"Happy Mother's Day" Free for All Mailbag
We've reached the first tentpole of the season
Photo Credit: Richmond Flying Squirrels
Maybe I’m cutting in line. Memorial Day probably has the more traditional claim on being the first real tentpole in the baseball season. But as seasons have crawled backwards in the calendar, with opening days working their way not just into March, but well into March — even the Triple-A calendar began in the third month this year — it feels like Mother’s Day does fill the traditional role of an initial check in. The Giants and River Cats are past the quarter-point in their schedule, while the other three full season affiliates are either exactly 25% of their full schedule, or will reach that point in the next couple of days.
So, this feels like a solid initial assessment point, and, friends, the assessments aren’t great so far. The big league club has quickly managed to dissipate the excitement of late spring, and now faces a real health crisis. And, from a development perspective, there have been a few positive developments on the pitching front, but the overall start to the year has been downward trending arrows caused by either poor health (including a wave of sickness that has hit Richmond), poor performance, or both. Specifically, the news on the position player front has been off to a slow start — although a whole bunch of Triple-A level players have a chance to re-write the narrative in the big leagues now.
Anyway, there’s a reason for the overall grumpiness of the mailbag tone in recent weeks: 2024 has not brought a lot of great developments for a franchise that is desperately in need of a few. There’s still a long way to go before the story of this season is written, but as Yogi said, “it’s getting late early out there.” Things need to turn around for a lot of guys in the system, and the system corporately as well.
Before we get to the questions, however, I need to take a poll of my readers. I’ve heard from a few of you that the videos have been giving you issues lately. I’ve checked with Substack on this and they have no answers. My videos are the right formats and the right size. They’ve suggested all the normal stuff: refresh your windows, try different browsers, try it in the Substack app, try watching on my site rather than in the emails. Basically: try stuff!
But what I really need to know is how widespread the issue is. If it’s bad enough, I might have to go back to my old process of running everything through You Tube first — although that is a major time addition to my publication process, so I’d prefer not to do that. So please take a moment to answer these polls as to how your videos are working, so I can assess:
IF, you’ve been having problems with videos, have you noticed which kind of videos have been giving you the most trouble:
Thanks for your help with this. The video element of my posts is a significant value-add, I believe, so I really want to fix this for you. By the way, for those of you who haven’t noticed which type of videos you’re having trouble viewing, all of today’s videos will be coming from You Tube.
Now, let’s get to your questions.
Now that so many youngsters have been called up from Triple-A, would you give a primer on how the Giants will be assessing their growth? As in, what’s the single thing the club most wants to see from Heliot Ramos, Casey Schmitt, Luis Matos, Blake Sabol and Brett Wisely to gauge if they’re more ready for the big stage than last season?
This seems like a great question to start with today, as a health crisis seems to be overtaking the club, leading to a forced wave of promotions from Triple-A Sacramento — a wave of such intensity that they are coming quite close to running out of healthy position players on the 40-man.
First and foremost, I think it’s crucial to make the point that — as I heard Ron Wotus say on a recent Baseball Marty show — MLB is a performance league, not a development league. There are no moral victories of development advances at the major league level, players have to perform or teams will look for someone else who can. And from that viewpoint, the answer to your question is that the Giants need to get performance from these players while they’re being pressed into duty, and “signs of growth” aren’t going to be enough for anybody’s satisfaction. Whether your touchstone is WAR, wRC+, OPS+, or good old fashioned counting stats, these guys need to perform at or near the level of standards that all major league position players are held in order to keep playing.
That definitely was not the case last year. Over various levels of playing time, all of these players provided very poor performance. Every one of the youngsters, other than Sabol, was a sub-replacement level player by Fangraphs WAR (Sabol, at 0.3 fWAR, was essentially replacement level, which is low for the amount of playing time he received). Ramos and Wisely both hit under .200 with wRC+ less than 50 — an unplayable level, though Ramos got very little playing time (Wisely had a pretty good run of regular play when Thairo Estrada was on the IL). Matos and Sabol had the best offensive numbers, but neither of them was a league average hitter — both approximately 10% worse than that level. Schmitt got a very long runway, and, like Sabol and Matos, ended up with more than 250 PA, but returned an OPS of just .579 and a wRC+ of 59 — more than 40% below league average. Together, that group played a significant role in the disappointing 2023 season — especially during a stretch in July when Schmitt, Matos, Sabol and Wisely were making up the bottom half of the order on a daily basis. If that happens again over the coming weeks, the team’s fortunes are going to take an even worse turn.
So, truly…hit a lot better than last year is the bottom-line answer to your question. But I take your meaning, and so, to dig deeper, I would say the metrics the team is likely to be paying attention to are something like this:
Ramos: more contact (Ramos’ career K rate in MLB is 33%), get to power more often. Put up competitive at bats more consistently;
Schmitt: better swing decisions and less chasing outside of the zone. His chase rate in 2023 was 38.5%, and it some work over his final weeks to get it down that low. According to Baseball Savant’s minor league search function, Schmitt’s chase rate in Sacramento this year has been around 33%, though other sources, like Robert Orr’s swing decision tool, have him closer to 38% (different sources use slightly different definitions of “chase zones,” causing the discrepancy);
Matos: impact the ball more. Matos’ average Exit Velocity last year was just 87 mph, right around the bottom 20th percentile of big league hitters in 2023. Especially given the doubts about his ability to stick in center, he’s going to need to produce more power to be a real option as a corner bat. And hey, good start on that!
Sabol and Wisely: more competitive at bats against secondary stuff. Though Sabol showed good power potential in 2023, he also struck out 34% of the time, and you can draw a direct line from that number to his performance against breaking balls (44% whiff rate), or off-speed pitches in general (a whopping 52.5% whiff rate). Wisely wasn’t quite as bad, but with a 31% K rate, 35% whiff rate on breaking balls, and 44% on off-speed pitches, the same general flaw was in evidence, and Wisely doesn’t have anything like Sabol’s power potential, so he has to put the ball in play in order to find success.
And for all of them, the quality of the at bats just needs to have more consistency and competitiveness — which we’ve seen some of this week. Keep it up, guys!
In some ways, it’s Ramos’ situation that is the most interesting here for me. I think it’s been pretty clear for most of the past two years that the front office has had a somewhat negative evaluation of Ramos that hasn’t been changed by his improved performance in the PCL — not so negative that they’ve considered clearing him off the 40-man, of course, but negative enough that he’s consistently been passed over for opportunities. While they’ve said all the right things about Ramos publicly, their actions have been very clear and consistent. Ramos lost a run of potential playing time when the club made the dramatic decision to elevate Wade Meckler, and later, he was the one rookie who didn’t get regular starts at the dreg ends of the 2023 season. He was shipped out early in spring camp this year. Even when they were more or less forced to call him up last week, he got one start and then was back on his bench the next day. True, he was brought up before Matos this time, but it still feels like the club has been tepid in its faith in the 2017 1st rounder.
But now, dire circumstance would appear to force the club’s hand, and Ramos may be getting the opportunity to prove them wrong…or continue to show them they’re right. How the next week or two shakes out on that front could be a fascinating subplot in the season with ramifications that could reach well beyond Ramos himself. So we’ll see what Heliot — and all of the kids — can make of this opportunity. For everybody’s sake, let’s hope it’s something good!
I have a human interest one for you, Roger — at least it’s of interest to this human. Since you know the Richmond club well, what can you tell us about what life is like for the players off the field? What’s their housing situation? Do players bring their cars from home if they're assigned to the club to start the season or, if not, how do they get around? How does the club help a newcomer get assimilated into the community, particularly during the season? Does the team provide 3 meals a day at the park at home? Do a lot of the players have other jobs in the offseason or can they make ends meet with their paychecks? Anything else we’d find interesting about the off-field life of a Flying Squirrel?
Scott, I love this question. Thanks so much for asking it.
First and foremost, this gives me an opportunity to get to a graphic that Baseball America posted last week, that details the advances that minor leagues have made financially over the past few years, thanks to a lot of tremendous work done by the group Advocates for Minor Leaguers, and, ultimately, the formation of a minor league players union.
None of these guys are exactly living the life of luxury, but you can certainly see how much of a difference the push for unionization has made. And payroll is only one place where players have gained. At least as important has been the move to get organizations to provide their minor leaguers with housing — which MLB finally guaranteed before the 2022 season (after a host of online horror stories involving players sleeping in offices, cars, and five or more to a room shamed them into the concession). Housing used to be a significant stressor in the lives of all minor leaguers, who not only struggled to afford it in the first place, but were often forced into a situation of having to pay for housing in multiple cities as they were promoted or shuffled around. Having this major financial and logistical concern taken off their plate has been a huge boon for players, as has having a little more pocket change to jingle around.
Most teams, the Giants included, partner with a third party that manages the specifics — essentially, it’s a kind of corporate housing. As mandated in the MiLB CBA, married players are able to have their wives with them, but with girlfriends or domestic partners, it’s up to the individual organizations to decide on a policy. The CBA sets out other criteria related to housing as well. It has to be within a specified distance from the stadium, come with all mod cons (washer/dryer, etc.), and every player has to have their own private bedroom (no more sleeping five to a bunk and one on the floor like the bad old days).
The players do bring their cars with them from home — if you walk into the tunnel underneath the Diamond, you’ll see all of them lined up around the clubhouse area. I often play a game with myself trying to guess whose car is whose — the home state license plates definitely help there! Often, when players are given in-season promotions, however, they’ll leave their cars behind, retrieving them after the season is over.
As for meals, I’d recommend you listen to the interview I did last year with former Richmond Flying Squirrels’ staff nutritionist, Rachel Rodriguez, where we really dug into the specifics of her work with the team. But the short answer is, the team provides full pre- and post-game meals, plus healthy snack options throughout the work day. And the team nutritionist gives them advice on making healthy choices for the meals they are responsible for making or acquiring on their own.
The work days for players are quite long. For night games at home, they’ll arrive in the mid- to late-morning and go through strength and conditioning workouts, various meetings with the coaching staff (usually in small groups of hitters or pitchers) as well as on field infield and outfield drills (In/Out), pitcher fielding practice (PFPs), and plenty of hitting cage work and bullpen sessions — all of which comes with a lot of data to look through when players are done. There’s also more media requests than you might imagine for a lot of these players (I’m part of the problem there), as well as spots or media shoots that they record for the team for promotions, in-stadium activities, and other things. They’ll typically be at the stadium for 12-hour work days or more.
The team staff will make plenty of recommendations on things like food or recreation options, especially for the off days (golf is an extremely popular off-day activity for a lot of players, though many also take the opportunity to relax and veg at home). And, of course, the Richmond organization does an exceptional job of connecting to the community, and players have some opportunity to take part in community outreach ventures through the summer — Little League baseball camp days, for instance, or visits to hospitals and other community institutions that help the players feel connected. At least one player has connected so well to the community that he continuees to live in the city!
As for off-season jobs, I think that’s becoming a bit rarer than it used to be — and certainly the increased salaries (and a further MLB admission to pay players during spring training) helps with that. More and more, at least in the Giants’ organization, U.S.-based players are spending significant portions of their winter in Scottsdale — even moving their permanent home there — so as to take advantage of the Giants’ facilities and staff at Papago Park. Some Dominican players do the same at the Felipe Alou Academy. And, of course, a lot also take advantage of the various private facilities in the offseason (though most of the ones you’ve heard of are extremely expensive on a minor league salary).
And, of course, that’s exactly where they should be. Because most of all, what these guys love doing is working on their games! Most of these guys are field rats at heart.
Since getting the Giants’ best hitting prospects over the hump to become productive big leaguers is in such focus, I want to say I’m concerned with how the organization handled Marco Luciano in the last 7-8 months. At his end-of-season presser on Oct. 3, Farhan Zaidi said, “As we sit here now, we want to give Marco Luciano the chance to be the everyday (shortstop) next year.” That sounded great. But then the Giants either didn’t give him a true chance or gave him enough of a chance to find he wasn’t ready (highlighted by Bob Melvin saying Luciano needed to continue developing defensively when they optioned him to Triple-A at the end of spring training). From where I sit, it looks like the front office both poorly evaluated where Luciano stood after last season — which sends off alarm bells — AND carelessly gave a frustrated fan base false hope about the MLB readiness of its top hitting prospect. Yikes! Luciano clearly still isn’t ready — which is OK; he’s 22 with less than one season of upper minors experience. But this episode leaves me uneasy about how Farhan & Co. are handling business on multiple fronts (PD and PR). What say you?
When I look at Marco Luciano, I see a lot of troubling metrics. Exit velocities look good, but an average launch angle of 2.7 degrees, barrel rate of 6.2%, z-contact% of 78.7% and z-swing% of 56.3% all look suboptimal to me. He seems to have a good idea of the strike-zone but doesn't swing enough and when he does swing, his contact rate is below average. When he does make contact, he seems to hit the ball hard on the ground, which would explain why he has a .078 ISO this season. How do you assess Luciano's season thus far and do you still see him as a future impact player?
Watching Luciano play defense in general has been interesting. With the importance of infield defense for this pitching staff, and the organization liking his bat, do you see a potential move to 1B in Luciano's near future? Wilmer's not getting younger, and Luci serving as a right-handed 1B/DH with the occasional start around the infield when needed (a lá wilmer) seems like a healthy step towards a consistent role on the major league squad. Obviously, this opens up questions about the SS position post-Ahmed, but I’m not sure anyone is really confident Luciano is the answer there.
Oh, Scott! And then you went to the Dark Side on me! I’ll take your portion of this dual entry first. To be honest, I don’t read that sequence of events as negatively as you do, Scott. Zaidi’s comments in the post-season presser last year were pretty standard GM speak in my opinion. Every baseball GM in history has had “full confidence in the talent we have on hand,” no matter how acute a roster might be to a semi-sentient observer, and that’s more or less what Zaidi was doing. I’m sure he was fully investigating the shortstop trade and FA market all winter, despite those comments. I also think that it makes some difference that Bob Melvin was not a part of the organization when those comments were made, and once he was, it made a difference in how the team viewed roster construction.
I also want to point back to Mike Elias’ comments at the time he sent Jackson Holliday back to the minors, in which he openly discussed how hard it is for front offices to make that final evaluation (“is he ready”) with success. Other top executives have spoken with their wallets this year, and been equally frustrated as players like Jackson Chourio and Colt Keith have really struggled out of the gate after receiving long-term deals.
So I’m not in full-on “Yikes” mode on either of those issues. I think if you want to lay criticism on the front office here, it’s probably their decision to push him up to Triple-A (and almost immediately then to MLB) when he was barely showing the first inklings of adjusting to Double-A, after missing more than a month at the beginning of the season with injury. That was part of a broad strategy the team had last year of really challenging and pushing their top prospects — but the results of that strategy weren’t exactly “Joker, Joker, Joker!”
I also think it’s fair to question the overall progress of Luciano’s development (and others, like Matos, as well), which leads us to Eric’s question. Yes, Eric, you’re right. There are a lot of concerning trends there, and I’ll give you one more: while Luciano’s ~78% in-zone contact rate is troubling, it pales in comparison to his jaw-dropping 59% in-zone contact rate against off-speed pitches, which is an absolute “No go.” Major league pitchers can throw breaking balls in the strike zone, and a hitter can’t survive at that level with that little ability to do anything with those pitches.
My theory on Luciano is that he is currently attempting to let balls travel deeper in the strike zone, thereby giving himself that extra nano-second of decision time in an attempt to improve his strike out rate. That has been somewhat successful, as his K rate, which was over 30% last year, has been more in the 27% range so far this year. But it’s come at the expense of his power, because he’s slicing balls into right field and putting a lot on the ground. He is walking a tremendous amount, and he does have a good idea of the strike zone, but I do wonder if maybe more aggressiveness, even at the cost of more strikeouts, might be the direction he needs to go to get back to his power.
My overall assessment, then, is that Luciano appears to be in a very similar position to where Ramos was two years ago, when he, too, was a 22-year-old trying to figure things out. That’s maybe not good news if you’re hoping for a 22-year-old burgeoning superstar (which it once appeared he was headed for), but it’s not terrible news. There is still time for him to optimize these approach issues and figure out what works best for him, and resume his path towards being a very good major league position player.
As for Max’s query, I’ve gone up and down on Luciano’s defensive potential over the years. Last year I thought he’d really turned a corner, but this year there have definitely been the kind of inconsistencies that are likely to give the Giants pause before entrusting big league reps to him. But I don’t really think 1b is the answer — I’m not sure he’d take to it all that well, and it would negate some of his best attributes as a fielder. Not only that, but it would put a lot of weight on his bat taking a big step forward.
I’ve always thought that Luciano would make an outstanding 3b — though the Giants have other options there, obviously. But beyond that, I think maybe corner outfield is a better option than 1b? It would be hard pushing him to 1b so early in his career and giving him no wiggle room for providing value other than to be a great (not good) hitter.
So: does Luciano still look like a potential star? That’s a harder call, I think, though there are certainly still plenty of evaluators who think so. He’s only 22 and trying to make adjustments, which puts him on the same development track as a lot of very good MLB starters. At this point, I’d think if they can get him to the point of being a 2-5 WAR player it would absolutely be considered a win (I think that goes without saying in all cases), but maybe the 6-8 WAR dream might start to feel a bit rich if some of those disturbing trend lines don’t start to turn around.
Dennis Touros
What do you think is an acceptable success ratio for position prospects? For example, Brian Sabean/Bobby Evans drafted or signed Joey Bart, David Villar, Marco Luciano, Luis Matos, Jairo Pomares, Victor Bericoto, Heliot Ramos, Luis Toribio, Ricardo Genovés, and Patrick Hilson. Whether it takes three years, five years, or longer for these kids to make it to the majors, should we consider 20% or two of 10 an acceptable ratio? Success being defined as starting and lasting in San Francisco five years or more. (Or Pittsburgh in Bart's case and Tampa Bay in Genovés case).
Hi Dennis, thanks for the question. I think the first thing we need to do is try to compare apples to apples as much as possible. Here’s an image that I go back to all the time, from Tom Tango (a legendary analyst who now works for MLB) that looks at where major league productivity actually comes from in the draft:
As you can see, 50% of all WAR produced from drafted players comes from 1st round draft choices, a little more than 10% from 2nd rounders, and then the remaining ~40% from every other round put together (it’s stats like this that have caused major league owners to continually shorten the draft). If this graphic were a little more granular, we’d also see that within the 1st round, there is a similar sea-shelf shape, with players selected in the top 5-10 picks accounting for most of the value.
So your group up there is intermingling a pretty wide spread of players with dramatically different expectations and odds of providing value: you have both drafted players and internationally signed teenagers, and within those groups, you’re mixing top of the 1st round, late 1st round, and 10+ round picks, or on the international side, multi-million dollar signings with low five-figure ones. And, of course, you’re omitting a whole lot of players acquired through both the draft and the international market (especially with Genovés tossed in there, who goes way back to the 2015 IFA cycle, while most of the other players you mention were drafted or signed in 2017-18).
My sense is that teams look at the draft with this basic lens: from the top spot (say top 5 to 10 picks) they need to get an impact talent; from the remainder of the 1st round through maybe the supplementary round/2nd, they’d like to get a solid starter; and after that, any value at all is gravy. On the international side, the tiers are probably $2 million and up signings, $1million, and everyone else, but with the additional caveat that investments on 16-year-olds are much less sure even than those on 18- or 21-year-olds.
With all of that said, there are a lot of players you’ve mentioned that I’d just segment out. Villar for instance, has already struck gold (for both himself and the team). If you can ever add an 11th round pick to the 40-man and get them in the majors for a day, that’s pennies from heaven (not to mention Ryan Walker, whom the team took even later in the same draft). The same goes for small-dollar international signings like Bericoto, Toribio, or Genovés. The only place where you really have expectations is where the investment starts climbing into the seven-figure range, which of your group would be Bart, Ramos, Luciano, and Pomares. And, from that perspective, I’d say the jury is still out. Ramos could be starting to figure things out. Bart could still stick as a backup catcher, and Luciano and even Pomares probably will take a few years more before we have a good handle on the shape of their career. Luciano is the only one of the group who you seems likely to have a career as a starter still in front of him at this point.
In the 17 years in which Brian Sabean was Giants’ GM, the club had 32 1st or Supplementary 1st round picks. Twenty-six of them made the majors; 15 of them have had what I think you’d call lengthy big league careers. Six of them had careers of more than 10 WAR, which is a gold standard (no more than that can ever really be expected or wished for). And, of course, the club’s top picks from 2002-2009 is a run of excellence that has an argument as the best draft run of all time. Separating out the years 2004-05, when they gave up their 1st round picks, the Giants’ top picks in those years were, in order: Matt Cain, David Aardsma, Tim Lincecum, Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, and Zack Wheeler, which beats any acceptable expectations to pieces. The four-year stretch of Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey, and Wheeler (who I think could sneakily get himself in HOF discussions if his late career blossoming continues into his later 30s and the Phillies continue to put him into post-season showcases) is, in my opinion, the best of its kind in draft history.
Sadly, for a variety of reasons, that success didn’t continue (one of those reasons being that nobody can really be that successful for that long), though nuggets continued to be found. Where Tyler Beede turned into a disappointment as a 14th overall pick, for instance, they ended up getting everything they could have desired from Beede out of Logan Webb, taken three rounds later. Whiffing on Bart, of course, was the real killer for that administration, though given how strong their top 10 picks had been up to that point, even there, it’s hard to begrudge the failure too much. Just to take one obvious example, the Pirates once had a stretch of five consecutive top five picks in the draft that went like this: Brad Lincoln, Daniel Moskos, Pedro Alvarez, James Taillion. The sixth year, they finally found paydirt with Gerrit Cole, but that’s still a brutal stretch of drafting.
I guess the answer is there’s no mathematical equations of expectations. The failure of players in whom an organization has invested tremendous resources is always going to be taken hard internally, and will always have negative impact. There are ways of mitigating that impact, and every club is constantly pulling as many levers as possible all the time, but if you miss on multiple top, say, 10 picks, there will be cumulative troubles in the end. By your standards, Sabean, of course, is one of the best to ever run draft boards (and that’s without going into his success as Scouting Director with the Yankees). Bobby Evans, unfortunately, didn’t fare as well when he was running things, a problem that was accentuated by the fact that they misevaluated by far the best player drafted under his tenure (Bryan Reynolds, whom they viewed as too much of a tweener — they weren’t entirely wrong about that, but they were very wrong about how much it would matter).
When all is said and done, you can say Evans went 0 for 4 in his top draft picks — but it’s worth remembering that that wasn’t what cost him his job (the club didn’t know how those picks would turn out when he was fired). It was failure at the major league level that did that. This is a results-oriented business and the only thing that determines an “acceptable” outcome is the major league record of success. The two are intermixed for sure, but it’s ultimately the W-L at the top that matters — and sometimes even that doesn’t work, as Dave Dombroski knows too well.
(Is there a bad reason to watch Buster Posey highlights?)
Mark Anger
Is Grant McCray still a prospect. Defensively he looks great but do you think he will ever hit enough?
Of course, he’s still a prospect. Though I suppose this is one of those “define your terms” situations. If one’s sense of “prospects” is that they must be players with a high likelihood of becoming good major league starters, then that narrows the pool a good bit. If your sense of prospects is, as mine is, players with some major league tools and skills who could provide value in some regard to their organizations (including value in trade or being an optionable up and down piece, in addition to solid role players, adequate starters, and future stars) then we’re dealing with a wider swath of players. The pool of the former group is, I would guess, a maximum of 25-30 players across the game at any point in time, while the latter is several hundreds.
McCray has been a top 10 prospect in a middle- or lower-tier system (where the strength is decidedly pitching). That’s never going to be the description of a player who is destined for a starting position in the majors, though he certainly has the skills to make that a potential outcome. But if you look around the various prospect sites, you’ll see scouting grades for him as high as 50 (average starter) with high risk for reaching that outcome (which is Baseball America’s current grade) down to 40 (bench piece), as we see at Fangraphs and ESPN. In my Depth Charts and rankings this winter, I had him as a 45 — essentially splitting the difference of those two outcomes.
I’ve always comped McCray pretty strongly in my own mind to former Giant Steven Duggar — they have similar size and build, as well as similar skill sets. And Duggar has had some periods of success in the majors (he was a sneakily valuable part of the 107-win 2021 club). But ill-timed injuries and an inconsistent hit tool ultimately have kept Duggar from a consistent major league career, and there’s obviously that concern in McCray’s case as well — a concern that increases as his contact issues continue to follow him up the ladder.
But I’d still be very surprised if McCray didn’t see some big league time in his career — and that puts him firmly in the “prospect” camp for me. This is going to be a crucial season for him. Double-A is really the level where you see who will be big leaguers and who will be weeded out — I hear that over and over again (including a conversation I had with a former top executive just this weekend). So far it’s been a rough go for McCray at the plate, as is true of most of his teammates (that team has also had a rough bout of illness running through them lately). But let’s wait and see how the season goes before making pronouncements. A month isn’t a long enough time to watch and see the adjustments a player might make. Just to take one recent example, David Villar hit .240 and struck out about 30% of the time over his first two months at this level. Over his final two, he cut that strikeout rate down to 18% and had an 1.100 OPS. Though perhaps using Villar as an exemplar here takes us back to the “define your terms” portion of this answer.
Roger, I just discovered I can watch the Giants minor league teams via my MLB.TV subscription. Do you have any recommendations of which teams to watch right now?
Yes, I’ve loved watching minor league games on MLBTV for the past two seasons. They don’t archive games that have concluded (for that you still have to use the MiLB.com subscription, but you can watch any of the full-season affiliates’ games live on the MLBTV app. I will frequently have the Giants game on my TV and one of the affiliates on my laptop simultaneously, or, if the times work out, an affiliate on the TV.
I almost always watch Richmond’s games, if only because their eastern start times usually give them a window unto themselves in the organization. The other clubs all tend to conflict with each other, so then you need to start making choices. I’ve been finding myself watching the Sacramento squad pretty regularly this year. It’s a pretty stacked roster, what with Luciano, Luis Matos, Casey Schmitt, Carson Whisenhunt, Mason Black, and others, and it really does feel like the Giants’ ability to turn this group of players into productive big leaguers is a huge story both for the current season and for the future health of the organization. I actually don’t think that it’s overly dramatic to suggest that if the Giants fail to turn any of Luci, Matos, Ramos, or Schmitt into productive starters in a timely fashion, then another regime change starts to become a question of “when,” not “if.” So, I’ve been watching that club closely.
And then I’ll try to flip over to San Jose as a backup — certainly enough to catch Bryce Eldridge’s at bats, if not more than that. You can flip around — no need to just stick on one, based on who’s in the lineup, who’s on the mound, and how the game is going, and — for the multi-taskers out there, watch multiple games on multiple devices for maximum baseball overload!
Henrique Gonçalves
Roger, When do you start paying attention to the upcoming draft? And if you have already started, any early favorites for the #13 pick?
Bonus question: what are your thoughts on redrafting almost forever Giant Vance Honeycutt? I feel like the consensus is that he has a questionable hit tool, but plus power and speed and gold glove defense in the OF. Is that Grant McCray 2.0?
I’ll be honest. Since I’ve started There R Giants and really devoted myself to covering every aspect of the Giants’ farm system — at least skimming through every game, as well as keeping up correspondences, texts, or phone calls with industry sources, my ability to really drill down on the draft has waned over the years. I would call it pretty surface level at this point. I read a lot of the same scouting reports you all do, and try to keep my hand in by listening to the few contacts I have on the amateur side (my friend Brian Recca is a fantastic source of info, and I highly recommend following him on twitter at brian_recca).
With that said, I think we are almost definitely headed for a college pick this year — the nature of the talent in this class made that highly likely from the start, and the loss of the bonus pool money from the 2nd and 3rd picks that were sacrificed at the Free Agent altar clinched the deal. My best guess is we’ll see a college hitter — again, just because that’s where the talent at the top of the class seems to cluster. It looks like there’s a group of about six college hitters who are coalescing at the top of the class, and after about pick 8 or 9, things are going to become a little more wide open.
That could put the Giants right in line to re-select Honeycutt, whom they drafted out of high school in the 20th round in 2021, but didn’t sign. If you want a sort of wild hypothesis, I think there’s a chance that he was a fallback pick that year. Had they failed to reach an agreement with Eric Silva — who was committed to UCLA and ended up using that leverage to get a $1.5 million bonus — I think a lot of that bonus money would have made its way to Honeycutt.
You put the case for and against Honeycutt well. In terms of recent drafts, I’d say that he’s most like Florida’s Jud Fabian, who ended up falling to the 2nd round in back-to-back drafts specifically because of concerns over his hit tool. Even the Orioles have ended up having trouble getting the pearl out of the oyster there. And I think it would be worth the Giants’ time to seriously consider whether they will be the right organization to develop an athlete with Honeycutt’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s hard to say they’ve had a lot of success with the big power, low contact types — though it’s not a phylum that any organization can truthfully say they’ve cracked code on.
Hello Roger! Thank you for the very good content you publish on a regular basis. Two questions for this week:
1) Our best MiLB prospects appear to be pitchers. Please rate the top 6-8 (or possibly more) pitchers you see as possible ascensions to the MLB squad in 2024-2026. Furthermore, which of these would you say are "keepers" vs. "possible trade pieces," based on their projected career arc?
2) Turning to our hitters/position players: you have highlighted and encouraged us about a group of players who we thought were ascending steadily toward MLB, only to fall off a bit in 2023 and so far this year: McCray, Luciano, Aeverson Arteaga (MyGuy), Vaun Brown and to a lesser extent Schmitt and Tyler Fitzgerald. Same question: which ones are long term keepers vs. possible trade pieces, and who is among the next wave of prospects we will want to watch closely?
I would say that nothing has happened in the first five or six weeks of the season to move me very far from the player rankings I put out this winter in my Top 50. At that time, I had the pitchers ranked as followed:
That was followed by a long parade of relievers, including Randy Rodriguez and Erik Miller.
I feel pretty happy with that group in retrospect. I might think harder about moving Winn above Birdsong, especially having seen him increase usage of his slider, which was something I specifically mentioned being an important next step. And I’d definitely move Roupp up a bit from where he was, not just over Whitman, but up pretty close to the top 10. He’s answering questions about his health and the stuff plays when he’s on the mound.
“Keepers versus Trade Pieces” to me is an impossible question to answer free of context. Who are you replacing? What are the holes in the roster? Who might you be getting as a return in a trade? You can’t answer that question without knowing all of those variables. But, for what it’s worth, in my Depth Chart series last fall, Harrison and Whisenhunt were the only pitchers I put a 50 grade on — so after that twosome, I think there are more development questions to answer before we can say they are clear major league starters with sustainable careers in front of them. Even Whisenhunt has questions to answer, I think (mostly around the fastball command and third pitch). Under the right circumstances, I guess I’d say that Harrison is the one guy I’d want to stay away from in trade talks.
That said, I could happily see several of these pitchers being part of future rotations if they can take the necessary steps. The important thing for a club is having value — and I think there is value in all of those pitchers. How a club leverages that value is, for the most part, a matter of circumstance and context. Priorities shift with the moment often in this game.
As for the hitters — I don’t think there’s necessarily a “hands off” guy in the system, though you’d be very cautious about any talks regarding Eldridge and Arias right now, because they are still so early in their development process that the possibility of selling quite low on them would be a danger. I will say that the example of A.J. Preller is maybe illustrative here. Preller seems to be a master of getting young, high-ceilinged talent that the industry gets excited about and then moving them for proven major league talent, and, in general, he hasn’t been bitten by it very much. Certainly, he gave up a lot of talent for Juan Soto — and C.J. Abrams and Mackenzie Gore have been the best players he’s moved in his many prospect deals — but Soto was a special case. In general, Preller has shown that moving super hyped teenagers at the top of their market is a pretty solid strategy.
Having said all of that, my keeper is Eldridge, and I still want to see Luciano and Matos turn into important parts of this franchise. I’ll just end by saying that while I’m always eager to see these players succeed, I try to communicate both their paths to success and the difficulties which might trip them up. Very few players rise to the level of successful big leaguers. Failure is always the most likely outcome for ball players, and that’s as true in the development world as in any other aspect of the game.
Is it time for Dylan Cumming to move up - doesn't seem to have any more to prove in Eugene? Is a more likely future for Will Bednar to move to reliever like his brother?
He’s certainly pressing the issue. Cumming has a 1.01 ERA over 26.2 innings this year and has allowed no runs at all in five of his seven starts. That said, I don’t know if it’s as much of a slam dunk case as those numbers would suggest. Cumming pitches with a ton of confidence and swagger, and he can really provide hitters with an intoxicating blend of shapes and speeds, back-dooring them with one pitch while sweeping them into chases off the plate in the next. The weak element in his game, however, is a fairly fringy fastball that seems to max out around 91 or 92 mph, and that’s the part of his resume that doesn’t scream promotion.
Still, results matter, and Cumming has done nothing but deliver results so far in his pro career. I tend to think that the last spot in the Richmond rotation was originally reserved for Trevor McDonald. But as there’s no clear time table for his return, that won’t necessarily be an impediment. If Cumming keeps tossing up zeros, at some point you have to consider him ready!
As for Bednar, I don’t think there’s any need to worry about that right now. Just get him reps and let him compete and show that he can make it through a year fully healthy. If he can do that in 2024, then 2025 becomes the decision point for thinking about his role. His slider would certainly work well in relief, but with him too, you’d probably like to see the fastball velo climb back up to where it was in college. Perhaps with regular work, throwing free and easy, that will happen.
Hello Roger and thanks from all of us. Your ability to provide such quality content, day-in-day-out is astounding. We all tuned in for more stolen bases, but it seems like the only players who didn’t get the message, were the Giants’ big league guys. It’s an offensive category missing from the stat sheet and I’m left wanting more. How does it translate from minors to majors and how do you rank the best bag swipers in the system? Will Onil the unicorn be able to carry his success up the ladder? Clearly I want more! Thanks in advance.
Yeah, the Giants are pretty much the turtles of MLB aren’t they? Sadly, I don’t think there’s a ton of good news in the minors for you, Jason. I do not believe that Onil Perez, athletic as he may be for his size, is likely to turn into a 20 SB threat in the majors.
The best speed threats in the system are McCray, Brown, and Jonah Cox. There are other good base runners, but those are the guys you want to see turn into quality big leaguers if you want to see some speed. But of course, there is one expert base thief who is not in the minors, and that, of course, isTyler Fitzgerald. He currently leads the big club in thefts with four (although he should probably stop getting picked off in crucial moments). Perhaps this rash of injuries is going to thrust Fitzgerald into a starting position, and he’ll bring that dash of speed to the big Giants that you are so hoping to see!
Simple - what is wrong with Wade Meckler and why is this being treated like a Soviet state secret.
Hi Bob, thanks for the question. I’ve been theorizing lately that Meckler possibly sustained a broken bone when he was hit by a Carson Ragsdale fastball in the Sacramento-San Francisco exhibition game, as he was placed on the IL within 48 hours of that game. However, Eric Longenhagen recently reported that Meckler was on the IL with wrist inflammation and Andy Baggarly confirmed that yesterday, tweeting out that Meckler had been dealing with a lingering wrist sprain. So perhaps that HBP merely irritated an ongoing issue.
As for the second half of your question, the Giants tend to be very cautious and close to the vest when it comes to minor league injuries. Whenever I’ve asked about this, the Giants have responded that they are protecting players’ individual rights to medical privacy. That makes sense, but it’s also clearly not a policy that they are religious about, as various beat writers or national writers tend to pop up with minor league injury information on a sporadic basis (case in point, Longenhagen’s and Baggarly’s knowledge of this situation). Of course, with the major league players, regular health updates are given out. I guess you just need to be talking to the right party at the right time. Sometimes I get info and some (most) of the time, I don’t.
Any updates on Walker Martin? When do you think he'd debut in SJ?
Timelines on Rayner and Walker Martin? Do we see them in San Jose anytime soon?
Martin has been dealing with a strained hamstring that was apparently more serious than Bryce Eldridge’s fairly minor one. I should say, following on the previous answer, that this information was also provided by Eric Longenhagen, who is based in the Phoenix area, and sees a lot of extended spring games — another example of the somewhat arbitrary manner in which minor league info tends to spread.
Anyway, Eldridge missed two weeks with what was described as a minor hamstring strain, while Martin’s seems to be a slightly higher level of concern. Here’s what Longenhagen said about it:
A hamstring issue that popped up during extended spring training will have him shelved for another few weeks until after the 2024 Complex League season begins.
That feels to me like we’re talking about a 4-6 week sort of recovery? Maybe his return could be targeting sometime in late May if there are no setbacks, but that’s just a rough guesstimate?
Arias has a sprained wrist, also suffered late in the extended spring game cycle. I just saw him last night and he was wearing a fairly substantial-looking wrist brace that didn’t suggest a quick return to the field. If would be nice if we could get both of these guys back before June, but these things always seem to take longer, not shorter, to come to resolution.
Neither of the two are ticketed for San Jose any time soon — especially since they’re getting a late start at the complex level. Best-case scenario might be to hope that have strong rookie league performances once they are ready to go, and make the case to join San Jose later in the summer, perhaps after the conclusion of the ACL schedule at the end of July.
And with that, we’ll close up the bag for this week. Please do vote in the polls above. I really want to know how to handle this situation and need your help to decide on a solution.
If you’re looking for ACL updates from last night, that will come under a different cover this morning, so look for that elsewhere.
See you next week with another fully loaded mailbag — and hopefully some happy answers on the progress of Fitzgerald, Schmitt, Wisely, Matos, Sabol and more.
Excellent stuff, Roger.