It's the "How is Already May?" Free For All Mailbag
Congratulations to Mason Black on becoming just the 23,193rd major leaguer ever. I know he walked off the mound a little disappointed at the final result, but he should be very proud of what he’s accomplished to this point in his career, and excited about what’s to come. One thing’s for sure, his family and friends certainly were!
I would like to break this habit I’ve fallen into of driving to Philly to watch Bryce Harper hit home runs, however. I’ve seen him hit quite a few in my life — no need to add to the collection. We’ll have to work on that.
And so it’s May already. We wait and wait and wait for baseball through a perpetually sluggish winter. And when it finally arrives, the months flash by like lightning! How can it be possible that a fifth of our season has already slipped away, when just yesterday I was crazy with anticipation for opening day rosters to be released.
It is ever thus. Anyway, we actually have a fairly sparse group of questions for this week’s mailbag. And I know you know what that means — much more expansive answers! Yes, I just couldn’t help myself. But I will put in a special request for next week — could we maybe have a few more happy questions? I know that things aren’t necessarily trending in a pleasant way in Giants’ world just now — but it makes my job more fun!
On with the questions…
Has the Giants’ kiddie glove handling of their minor league pitchers last year already blown up in their face? It was supposed to reduce injury, and yet FanGraphs just reported that they have so many injured pitchers at the moment that they’re not able to play full extended spring games. Meanwhile, at the major league level, we’ve just started to worry about how many innings we can ask out of Keaton Winn and Kyle Harrison as they’re finding their stride and sticking in the rotation for the first time. I’ve seen numerous downsides to this strategy so far and none of the upside. Was the whole idea just flawed from the start? Or are the Giants doing something else that’s causing all their pitchers to break?
This one is left over from last week’s mailbag. It was the last one to come in and I just knew there was no way to do it justice if I tried to sneak it in quickly at the end.
I can see how it might be easy to connect those dots, but you’ll forgive me if I say that, in my opinion, it’s maybe too easy to connect those dots, and we should delve into it a little deeper. I certainly don’t think that anything has “blown up in their face” — the strong production they’ve gotten out of young arms should be proof enough of that — and I’m not really willing to ascribe either issue you mention to their development strategy.
First, I should make two points that Giants’ officials themselves have made to me when I’ve broached the topic of pitch limits.
It’s more accurate to say that they spread innings out more evenly around the staff — while starter’s innings might have shrunk, many relievers (or tandem starter types) were stretched out more than traditional bullpen work allows, giving more opportunities to more players;
They didn’t limit innings, but monitored pitches, and a lot of times pitchers being removed early in games had mostly to do with an inability to throw strikes and get through at bats efficiently
With those two caveats that I know the Giants would make to such a question, it is still true that they did tend to limit pitchers more than other organizations do, particularly early in the season. Kai-Wei Teng, for instance, has been the workhorse of the system for years, but he ranked 44th in the minors last year in terms of pitches thrown, and 59th in innings pitched, and only he and Black were in the top 100 in either category in 2023. But they did let pitchers go between 60-80 pitches for most of the first half of the season, and a bit more after that.
What Farhan Zaidi has said publicly is that the Giants have done post-pandemic studies that suggest to them that quick ramp ups in innings ultimately leads to eventual degradation of stuff later in the season, and, with fatigue, comes danger of injury. That’s not quite the same thing as saying that this development plan avoids injuries — nothing will do that with pitching, particularly not as the game pushes close to the human body’s limits in terms of generating velocity and spin. But the idea is to balance both pitcher health with a plan that will get them into the second half of the year throwing something like their best stuff — because it’s awfully hard to develop one’s craft when throwing at less than one’s best.
So let’s take the question of injuries first. Eric Longenhagen did mention in his Fangraphs rankings this year that the Giants were having trouble putting together games in extended — and were likely to have issues in the ACL — because they have so many injured pitchers in camp. And there are a lot of injuries. This is, I think, a complete list of all the pitchers currently listed on various ILs for the org:
Full Season IL: RHP Luis Bermudez, RHP Gerelmi Maldonado, RHP Melvin Pineda, RHP Brett Standlee, LHP Nick Zwack
60-day IL: RHP Blayne Enlow, RHP Nicolas Herold, RHP Marques Johnson, RHP Chen-Hsun Lee, RHP Spencer Miles, RHP Blake Rivera, RHP Liam Simon, RHP Michael Stryffeler, LHP Thomas Szapucki, RHP Cole Waites, LHP Chris Wright
7-day IL: RHP Will Bednar, RHP Sam Bower, RHP Wilkelma Castillo, RHP R.J. Dabovich, RHP Mauricio Estrella, RHP William Kempner, RHP Mikell Manzano, RHP Trevor McDonald, RHP Kanoa Pagan, RHP Ian Villers
That looks like a lot, but is it an aberrant number? Just spot checking a couple of organizations, I see the Yankees (generally considered an outstanding pitching development org, and one that lets pitchers pile up considerable innings), currently has 12 pitchers on their Full season list, 13 on the 60-day IL, and 12 on the 7-day IL. So, at the very least, the Giants aren’t out charting new territory in injuries.
Another thing that is noticeable from the above list is that last year’s handling of starting pitchers has almost no bearing on the majority of these players. Most of whom are either 1) not starters, or 2) dealing with health issues that predate last year. Yes, there are pitchers on this list who were impacted by last year’s treatment of starters, but it’s certainly counter-intuitive to suggest that might have saved guys like Simon and Maldonado from having their years end in TJ surgery by having them work more. Those are two of the hardest throwers in the organization, and velocity is still the aspect of pitching that seems linked most closely to arm injuries.
I’d also note that this list of pitchers really has no impact on the team’s ability to cover innings in extended or rookie league, since all but a small handful of these guys are older pitchers who wouldn’t be in extended were they not injured — and, indeed, we’ve already seen three of the 7-day IL pitchers appear in the first two ACL games. The primary reason why there are so few pitchers on the ACL roster, in my opinion, is that they haven’t been developing a lot of arms on the DSL teams that were deemed advanced enough to move up. In the old days, when the draft was earlier and rookie league started later, ACL pitching staffs intermingled new draftees with arms coming up from the DSL.
But now with the draft taking place at the end of rookie ball, international arms are going to have to carry the whole load, and the Giants have generally shied away from big money pitchers in the IFA market, because pitchers develop in a such a different way from hitters. A late addition to the ACL pitching staff is young lefty Jose Rengel, which isn’t surprising to me, as his name kept coming up this spring when I asked about DSL arms who had impressed people. Jose Bello was mentioned as well, and I won’t be surprised if he joins the club at some point as well.
Lastly, as to the question of innings limits for Harrison and Winn (and Hicks, who is in his own category), I really think that this is something every team deals with for rookie pitchers. The days when Madison Bumgarner was chucking 160 innings as a 19-year-old in A-ball are long gone, and every team is careful with youngsters as they develop them. The Dodgers worked Bobby Miller up to 112 innings in 2022, and last year at the major league level they only felt comfortable stretching that out to 124 (with an additional 14 in the minors).
Harrison and Winn both ended last year right at the 100 innings mark, and IL stints that took away about a month probably kept them from getting to something closer to 120. I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that either could reach 150 innings this year if they’re closely monitored so as to avoid too many stress innings, and perhaps given a blow now and again. And that’s right in line with where most rookie performances are these days.
Over the last decade (since the start of 2015), there are only 21 rookie pitchers who have thrown more than 150 innings (if we separate out older pitchers coming in from foreign leagues with rookie status). Only 10 threw more than 160 — amusingly, three of those 10 were Giants: Chris Heston, Ty Blach, and Andrew Suarez (does anybody remember Suarez throwing 160 innings in 2018?). It’s maybe not a coincidence that the health history of that group of players (which is topped by Sandy Alcantara and Anthony DeSclafani, with Michael Soroka right behind) isn’t great! My guess is that either Harrison or Winn, and possibly both, will end up throwing about the same number of innings as most of their rookie starting peers this year.
I saw a stat this week that of the 10 starting pitchers in 2023 with the highest average velocity on their fastball, nine are currently on the IL. So, no, I don’t believe any strategy has blown up in the Giants’ face. I think they’re dealing with all the same complexities that every other club, college team, and American Legion hopeful is right now — how to push the human body to its limits without it breaking down.
Hey Rog! Just a quick one about the ABS system. What is considered a strike? Any part of the ball nicks the line? More than half the ball has to be in? I've seen in some of the charts showing players, for example, "swinging at balls" and seen the outline of the "ball" nicking the strike line, so I'm a little confused.
You got it right, Craig. If any part of the baseball nicks the line of the square, it’s considered by the system to be a strike (that’s actually true of the “rulebook” strike as well). But it’s not quite that simple!
The ABS system only sees in two dimensions, and, of course, the plate, the ball, and the strike zone itself are all 3D objects (or, I guess, “3D concept,” in the case of the zone). Part of the reason for experimenting with the system in the minors is to try to find the optimal point in that 3D space to take the 2D picture that ultimately decides the pitch. In initial ABS pilot attempts, the ABS was placed at the very front edge of the plate, but that resulted in some pitches that were almost comically low in appearance being called strikes (former Giants’ prospect and current Giants’ minor league manager Jacob Heyward notoriously became the first player ever ejected for arguing with an ABS system on one such pitch). MLB has adjusted the decision point multiple times over the last few years, and it now sits at the midway point in the plate.
The height and width of the strike zone have also varied over time — in fact, you might be surprised to learn that there is not just one strike zone currently being used in ABS systems. In Triple-A this year, the width of the strike zone is currently set at 17”, which is the actual width of the plate. Down in the Low-A Florida State League, however, which is the third of the three leagues that use ABS, the width this year is set at 20”! It’s the ol’ Eric Gregg strike zone! The FSL is also using a different top and bottom than the two Triple-A leagues.
Last year, Triple-A started out using a percentage of hitter’s height to set the top and bottom of the zone, but midseason, this was changed to reflect the fact that not all hitters’ bodies are proportioned the same. For the end of the year, MLB used the Hawk Eye system to determine specific marks on the batter’s body when he went into his “load” position, and set the top and bottom of zones from those body points. This year, however, Triple-A has reverted to a pure proportion of batter’s height (53.5% of height for the top and 27% for the bottom), while the FSL uses the Hawk Eye’s body tracking to place the bottom of the zone at the bottom of the hitters’ back knee, and the top at the midpoint of their hips.
Ultimately. MLB is looking for the specifications that produce the most entertaining product as well as increasing accuracy.
Chuck Reed
Topic: There is lots of talk about the Giants being good at developing pitching prospects, but less so hitting prospects.
Question: Do you agree with that assessment? If so, what might be the root causes? Is it a numbers game and they’re simply drafting more pitching prospects? Is their ratio of pitching prospects versus hitting prospects different than other organizations? Is it approach? Are they being taught to be so selective in the batters’ box that they are too passive? Are there other possible causes? Would love to hear your thoughts.
In my best President Jedidiah Bartlett voice, may I first say: post hoc ergo procter hoc? After this, therefore because of this.
The nature of all such proclamations in this game are to assign credit/blame and causality based on a tiny handful of successes or failures. When the Dodgers produced Corey Seager, Cody Bellinger, and Will Smith over a four-year period, they were proclaimed a Player Development assembly line that would produce non-stop hitting stars forever. In the five years since, they’ve had fairly modest success, at best, with their rookie hitters, failing to find another solid starter, including one extremely high-profile prospect “bust” in the case of Gavin Lux. (I’m fairly high on Andy Pages, so this might not look like a great take in a few months). Did the Dodgers somehow stop being good at developing hitters in 2019? Probably not!
This is a long-winded way of saying that the reason for the perception you reference is that we can look at the current Giants’ roster and point to plenty of homegrown pitchers, but not to many homegrown hitters, and our brains create a sense of pattern. Post hoc ergo proctor hoc.
And yet … is it really true that the Giants’ roster lacks development wins on the hitting side? Surely, the team gets some share of the credit for the success of Mike Yastrzemski, Thairo Estrada, and LaMonte Wade, Jr. in becoming solid every day big leaguers. Yaz was stuck for five years in Double-A and couldn't get a big league opportunity out of an Orioles club that was literally trying to lose by the end of that time. Estrada had a 29 wRC+ for the Yankees in 2020, and was DFA’d so they could get Rougned Odor on their roster. And Wade was a career .211 hitter who had shown no power and nothing like the on-base skills Giants’ fans have seen from him before coming to San Francisco. All of them went to Sacramento and worked their way into better versions of themselves. Surely those are development wins, right? We don’t think of them that way, because our parochial prospect minds tend to fixate on the “homegrown” label, but I can assure you that’s not how front offices think about players — they’re just looking to get the most out of who they have on hand.
But even if we focus solely on players who have come up from the bottom with the Giants, I think you have to say that Patrick Bailey is looking like a major success, and Tyler Fitzgerald, of whom much less was expected, is certainly a successful development story. Where I think the doom cycle is originating is in the perception of major prospects failing — in particular Joey Bart and Heliot Ramos — and probably a sense of prospect fatigue is taking hold with regards to Marco Luciano and Luis Matos. Frustration caused by major prospects floundering is not unwarranted — and let’s leave no doubt about it, the failure to get guys over that final hurdle and successfully integrated into the majors is having a major negative effect on the overall health of the organization. But it’s not unusual, either. And, specifically with regards to Luciano and Matos, we have to keep in mind that they are both still just 22 and not all that experienced from a pure reps perspective, so there should be plenty of growth still to come.
I remember GM Pete Putila talking with me once about the Astros’ Kyle Tucker, who, like Luciano, was originally pushed to the majors at 21, a little before he was ready, and struggled. The following year he returned to Triple-A and sagged a bit in performance from his previous shot at the level. It wouldn’t be until his third trip to the majors in 2020, at the age of 23, that his fortunes really took off. That’s not an abnormal player development experience. As Putila said at the time, you just have to be patient. Of course, nobody really wants to be continually patient — especially when, as a fan, you’ve devoted so many patient years to prospects who ultimately disappointed and flamed out. It is the nature of the beast, however.
I don’t mean to tap dance around your question — it’s a good one, and I’ve been having conversations on this topic with some of my contacts around the game. The problem really is that so little is really understood about what makes a great hitter even today — and even less about how you help guys get there. In one conversation I had recently with a front office member of a different club, they noted that trying to assess scouting and development processes is an unforgiving task. The feedback loops — in other words, the arc of the players’ careers — take a decade or more to form, and even then, they include so many unseen circumstances and twists of fortune that it’s hard to know exactly how or how much a team really helped a player. “And yet we all do it, we all try to self-evaluate” this executive noted, “Constantly. We have to. We just don’t know if we’re doing it right.” There’s so much noise that it drowns out the signal, like pressing our ears to portable radios in our youth, trying to pull in ghostly AM radio signals from across the country.
I think all of the potential causes you list could be part of the story with the Giants. Certainly, the Gians have tended to sway towards pitching to a certain degree in their draft strategies over the decades, though I don’t believe that their general mix of pitchers vs hitters is unusual or out of line with peers. We could try to look at some analytical issues, but I can tell you that almost everywhere that I’ve looked where it starts to seem the Giants are outliers in a negative sense, the Dodgers’ organization is right there next to them. The two organizations share a lot of core philosophies and tactics, but differ in end results somehow. I think it goes without saying that if it were easy or even possible to assign the “root causes” of the issue, then the team would change them.
The main thing that I’m seeing right now when I watch games or try to dig into data is poor performance against fastballs, but I don’t really know what cause to assign to that. Is it a coaching or philosophy issue or a quality of hitter issue or both or neither? That’s much harder to say. We can talk about swing decisions and plate discipline, but the Giants have hitters who are very free swingers (Casey Schmitt, Luis Matos) and hitters who are extremely patient (Marco Luciano, Logan Wyatt), and others who are in between. They have players who chase outside the zone too much and players who others who have contact issues inside the zone. So I can’t see that one dogmatic principle is really at play here. One of the mental focus T-shirts that I’ve seen Giants’ hitters wearing lately says #finishthepuzzle, and that’s a very apt way of looking at hitting development. It’s a puzzle to be solved that is different for each player.
I know that it’s probably frustrating for you readers that I keep nuancing this answer and don’t pound the desk with judgmental disgust and shout “throw out the bums!” There is no doubt that the malaise the organization has been in for most of the past eight or nine years falls directly on the failure to produce productive big league bats — and that in general, we’ve seen decades come and go without producing much in the way of everyday regulars. Teams can’t just piece together rosters made up of free agents and waiver wire finds year after year and expect to be successful. And the trend lines really don’t seem to be heading the right direction at this point with any of the upper-level hitters. The symptom is obvious; but the cure for it and the reasons behind it much more obscure. Just remember that it only takes a couple of big wins to shift the narrative going forward. The clock is ticking though, and it’s hard to say how much longer the current administration has left before that narrative hardens into its final form.
Hi Roger! Is there such a thing as a mirror image of the Giants org, where their fans are moaning about having too many bats in the upper minors, but there is no pitching to be found to help the big club? Seems like that must be the case somewhere. Maybe we could make some beautiful music together…
Continuing on with this theme, it might surprise many Giants’ fans to know that the Giants are far from the industry exemplar of the “all pitching/no hitting” development style. That honor, by far, goes to the Miami Marlins, who are long known for their ability to produce bushels of impact arms (not quite so well known for keeping them healthy and productive) and are annually the most barren hitting organization in baseball. It’s been a running joke for years that they need to match up with hitting rich teams — so many years in fact, that that preferred target has moved over time from the Cardinals to the Orioles!
The Milwaukee Brewers developed a Cy Young Award winner in Corbin Burnes, along with similarly talented rotation mates like Brandon Woodruff and Freddie Peralta. But they, too, have struggled for years to find a modestly competent bat in their system, even managing to turn “can’t miss pure hitters” like Luis Urias and Keston Hiura into dust.
Also, I realize this sounds strange to say, because they’ve managed to develop the splendiferous Julio Rodriguez, but Seattle has turned into a real pitching factory, while struggling to hit much better than the Marlins on an almost annual basis. This leads me back to the question posed above: how much credit does Seattle get for Rodriguez turning into star, given their struggles elsewhere with hitting prospects. Was JRod a happy accident, a proof of concept, or somewhere in between? This is the danger of creating narratives based on one or two examples.
Maybe the lesson we should be drawing here is that developing into a quality major league hitter is pretty danged hard and nobody really has the problem solved. As Yeats famously posed the question: how can we know the dancer from the dance?
But to answer your question, I’d say the Cardinals really have long been the case study for this. They not only seem to come up with more hitters than they know what to do with on an annual basis, but they’ve given away some really good ones as well (most famously Randy Arozarena and Adolis Garcia in rapid fire succession). But the poor Cardinals absolutely, positively have fallen behind modern pitching development, and can’t for the life of them seem to raise quality arms through their system anymore, in part, it would seem, because they’ve held stubbornly to a faith in low-velocity innings-eater types who pitch to contact. Even when they’ve gone out and traded for highly regarded prospects, that’s the type they’ve mostly targeted, as in the ill-fated Arozarena deal (hello, Matthew Libertore!). Even their minor leaguers look like this, by and large. Once upon a time that seemed to work, but that time isn’t this time.
Jodi
Hello Roger! I love reading your blog posts. Thank you for all that you do! Here's my question for the mailbag. It's been a really long time since the Giants have drafted and/or developed an all-star caliber outfielder who hits with power. Chili Davis was probably the last one. There have been multiple front office regimes over the decades. Is this a matter of poor luck, a scouting issue, a minor league development issue, or does this have to do with an ongoing philosophy throughout the decades? And if it's philosophical, what gives? Does this have something to do with ownership? After all, they are the ones who hire the GMs and Head of Baseball Ops. Surely they have some say as to "who" gets drafted even if it's not so much in words but in the money they're willing to spend on draftees. It just seems odd that every single GM or Head of Baseball Ops since the late 1970s has missed the boat when it comes to drafting power hitting outfielders. Maybe Luis Matos or Heliot Ramos can break that trend?
You see why my call at the top for a little happier tone of questions next week! We seem to be falling into a real case of crankiness hereabouts — and the ongoing disaster of the Giants’ current road trip doesn’t seem likely to help things any.
I almost didn’t answer Jodi’s question — not because of any ill will towards Jodi, who asked quite nicely! — but because this very question has come up multiple times in the past and I feel that I’ve run out of things to say about it. Indeed, The Athletic’s Grant Brisbee wrote an entire (brilliant) article on each team’s longest homegrown All Star drought, inspired by this very fact. In it, he noted that there are only seven MLB clubs who have failed to produce a homegrown All Star outfielder since 2010! And heck, that article is two years old — things might have gotten worse since then.
The problem with answering a question like this is that when you’re dealing with a fact that defies logic, common sense, or even dumb luck, it’s virtually impossible to ascribe any proper causality to it. It breaks the mind to think of it, so how can a rational response really explain it? You’re much better off going with ancient voodoo curses. My own personal favorite is the Curse of George Genovese, the legendary scout who signed many of the Giants’ finest players, including outfielders like Bobby Bonds, George Foster, Garry Maddox, Gary Matthews, Jack Clark, and Chili Davis. Genovese left the Giants organization after they refused to take his strong advice to draft USC’s Mark McGwire with the 9th pick of the 1984 draft, selecting outfielder Alan Cockrell instead. The rest is cursed history.
If, however, you insist on causality that doesn’t dip into the supernatural, the best I can do is suggest that for about the first 20 years of that time, player development was under-invested, and, to some degree, neglected by the organization for reasons that had to do mostly with ownership and financial health. For the last 20 years, it’s more about opportunity. The majority of stars come from the top of the draft, and the Giants have selected just two outfielders in the first round this century — Heliot Ramos and Hunter Bishop. Of course, their first pick in the 2016 draft, which came in the 2nd round and the 59th pick, was spent on Vanderbilt’s Bryan Reynolds…who became an All Star outfielder. Go figure. For what it’s worth, they have drafted six All Stars this century with 1st round picks at other positions (and several in lower rounds as well), and most of those players were crucial to winning the only three World Series titles in San Francisco history, so it’s not all bad!
Rog - I’ve been wondering about catching depth and I swear this was before Bailey left the game tonight!
Blake Sabol is on the 40 man and Bart is now gone. So looking at future catchers, Adrian Sugastey and Onil Perez I assume are the top prospects among the young catchers. There are a lot of other catchers but curious for the others and it doesn't appear any are rated as potential big league starters. Any updated thoughts on position depth? Thanks a bunch!
Well, Nick, in the 24 hours after you submitted this question, things became even more dire, with Tom Murphy also going down to injury. When I said on last week’s KROG podcast that the Giants had been relatively fortunate from a health perspective so far, and that that would change at some point, I didn’t imagine we’d be looking at a Sabol and Jakson Reetz catching tandem within 72 hours.
Generally, I think you’re on it here. Sabol provides the team with major league depth for injury situations, such as Bailey’s concussion (but its certainly nobody’s idea of a starting catcher), and beyond him Sugastey and Perez are probably the top prospects at the position. I’d probably put Luke Shliger somewhere close to that pair as well in the long term.
I actually think that the Giants have pretty admirable depth at the catching position. I was having a conversation with a scout at Papago Park in the spring about the quality of arms they have in the organization. There are a lot of classic “catch and throw guys” really top to bottom. Andy Thomas and Brett Auerbach have strong accurate arms, and I can keep going with that down the ladder to even guys like Drew Cavanaugh and Javier Castillo, who really impressed me in spring. Thomas, is I think, a sneaky candidate to help them get over the immediate hurdle. He hasn’t hit much in Double-A, but he’s a good receiver, and pitchers have good things to say about working with him. In addition, he can work a walk and has raw power. That could be enough for a looksee — especially in times of desperation.
But most of these names are long-term system depth. There isn’t — and hasn’t been for a few years — much immediate help at the highest levels. In addition, these aren’t super prospects; they’re solid ones. Even at catcher, the guys who jump out at scouts are the ones who can really hit the ball — like the Orioles’ Samuel Basallo, taking 98 from Reggie Crawford out to center field a week or so ago. Henry Davis is catching for the Pirates because he has big power and some real offensive potential. But I’ve never heard anyone speak about his defensive abilities without derision. So it goes — teams are always looking for big hitters.
None of the catchers in the Giants’ org has that kind of eye-catching power potential — Sugastey and Perez are both contact bats whose swings are more oriented to put balls in play than to drive them to the moon. They’re both on a trajectory towards the majors, I think, because they do have outstanding contact ability and project as solid defenders (with some work still to do there, as you’d imagine from 21-year-olds).
Catch and throw skills will get you playing time, and playing time gives you a chance to develop that bat into something more playable. So we’ll see where some of these kids go with their skills. And, of course, way down at the bottom of the ladder, the Giants gave $1 million to Yoendry Sanchez this winter, based on his strength and ability to impact the ball. Whether he’ll stick behind the plate remains to be seen, but if he can, then he might progress as a backstop with more impact offensive potential eventually.
Of course, for much more on this topic, perhaps it’s time to revisit the old Depth Charts series!
The ACL roster looks REALLY young - Ryan Vanderhei must feel like a veteran at 23 amongst them! Anyone (other than Martin & Arias) you're interested in seeing? Will the Giants look at moving Ryan Reckley from SS to prioritize Martin's game time?
I don’t actually think the roster seems terribly young. Typically, it’s not unusual to have a lot of 17- and 18-year-olds on a rookie league club. This year’s group is mostly made of 19- and 20-year-olds — with a lot of repeat level players (which isn’t what you really want to see at this level). And, of course, there will be a heavy presence of rehabbing players from higher level as the season plays out, increasing the average age significantly.
As for players I’m interested in seeing, aside from the star prospects, I’d say that Lisbel Diaz, Carlos Gutíerrez, Dario Reynoso, and Jose Rengel (who suffered through a rough debut on Saturday) are probably the three I’m most looking forward to getting an eye on when I’m out there next week. I’m ALWAYS interested in seeing players I haven’t before. Diaz and Gutíerrez arrived in spring camp while I was there, but neither got into a game, and Rengel has come later. Eric Longenhagen mentioned having seen Angel Gúzman in some extended games, but he’s yet to appear on the ACL roster, and wasn’t listed among the reserves in Saturday’s game, so I’m not sure of his current status.
The question of Reckley’s time and position is an interesting one. I mentioned during my Camp Notes posts that Reckley wasn’t getting much starting time in Low-A games that I saw, but was coming off the bench. And that was with Martin playing on other rosters! So it’s possible he could be moved around — I’d still like to see how he looks in the outfield, where he could use his speed. In the two games the team has played so far, Reckley has started at DH and 2b, so it does seem that they’re beginning to move him away from full-time shortstop. Martin is currently out with a hamstring issue, and I wonder if they’ll try him at other positions once he’s on the field, as he already is starting to form into a strong frame that might well fit at 3b. We’ll see!
kent iverson
Hi Roger,
It has been great to see Randy Rodriguez make adjustments, succeed and get the call. With his promotion, who would you say have the top 5 fastballs in the system?
Wow, what a great question, Kent! This one makes me think. The way you phrased it, I’m assuming that this is only guys on the minor league teams — Erik Miller is out of bounds! — so I’m going to answer it that way. That makes it challenging, because, to be honest, the great fastballs in the organization — the guys who can 100 — are all on the big league roster right now, with one real exception.
Immediately, one issue I run into is that several of the fastballs I instantly think of as being dominant are currently sitting on the rehab lists following surgeries. Tommy John surgery doesn’t necessarily negate great fastballs, however — Winn’s big velo increase came right back while he was rehabbing from the surgery — but just to increase the level of the challenge, I’m only going to talk about pitchers who are active, so no Cole Waites, Gerelmi Maldonado, Liam Simon, or Spencer Miles, though all could probably qualify for this list. The other issue is I have is deciding how to weigh starters, who may get up in the 95-97 range, against one-inning relievers touching higher numbers. Tricky, tricky!
I think this is going to be my list.
The #1 guy here is very clear! Crawford is sitting 97-98 with his fastball, and I’ve heard he’s touched 100 in his time at extended. That is the best fastball currently working on the farm by a good measure I’d say. After that, things become a little muddled. Birdsong has mostly been sitting in the 94-95 range so far this spring, but I’ve seen enough of him hitting 97 when the weather is warm to keep that as his upper range, and he touched 98 in Arizona this spring. Ragsdale, on the other hand, seems to throw 95-96 in any weather I’ve seen him in, and rarely deviates from that specific band. Those two could be flip-flopped. Carson Seymour, in terms of pure velocity, is right with that pair of starters, getting up to 97 with his heater. But it doesn’t tend to play as a swing and miss offering in the same way as Birdsong’s and Ragsdale’s.
Flores is probably a surprise to many, but I know he hit 99 early this year in San Jose. I don’t know about the shape on the pitch — hitters do seem to get some good swings off of it, but he’s growing into some real strength and power, and just turned 22, so good times should be coming for him.
After that, I was kind of stymied. I’ve seen both Eric Silva and Julio Rodriguez hit 97 this spring, but Silva has been pitching more 92-94 in games where I’ve seen him with Richmond, and the same goes for Rodriguez in Eugene. R.J. Dabovich has gone back on the IL and is still struggling to throw strikes, but he has hit 98 this year in Sacramento, and he’s shown excellent shape on the pitch in the past, so I’m going with him for the final spot. Others who I might consider include Tyler Vogel, Tanner Kiest, and Ian Villers, who has been out since April of 2022 after having Tommy John surgery. Villers, the former Cal closer, made a rehab assignment in the ACL this weekend and was hitting 95. Not too bad for a first time out.
I’ll mention one other guy: Joe Salermo told me in the winter that new IFA signing Argenis Cayama had touched 97 as a 16-year-old (sitting 93-95), so he seems like he could be a candidate for big velo dude going forward if the body develops accordingly. We’ll see. Once upon a time, scouts thought that Manuel Mercedes would eventually be a triple digits guy, but, though he throws a sinker with decent velo, he hasn’t seen much upper 90s since the complex league.
Michael
It's been a pleasant surprise to see the High-A lineup thriving given the lack of prospect pedigree and the usual Eugene reasons. Besides Diego Velasquez, which of the High-A hitters have the best chance at continuing to climb the ladder to have a legit shot at the big leagues? What do you hear about these guys from your sources?
There are a lot of veteran college bats on that team who know how to put up a solid at bat for sure. Scouting-wise, you’re right that it’s not a club that makes scouts’ bow ties spin, with steam coming out of their ears and eyes turning into dollar signs. Onil Perez is solidly on the prospect map, and you hear some interested chatter with regards to Quinn McDaniel and Scott Bandura, but mostly, when I ask about members of this group, I’ll get the semi-dismissive scouty response: “it’s a college bat,” which translates into something like: older, experienced guy feeding on younger players.
That’s not to slam the door on their chances — there are plenty of players with exactly that profile who have succeeded, and even thrived, in the majors. Matt Carpenter, to take just one example off the top of my head, was seen as exactly that kind of guy in the minors — in fact, you can probably pick a random Cardinal of the past decade and find a similar story.
But it does mean that most of this group fits into the “prove it every level” basket of prospects. They just have to keep performing and keep performing level by level until a big league opportunity arrives. David Villar is an example of this type of player as well, and perhaps Ismael Munguia would be another good example.
A senior member of the Giants’ front office once said to me that they love coming to Richmond, because Double-A is where you really see if someone is going to be a big leaguer or not. If players perform there, then their stars start shifting. So….keep working, and we’ll see!
That’s it for this week’s mailbag. I’ll be back next week with new questions and answers — which hopefully won’t hover quite so obsessively around the topic of “what’s wrong with the Giants’ hitting development?” There’s only so many ways I can say “I don’t know,” after all.
Roger, this a superb post--comprehensive, even-handed, and spectacularly knowledgeable. It adds up to a thorough presentation of the current state of the Giants' player development in the broad context of the industry. Thank you.
"the Curse of George Genovese"
There is a movie script in there somewhere. Maybe kinda like Moneyball or something. Trouble is, there needs to be a happy ending.
Yeah.