Jacob Bresnahan Is Rolling!

SF Giants Minor Lines, June 19, 2025

Photo Credit: Colin Beazley | Pittsburg Post-Gazette

Before we get the Rafael Devers trade too far in the rear view mirror, there was one bit of reporting on the drama that led up to that deal that really caught my eye this week — and relates pretty directly to the work I do here. Over at Yahoo! Sports, Boston-based writer Joon Lee wrote a pretty in-depth piece that attempted to look beyond just fraying relationship between Devers and Boston GM Craig Breslow, and connect it to other big picture issues in the Red Sox organization.

The piece is a wee bit click baity (the term ‘shitshow’ is prominent in its title), but Lee is a solid reporter with stops at ESPN, the Washington Post, and NY Times in his resume, and there are a lot of detailed, presumably well-sourced, and very funny, anecdotes in here that illustrate a fraying internal culture in the Boston front office. But let’s zoom in on the part that I want to highlight:

The coaching staff has grown frustrated with the state of player development, specifically how much emphasis is placed on swing mechanics and hitting data, often at the expense of fundamentals. That imbalance, coaches believe, traces back to the Bloom era and has only accelerated under [Craig] Breslow. One example cited is rookie Kristian Campbell, who has made a string of routine errors at second base since being called up. He’s not alone; as a team, the Red Sox lead all of baseball with 64 errors, one more than the Colorado Rockies and 17 more than the third-place Los Angeles Angels.

Another error came during Roman Anthony’s debut, when he misplayed a ball in right field. The next day, Anthony was sent out to run outfield drills in front of the media. Multiple people in the organization noted that under previous regimes, that kind of instruction would’ve taken place behind closed doors. This time, it felt like a message from the coaching staff to the front office. One team source described the message as deliberate: “This is what we still have to teach, at the big-league level.”

It’s easy to overstate “tribalistic” divides in baseball, especially the analytics versus scouts one that seriously miscasts the complex and nuanced relationships of those two departments of baseball evaluations. But what Lee is talking about above (and what Katie Woo talked with me about last fall on the podcast) is a genuine Old School vs New School debate.

Is it more productive for Player Development to focus on metrics and data and observable, technical improvements or should PD take a broader, more wholistic, and less verifiable approach to try to create “winning ballplayers who understand how to play the game.”

It’s a topic of a lot of intense debate among the pro scouts I tend to talk my baseball with, and it’s a question with no clear answer. Kyle Boddy, founder of Driveline, is, as much as anybody, the original driver of following data and observable metrics, and it’s an understatement to say that his achievement and impact on the game has been monumental. And from his warehouse in suburban Washington, that influence has captured the top of most MLB organizations at this point — including a lot of very high functioning ones. It’s also led directly to dozens and dozens of impressive and exciting player development success stories — including in the Red Sox’s organization, which is pretty much the consensus best farm system in MLB right now.

Following the data makes a lot of sense. It’s the scientific method. And it produces verifiable results. And yet….there are many complaints like the one above that you hear throughout the game. Are we producing metrics darlings who don’t actually play the game well? Is the end result of this process one-dimensional players who are easily exploitable by the next wave of data (the way that sweepers instantly became a platoon-split issue, for instance, or steep bat angle “launch angle” swings become exploitable by high-rise fastballs at the top rail and on and on).

I certainly can’t answer which of these approaches and methods are “better,” if any such thing exists. I’m always a believer in synthesis and collaboration and combining the best aspects of all approaches. But I know that many of my readers want to see the Giants follow the Red Sox’s path and success. And I can tell you that this argument is raging throughout the game.

And, finally, I can say that the Giants have just whip-sawed from one side of the debate to the other with the change from Farhan Zaidi to Buster Posey. Randy Winn wasn’t too willing to engage when I found myself sitting next to him in the Richmond press box recently, but from what few words we did exchange, I’m convinced that he was looking at something very different than metrics and mechanics when he stared down intently on the players below. This org is going to focus on teaching “play the game” stuff down at the minor league level so that Bob Melvin and his staff don’t face the same frustrations as Alex Cora. Hopefully, they’ll be teaching the metrics and observable data stuff, too. But, for good or ill, the old school “teach the game” mentality is in ascendance in the org right now, and we’ll see in time if that produces better — and more consistently ready — results at the big league level in the coming years.

But when you folks ask me about promotions and what players have to prove at certain levels, keep in mind that that “proof” the club is looking for will likely be found in things more subtle and more vague than bat paths and pitch shapes. Take it for what it’s worth.

(As an aside, Boston sent Campbell down to Worcester yesterday for a “reset,” though the move was probably due more to his offensive slump than his defensive one.)

HITTER of the NIGHT: Angel Guzman (ACLG), 3 for 3, GS, 3 R, 6 RBI, 2 BB
PITCHER of the NIGHT: Jacob Bresnahan (SJ), 5.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 8 K

And, with that extended digression out of the way, let’s start things off with a bang. Minor Lines coming at you….