any advice for how a fan should handle losing at the big-league level? I try to turn the page when the game is over, but I'll admit to being a bit grumpier than I should be sometimes, especially when a contending team (like this year's) hits a rough patch
Boy, I don’t know Dan. My Dad used to pace the floor muttering and cursing under his breath, yell at the TV or radio during games, and could generally be in a pretty dour mood when the team wasn’t playing well — and when they were playing well, fret that it was all about to come toppling down. It drove my Mom crazy for years.
I remember talking to him the night of the final game of the 2010 World Series, and he said that he had come to the realization that the games weren’t that important and maybe he shouldn’t have gotten so irritated by them all the time, which was honestly one of the most shocking sentences I think I’ve ever heard another human being speak in my lifetime (and, to be fair, one of the last games we ever watched together was the game in which Buster Posey’s ankle was broken, and I can tell you, a pretty good pall was cast by that game over the rest of our visit).
I guess I would say this: I went to Giants games through the ‘60s, heard them on the radio, and have fond memories of a lot of the ‘60s players, but I grew up on Giants baseball of the ‘70s, and that era really cemented my love for them, even though it was pretty much ALL a rough patch. Loving baseball means loving the baseball part of it more than the wins or losses. Wins are the emotional payoff for the journey, the happy ending. But I’m also a child of ‘70s cinema and count Chinatown and Five Easy Pieces as all-time favorites. I don’t need a happy ending to feel satisfied with my experience. There are always pleasures to be had, and disappointments wrapped up in them.
I apologize if you’ve answered this question before, so feel free to ignore it if you already have! How do you think the situation in Eugene impacts player development and performance at the level? Not being able to use the facilities all the time and the dreary weather seems like it would be an issue. Watching guys struggle with hitting at the level and then watching them succeed (Bailey and Matos come to mind even though Luis was dealing with injury.). Does this give more context to somewhat “disappointing” performances of current prospects at Eugene?
I have discussed this topic a few times this year, but I’m always happy to revisit it. I don’t think we can quantify the impact. It certainly doesn’t help, that’s for sure (although the weather was actually quite fine most of the spring this year).
Ultimately, however, I think the bigger impact in the step up is simply the improvement in pitching. I’ve had some scouts and industry folks opine that the Low A to High A move is almost akin to the traditional High A to Double A move, because the elimination of short season ball has flooded Low A with pitchers who don’t belong there. In that view, the current Low A is almost on a par with old short season, while High A is something more like what High A used to be, creating a larger step between.
There is always context to be had. In Matos’ and Bailey’s cases, other factors were in play, too. Matos was physically impacted by his strained quad, and Bailey’s cerebral game maybe just didn’t play that well in a context where the umps didn’t have a great control of the strike zone and the pitchers weren’t necessarily thinking along with him.
Finally, I guess I’ll also say that we dig for context when the surface level doesn’t tell the story we like. Development isn’t linear and every player has to trod their own path. But I had a recent conversation with a player development official who suggested that that view can also be a convenient excuse a lot of times, and ultimately the job of PD staff isn’t to have patience — it’s to get guys to improve. And that really does need to be the majority outcome for a healthy and productive farm system.
I never see anything about Yosneiker Rivas. Is he playing in the DSL?
No, sadly Rivas’ season was almost entirely wiped out by injury — a situation that has been all too common with the Giants’ DSL players lately. Rivas played the first three games of the season before going out with some undisclosed (as they all are at that level) minor injury. He returned three weeks later but played just six more games before leaving the lineup for good — less than a week after the wrist injury that ended his teammate Arias’ year. Is it possible to make a uniform out of bubblewrap!
About Last Night
ACL Giants Black beat ACL Brewers, 7-4
ACL Giants Orange lost at ACL Royals, 4-3
Giants’ 9th round pick out of University of Illinois - Chicago, Charlie Szykowny, got a genuine Gatorade moment when he jumped on a high breaking ball and crushed it out to right at 100 mph for a walk-off, stomp-off three-run homer. You don’t think these kids are having fun playing down in the desert? Watch this celebration!
Those are happy ballplayers doing what they love. Szykowny, who was a data darling in college, is the second pick signed by former There R Giants’ contributor turned Giants area scout Tom Shafer (after Hayden Birdsong last year). I’m therefore expecting big things from Charlie, who hit .271/.417/.500 in his ACL debut.
Szykowny’s heroics were set up by some fantastic relief pitching down the stretch, as relievers Christian Avendano and UDFA Trent Harris combined to strike out 7 of the 10 batters they faced. Throw Avendano’s 4.67 ERA out the window, he’s been one of the most interesting and successful stories on the complex level this year. Released as an outfielder prospect by the Cardinals, Avendano was signed by the Giants for, we must presume, peanuts, and converted into a pitcher, and in his first year at the new assignment, he showed a fastball that could run up to 95, and a big, sharp high-spin breaking ball that collected a lot of Ks. And Avendano’s stuff comes with some highly coveted pitch shape data as well. He’ll be a real arm to watch develop.
Harris isn’t just continuing the Giants collection of a single player from every minor and major college in North Carolina (representing UNC-Pembroke), he also had a highly successful debut in the ACL. With a fastball that sits 93-95 and a big sweeper, he allowed just one earned run in 12.0 IP (0.75 ERA) while striking out 21 batters. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him bumped up to San Jose for the last few weeks.
I’d love to see Bryce Eldridge head that way, too, of course. Eldridge contributed two more hits to the Giants Orange team, which also got a two-hit night from Ramon Peralta, who has really had a nice complex season.
DSL Giants Orange beat DSL Giants Black, 8-6
The numbers didn’t necessarily reflect a great outing, but I continue to look at 18-year-old right-hander Alfonso Perez as one of the more interesting arms in the DSL group this year. The youngster has a good looking delivery, loose arm, and good pitcher’s frame, and at the age of a high school senior, was holding solid velocity in the low 90s, along with a sharp slider. He didn’t strike out a ton of hitters this year, and the ERA crept upwards through the year, but I’m keeping him in the back of my brain for the future.
Perez’ final line didn’t look great, because he was touched up by two homers from the two guys in the middle of Team Black’s order — the two guys who should be the best non-Arias hitters on this squad, Moises de la Rosa and Carlos Concepcion. De la Rosa got off to a scorching start, but he really scuffled down the stretch, hitting just .177 after July 1, bringing his ultimate average down to .286. But he finished with a a bang — having the day of his life yesterday, going deep two different times and driving in four runs. That’s five dingers on the year for Moises, whose Isolated Slugging this year is .177.
Concepcion followed a strong game on Saturday with an even better one yesterday, picking up three hits, including his fourth homer of the year.
The DSL Giants’ season is now over (with today’s games cancelled due to weather), while the ACL Giants finish up today
Coming Up
Sacramento (TBD) at El Paso (Watkins), 5:35 pm*, MiLBTV
Richmond (Bertrand) at Portland (TBD), 3:00 pm, MiLBTV
Eugene (TBD) at Hillsboro (TBD), 7:05 pm, MiLBTV
San Jose (Vinicio) vs Modesto (TBD), 6:30 pm, MiLBTV
ACL Giants Black (TBD) at ACL Rockies (TBD), 11:00 am
ACL Giants Orange (TBD) vs ACL D’backs Red (TBD), 11:00 am
DSL Giants Black: Cancelled SEASON OVER
DSL Giants Orange (TBD) at DSL Colorado (TBD), 7:00 am
No Stats Review today. I’ll wait until next week and give a final for the complex levels. Plus, I have something a little special I’m working on for you in the stats realm. Now, I’m off to see Harry’s debut. Let’s all think good thoughts that it’ll be a special one!
Totally agree with your optimism for Matos. To see how impressive his debut was one need only look at his performance relative to his (older) peers. Compare his contact rates, routes and CF play to Meckler (whom I also like a lot long term). Hell, compare his strike out rate to literally any player on the team! Sure, he's not impacting the ball yet, but he's not whiffing either. Sure his defensive metrics look a little rough in SSS, but he's not looking overmatched and is making some spectacular plays in center as a 21 year old rookie! This is a special player whose time in the sun is only beginning.
> I don’t need a happy ending to feel satisfied with my experience. There are always pleasures to be had, and disappointments wrapped up in them.
:heart: