"Let's Get the Second Half Started" Free for All Mailbag

Photo Credit: Shelly Rodriguez | San Jose Giants

Here I was starting to put together this week’s mailbag, when I remembered there was a left-over question I didn’t get to from last week:

olives

Despite the terrible 40-man crunch looming soon, any chance that Jerar Encarnación has earned a call up at some point? Former prospect pedigree, 2nd in the PCL in wRC+ among players with 100 PAs... he seems like a better fit for the short-side platoon corner outfield role that Luis Matos (who I am disturbed to see has a lower wRC+ than Nick Ahmed on the year) is currently inhabiting

Just as I started thinking about an answer for olives (which was going to be some form of “probably not,”) this crossed my twitter feed:

Holy cow, I thought! Olives is a genius! But, sadly and shockingly, random twitter user turned out to be inaccurate in his information, and now, I’m stuck trying to answer the original question again, having gone through quite the loop!

Olives, my answer remains that it seems like a long shot to me. Encarnación is a fairly known commodity — huge power, huge swing and miss. Think of him as something like Lewis Brinson without the speed and center field defense. While I can see taking some sort of swing at him if the front office thought it was one big power bat away from kicking this team into gear, I don’t know that that’s the case here (and if it is, Jorge Soler is the one being paid to do that). It’s true that Zaidi has always believed in giving opportunities to those who succeed in Triple-A, and that could be a consideration here, but I’m not sure it’s the most pressing one right now.

I think that if the Giants want to rearrange their outfield situation, it’s more likely going to be with an eye towards long-term answers. Which means that I suspect any adjustment that is coming in the next week might be to try to get Luis Matos more playing time, rather than less. I agree that his season has been disappointing — not just that the production hasn’t really been there, but that he’s been letting pitchers get him out in the same way over and over again without really adjusting to it. But at this point, it would seem that Farhan Zaidi’s job retention possibilities (which we’ll get to later in today’s bag) rest on one of two things: success on the field, or a clear step forward in terms of production from the farm. Hitting lightning in a bottle for a couple months with Encarnación could conceivably help the former, but not really helping the latter. So the question might end up having mostly to do with the demands of ownership and their demands for the remainder of the season.

And, having cleaned up from last week, let’s take a look at what’s new in the old mailbag.

Trevor York

What happened to Reggie Crawford? He was pitching relatively consistently and then suddenly stopped around a month ago. I haven’t heard any injury updates since. Thanks for the coverage!

Crawford went on the IL with what was termed a biceps impingement back in early June. In his last game on June 5, he worked through a very quick 1-2-3 inning with two strikeouts, but his fastball velocity was noticeably down, as he came out throwing 92 mph and maxed out below 95. That sent alarm bells pealing in my head, and I imagine in the offices at Papago and Oracle Park as well. The Chronicle’s Susan Slusser coincidentally ran into Crawford after the Rickwood Field game (to which all minor league players and coaches with African-American heritage were invited by the Giants), and she reported that he said the IL stint was routine maintenance. Obviously, the longer his absence lasts, the less comfortable one feels about that characterization. As with all the folks on the IL, we hope to see them back on a field soon. I do believe that Crawford might have already made his big league debut were it not for this latest health issue.

David Jaulus

What is the one thing — if you had to choose one — that Vaun Brown has to improve to become a contributing big leaguer in the next calendar year?

That’s a pretty easy one, David: he has to make much more contact. Brown’s numbers this year in Richmond were alarming in the highest degree — and not something you see all that often at that level. He struck out nearly 50% of the time. He swung and missed at nearly 30% of all pitches he saw, and his whiff rate (the percentage of times he swung without making any contact) was over 50%. Yes, more than half of his swings this year resulted in no contact. That is startling!

It’s also much worse than anything we’ve seen from Brown before, including his 2023 campaign in Richmond. That year was concerning from a contact perspective, but it wasn’t anything like the out and out disaster that 2024 was turning into before Brown was placed on the Developmental List. The hope is that there are mechanical problems leading to that level of whiffery, and, thus, mechanical fixes that can help him find his way out of the problem. As the old saying goes, the first thing you need to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging. I think that realization was what led to Brown’s de-activation this year. The Giants have worked with him on a completely re-tooled swing, and, sooner or later, he should be returned to Richmond to try it out at the appropriate level.

Brown has big league tools — but you have to get the bat on the ball to be able to set those tools in motion. As I wrote just last Friday, seeing Brown find something that clicks is one of my most fervent wishes for the second half of the year.

10 Things I'm Hoping to See in the Second Half

Hey, speaking of those 10 things I’m wishing for — Aeverson Arteaga finally made his season debut in the desert last night, going 1 for 3! One down!

MikeH

Hi Roger. My apologies if you've covered this previously, but why is the ACL finishing so soon? Is this the shape of things to come, as it seems new draftees will have limited opportunity to get on the field, probably outside of the top picks? Would this have any bearing on them only picking up one undrafted free agent in spite of a lower number of players drafted? [EDITOR’S NOTE: there’s been a second UDFA since this question was submitted.]

The ACL season was shifted by a month this year — beginning in early May, rather than June, and finishing in late July, rather than August. This was an agreement reached by MLB’s Farm Directors as a way to deal with the reduction to a 165-player maximum on the domestic reserve list.

The numbers here are stark and unyielding. The Giants, as I wrote last week, are currently sitting, by my count, at 162 players on their domestic reserve list. Generally, it’s advantageous to have a little buffer between that number and the absolute limit, as various things make the number go up from day to day. Notably, when players are optioned down from the major league squad to Sacramento, they are adding onto that list, and if they aren’t replaced by someone going the other direction from Sacramento to San Francisco, you’ve just got a +1. This happened just last night (after I originally wrote this answer), in fact, when Hayden Birdsong was optioned, making him the 163rd player on the domestic reserve list.

That means that the Giants are pretty close to being completely maxed out, where every player in means one player has to go out. And now they have 20 new draft choices that have to be added to the roster (eventually, the timing of that is a different topic) plus whatever undrafted players they want to sign as free agents.

The bottom line is that it’s simply impossible to field five affiliates and sign a new draft class, and fit all of it below the 165 line. The solution to that quandary was to move the rookie league forward, so that incoming draft class doesn’t overlap with the complex season and its associated roster. Put another way, the expectation around the industry is that once the rookie leagues end, you’ll start to see teams release players from those rosters as a way of fitting in the new draft class. It stinks, but it’s the reality that all Farm Directors have to deal with now.

Let me return to the specific timing of when players from the draft class have to be added to the domestic reserve list. There are one of two dates that apply. IF the player takes part in the 2024 season — in other words, they are added to the San Jose roster and play out the Cal League season as a member of the Giants (or Emeralds or whichever team they join) — then they must be added to the domestic reserve list on the day of their first appearance in a game. If they do not play in the 2024 season, then they must be added to the domestic reserve list one day after the completion of the World Series, which effectively starts the following season from an administrative perspective. (By the way, different rules are in effect during the off-season, but that’s an answer for a different day.)

So, depending on how many of the incoming draft class the Giants want to get into action this year, they will need to start finding spaces for those players on the domestic reserve list, and unfortunately, players releases are the primary tool for accomplishing that. That’s the sad reality of things.

(To be clear, I don’t think Alix Hernandez will be released — the video just fit the ACL season topic).

Backpack5

Roger, this may be a dumb question. What is the goal of ISO as a stat? I see it used as a measure of power in a lot of baseball discourse, but that doesn’t seem intuitive to me.

For example: a hitter with a 0.100 average who’s slugging 0.300 has the same ISO as a hitter with a 0.200 average who’s slugging 0.400. The 0.100 hitter has more power (averaging a triple!) while the 0.200 hitter is a better hitter but only averages a double.

I’m not sure if this is just me misunderstanding a stat, or if ISO is usually contextualized enough that it plays its part well. It seems to me, though, that a better measure of raw power is probably slugging / average rather than slugging - average. Is that true, or am I missing something?

Also, just for fun: if you had to name a favorite pitch in the system right now from someone below AAA, which one would it be?

Hi Backpack, as a former teacher let me repeat the great educational truism: there are no dumb questions! I use ISO a lot, so it does behoove me to make sure all of my readers understand exactly what it does.

To answer your first question, the goal of ISO is to measure a hitter’s power, as you state.  In comparing batting average, slugging percentage, and ISO, all of them are a percentage of something per at bat. Batting average measures base hits per at bat, slugging percentage measures total bases per at bat, and ISO measures what we could call “extra total bases” per at bat, or the number of bases beyond first that we accumulate per at bat. So to reach the goal of measuring power, they use a measure really of the rate at which batters pile up extra bases on their hits. Does this truly measure power? Maybe. I’m sure that we all can see that speed rather than power can often contribute to doubles, and triples are certainly caused by some kind of combination of power and speed. So logically, it definitely is not totally isolating power.  It’s what some smart people have decided is the best they have.  Could there be something better? Probably.

As to the second part of your question, which was whether slugging / average might be a better measure of power than slugging – average, let’s take a look at what the two would be designating. As we said above, ISO, or slugging minus average gives you a rate of extra bases per at bat, which we said above is definitely affected by speed as well as power, so power is not totally isolated. What do we get from slugging divided by average?  This gives us a rate of total bases per hit, or what percentage of extra bases a player gets out of each hit. Clearly one advantage we get from the traditional ISO is that it is a rate per at bat, which is what we are used to, as both batting average and slugging percentage are also rates per at bat. So your idea of throwing in a rate of something per hit would make it kind of an apples and oranges thing rather than a rate similar to what we are used to.

Here is a chart of several players that can be found on the leaderboards right now and their traditionally-derived ISO (“Trad ISO”) compared to your suggested stat (“Sug ISO”):

Both are going to give indications of power. Traditional ISO, as mentioned, is in a nice decimal form like batting average and slugging percentage, which gives it a pleasing familiarity, whereas your suggested stat is a number greater than 1 that could take some time getting used to. As I said, you can analyze power from each.  Let’s take Aaron Judge and Jose Altuve. In the view of our traditional ISO, Judge picks up just over ½ an extra base each at bat, whereas Altuve picks up just over 1/5 of an extra base per at bat. With your suggested stat, we can see that Judge picks up an average of 2.7 bases for each hit, whereas Altuve picks up just 1.7 bases per hit. An advantage to your stat is that it is only analyzing hits, so outs don’t drag down the power stat. ISO clearly is affected by outs. And, of course, outs tell us nothing about power, but do impact how often a player can get to their power.

So is ISO the best way to recognize power? Or is your suggested stat, or something else entirely? You tell me.  I like to bet the field, so “something else entirely” is probably the best way to lean.

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Favorite pitch, huh? Two years ago, my answer was a very quick: Roupp’s curve. I don’t have anything coming to mind quite so readily today. There really aren’t any huge fastballs in the lower levels of the farm right now. But I am still a fan of snapping breaking balls, and there are some good ones down below: Dylan Cumming’s trio of sliders, Nick Sinacola’s slider, Trent Harris’ curve, and Alix Hernandez’ slider all come to mind as pretty great examples.

Josh

Hey Roger! Just curious what you think/are seeing with Walker Martin - it's hard to make sense out of his batting line. The 40% strikeout rate paired with the near-20% walk rate might suggest he's just taking a ton of pitches and trying to work walks. Is that actually the case or is there a lot of swing-and-miss in there too?

Hi Josh, I’m with you! It’s a confusing performance for sure. I actually want to say “some of both” is the answer here. I noticed even in spring that he was patient to the point of passivity. He is definitely a player who focuses on taking a ton of pitches in an attempt to work walks, but you don’t reach 40% strikeout rate in the complex league simply by watching them go by. There have been timing issues and contact issues going on as well. It’s been the whole pu pu platter of strikeout troubles. He’s also been pressing this summer according to folks I’ve talked to, which exacerbates everything else.

A couple of weeks ago I texted with a scout I know. Noting that Martin seemed to be making all of his contact (hits and outs) to the left side off the field, I asked if he was cutting himself off in his swing, and the literal quote I got back was “he’s everything-ing himself off.” In this scout’s view, Martin was, at that time, playing with a lot of anxiety about his performance, which naturally prevents a player from performing free and easy. The good news for me is that, since that conversation, I’ve seen a lot of hard pulled contact from Martin, and his swing has looked more free and natural.

I suspect that some of his performance issues this year have come from being a little more raw than anticipated. Some have come from feeling the pressure of being a high draft pick with a big bonus left behind in extended and ACL (and after a long delay before finally getting in any official game action at all). And some comes from an approach that could stand some tweaking.

And I do think, in general, the “passivity” question is a reasonable criticism that can be levied against the Giants at this point. The organizational philosophy, which comes straight from the top, really accentuates the value of taking walks, and I do think there are some players who get caught up in chasing them a bit more than is good for their development (to some degree, I feel like this has been the story with Marco Luciano the past couple of years). On the other hand, one of the most passive hitters they’ve had in the minors over the last few years was Patrick Bailey, and it hasn’t seemed to hurt him at all once he got to the top! Perhaps, Martin is just obsessed with living up to his first name.

Douglas Staver

The Dodgers’ farm system seems to consistently outperform the Giants’ despite the fact that the Dodgers usually have lower picks, and the Dodgers often trade away their best prospects. How do they do it? To what do you attribute this difference? What do you believe the Giants can do to improve the situation? And are the Giants, under this regime, taking the proper steps to close this gap?

Generally speaking, my natural inclination is to give sleeping bears a fairly wide and cautious berth. I don’t necessarily run away screaming from them, but I don’t pick up the largest branch I can find and start poking away, either.

Still, I’m going to go ahead a drop a hot take right here and now: the Dodgers’ farm system hasn’t been very good lately, and, without any doubt at all, the Giants’ farm has been FAR outproducing the Dodgers in 2024. And really, that’s a continuation of a trend that’s been increasing throughout this decade. At this point, I’m ready to say that what the Giants need most to close that gap is better PR! The Dodgers have a gold-star reputation, so people believe they’re succeeding whether or not they actually are, while the Giants have a tarnished reputation, so people believe they’re failing, regardless of the results.

Let’s check the facts on the ground. If we look at players on the current rosters who are 1) homegrown or home-finished (I’m thinking Erik Miller level here, not Jung Hoo Lee) out of the farm system; and 2) within the first three years of their MLB career, we find the following:

• Giants have received 10 fWAR this year; the Dodgers 3.7

• Giants have 3 players (Patrick Bailey, Heliot Ramos, Ryan Walker) with >1.0 fWAR so far on the season, the Dodgers have one (Gavin Stone);

• and, since fWAR isn’t a terribly precise number, if we round up from say 0.7, the Giants have 6 such players (including Tyler Fitzgerald, Brett Wisely, and Kyle Harrison) while the Dodgers have two (add Andy Pages to Stone).

That’s all pretty significantly in the Giants’ favor! Now WAR isn’t the end all/be all of value — it thinks that the Giants have received negative or neglible contributions from Spencer Bivens and Hayden Birdsong, for instance. But I invite you to slice up the numbers any way you’d like — by games played, PA, IP, ERA, HR, what have you — the Giants are getting much more value from recent internal resources this year than LA is.

And I’ll let you in on a little secret that perhaps doesn’t get much press — the Dodgers PD has had a series of fairly high-profile development failures lately. Gavin Lux was a minor league player of the year and consensus top five prospect in baseball four years ago, and I think we can say at this point that he’s failed to develop into even an average starter. Diego Cartaya was the Dodgers #1 prospect before both the 2022 and 2023 seasons, and he’s not only not made the majors yet, he’s fallen out of their Top 10 rankings completely at this point because he’s performed so badly in the upper minors (currently a 60 wRC+ in Triple-A). Bobby Miller has similarly been their top pitching prospect for years and a top 20 prospect in the game, considered the heir apparent to Walker Buehler, and he has an 8.70 ERA with the Dodgers this year. James Outman, who came out of nowhere to give the team a fantastic rookie year in 2023, has been so bad in 2024, he’s been returned to Oklahoma City. I don’t think you can point to a real, sustained, player development success story for the Dodgers — even a complementary type player along the lines of Austin Slater or Tyler Rogers — since 2019, when Will Smith (who continues to be great) came up.

Ironically, the best rookie performance this year from someone out of the Dodgers’ system has come from the Cubs’ Michael Busch, whom the Dodgers flipped for a younger prospect (a good Double-A LHP) because they didn’t see any way of getting Busch into the lineup. That would have been a quandary, as they have 1b and DH pretty well locked down, but given how poor their production has been at both 3b and 2b this year, I’m sure they’re regretting their hastiness at this point.

Let me put it this way: people who believe the Dodgers’ farm is outperforming the Giants’ right now believe that because they are programmed to believe it, not because there is any evidence to back that idea up. And when I talk to people inside the Dodgers’ organization, I get the feeling that they are concerned about it, too. There’s a sense that the reputation is starting to outstrip the accomplishments there. It’s a concern and it should be.

Which is not to say that everything is humming along perfectly with the Giants’ PD. This year has had as many or more critical backsteps as it has had successes. But the farm certainly has started to pay off in real major league production. Bailey alone has the 13th highest fWAR in MLB this year. Ramos has broken a 40-year-old curse, and Birdsong is doing things never done before in Giants’ history.

That doesn’t mean the farm will continue to produce value, or increasingly do so, or that the young players on the Giants right now will necessarily get better from here on out. Injury and regression are the monsters constantly hiding under the beds of major league players (go back and read that line about Outman one more time). But it does mean that Giants’ farm system is not the issue that is separating them from the Dodgers in 2024. The gap between those franchises comes from the Dodgers use of resources to acquire Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow — from their willingness to spend vast quantities of money, in other words — not from their ability to convey major league talent out of the minors to fill every need.

Hot take!

Gerald

At the helm for almost six years now, it doesn’t appear Farhan has met many of his deliverables - rebuild the farm system, recruit/sign and develop impact players, and win at the major league level. Our drafting seems mostly mediocre, the product on the field (aside from the outlier of ‘21) has been the same. Zaidi seemed more effective as an assistant with the Dodgers and A’s. Is it time for a change in leadership, direction, and philosophy?

I could go on with my hot take from above, but let me just say a couple of things relative to Gerald’s follow up. First, I actually think that the Giants’ current roster is plenty good enough to compete in an NL landscape that isn’t very inspiring, and may have just one really good team (the Phillies). It’s true that the Giants have been an uninspiring club for multiple seasons now, and seem allergic to getting over .500. But they’ve also kept from falling apart under extreme injury duress, which says something good about this squad. With a fairly easy schedule the rest of the way and enough talent returning to the roster to potentially claim one of the three or four best pitching staffs in the league, I genuinely don’t believe lack of talent is their biggest issue. I think a lot really falls on the players, who, for whatever reason, haven’t found a way to create a winning culture that demands a certain level of performance and holds everyone accountable when falling short of that.

That, I do think, is where the Dodgers have a real advantage over the current Giants. From Adrian Gonzalez to Clayton Kershaw to Justin Turner to Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, they have passed down a torch of leadership in the locker room that has maintained a culture of winning, whether things were going well for them or not in the moment. It seems very obvious to me that the Giants really haven’t been able to replace Buster Posey in that regard at all. I say all this from the perspective of one who has never been inside a major league locker room — so take it for what it’s worth. But I am convinced that winning is more than a matter of counting up the WAR of the talent on hand. There is some sort of alchemy that some teams and some players have and the momentum that consistent winning creates that can often outlive the individuals who started it (I think it’s safe to say that the Cardinals have struggled with some of the same issues since Yadier Molina retired, and the current incarnation of the Blue Jays is a classic case study of a failure to launch).

At some point, the players in that locker room really need to figure out how to play winning baseball. If they don’t? If this squad fails to make the playoffs even in this quagmire of mediocrity that is the National League? Then, yes, it’s quite possible that there will be a reckoning coming for that in other areas of the organization, and jobs may well be lost. Farhan Zaidi is the baker at this shop, and if the cake fails to rise, blaming it on faulty yeast isn’t likely to get him off the hook with testy customers.

I’ll be honest. I certainly have some criticisms about the way Farhan Zaidi has run the Giants — some specific to baseball, and some generic organizational management and leadership things. One of those definitely is the failure to acquire star-level talent, and I also think it’s a real issue that the end of year press conferences seem to go over the same basic priorities for improvement every year (in last year’s, for instance, Zaidi said of the team’s outlier status in SB that “it can’t happen.”). But I don’t feel the drafting has been a black mark — I think the 2020, 2022, and 2023 drafts have all been excellent, which certainly doesn’t feel substandard to me. That pandemic year draft is looking like one of the best in MLB that year. I also think he’s shown some real strengths in his time unearthing significant major league talent virtually for free.

Mostly, however, I think that regime change is always a fraught and dangerous move, and generally to be avoided if possible. For one thing, it just means more lost time. It takes time for new people to come in and assess the situation on hand and make changes and bring on the personnel and philosophies and technologies that fit their new ideas. Regime change is always a time when good people and good resources can be lost or mismanaged or simply depart for more stable pastures.

Another issue that should be considered is a lack of any particularly good choices out there as a potential replacement. Dave Dombrowski isn’t walking in that door and neither is Andrew Friedman (although I do think there’s a lot of disgruntlement in the Southland as well, so who knows?). There aren’t many experienced former GMs out there to pick from. Chaim Bloom is available, but I’ve heard enough stories of his time in Boston to think that that would not represent any kind of positive new direction from whatever critiques you might have of Zaidi (and would absolutely come with a new share of problems). I suppose Kim Ng would be one interesting alternate direction, though she doesn’t have a ton of experience as the top voice either. Do you go out and promote another person who’s never been the person in charge? We know perfectly well that is a promotion fraught with unforeseeable issues as well, don’t we? So what new direction is out there that isn’t a potential land mine? Unless the executive committee has a strong consideration that something or somebody tangibly better is out there, jumping blindly without a landing pad is a hazardous move.

The key thing that a successful head of baseball ops really needs is not, in my mind, baseball smarts (though that certainly is important). Rather, good old fashioned strong leadership skills are always going to be the most important element of a good executive hire. The ability to put good processes in place, hire good people, and inspire them to do their best and most creative work are the greatest skills a top executive can have. The ability to empower people, make them feel heard, to listen to a variety of voices with an open mind and then set a direction that the full organization has confidence in, these are the most important skills a leader can have. Those things matter as much in baseball as they do in any other organizational setting.

They are also some of the hardest skills to develop as an individual, and by far the hardest to evaluate in someone else when going through a hiring process. The fact is, most new hires at this level don’t succeed — and sometimes, you have no real understanding of why they did succeed when they do.

So, yes, change may well be coming if this group can’t find a way to improve their level of play. And I do think it’s hard to make a convincing case that the club is headed in “the right direction.” But this is the mother of all “be careful what you wish for” situations if you ask me (which you did!). And that consideration — plus the lack of any slam dunk replacement choices — might entice ownership to hold steady, even if 2024 ends in disappointment. There’s a lot hanging on the next two months. As Bette Davis famously said, “hold on. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Scott C.

Thanks for all the great content over the All-Star break, Roger. It sure wasn’t a break for you!

Your analysis last week of how Ramos has maximized his elite power helped explain a great (and at times unexpected) PD success story. Clearly the org has very few 45 FV or better hitters. But I imagine there are some guys with impressive data points that suggest a breakthrough to become a big league regular is at least plausible. Would you give a rundown of those players and their encouraging metrics — and then say what they need to improve upon to ‘put it all together’ and whether you see progress on that front?

Appreciate the compliment, Scott. Thanks for all the support that you and all of my readers give me constantly.

So, for the purpose of this question, I’ll skip over the guys who were on my Top 30. I’m sure everybody here knows that Marco Luciano, Grant McCray, Jairo Pomares, and Victor Bericoto all hit the ball quite hard — and I’ve certainly written reams of paragraphs about the areas of their game that could stand to be polished up. (Though I will say here that I think McCray’s case is really fascinating because he does so many things well — his batted ball data is outstanding and he really does do an admirable job of staying within the strike zone — that he doesn’t need to eliminate the weak spot in his swing, so much as minimize it). I’ve already talked about Brown above. Lisbel Diaz is fairly impressive on the batted ball score as well, which is why I made sure to sneak him in at 30. But what about guys that weren’t on that list?

There are some guys who don’t get a ton of play here at There R Giants who hit the ball as hard as anybody in the system, and I should probably do a better job of highlighting that. Specifically, Luis Toribio and Guillermo Williamson have some of the highest Exit Velocities on the farm this year — whether looking at Max or 90th percentile rankings. In fact, when I was able to get my hands on some industry data a couple of months ago (and sadly, I think my source there might have disappeared for future updates this season), Williamson somewhat shockingly had the highest EV90 in the entire system this year (109.4 mph). But those high EVs also come with contact issues that really undermine the potential. Both of them have run whiff rates (the number of swinging strikes per swing) this year is at around 40%. Tough to get your strengths to play at that level. So the path forward for both is pretty clear….and daunting.

But I want to highlight someone who I’ve maybe not talked about much this year that actually has a lot of interesting and positive things happening under the hood this year: 20-year-old infielder, Jean Carlos Sio. The surface numbers for Sio are decidedly middling: he’s hitting .239 in Low-A, albeit with a walk rate that lifts his wRC+ up to a solid 110. He also has shown well above average contact rates, striking out just 18.5% of the time. But things look even better down under the surface. Given how young and slightly built and physically immature Sio still is, his EV are impressive. In that same two-month-old data dump, he had a Max EV of 111 mph, which is very impressive for his size and age. And max EV is something that can be meaningful in a single instance. I’ve had scouts tell me that one batted ball over 109 mph will cause them to push a player’s power grade up.

Beyond that, Sio’s strikeout rates are well supported by other stats. He has a very good separation between his in-zone swing rate (69%) and out of zone (21%). His whiff rate and swinging strike rate are pretty strong. His in-zone contact is over 80% — that’s not necessarily elite, but for his age and experience it’s a very good indicator.

I do think that he’s an interesting sleeper to keep an eye on. For a left-handed hitting infielder who can play 2b, his combination of contact and impact is intriguing. I think that getting him a little stronger, so that he can get to that hard contact a little more consistently, and you could have a player who turns into a pop-up guy in another year or two.

Michael

How/why do you think Dakota Jordan landed with the Giants in the fourth round of the draft? The Athletic’s Keith Law wrote Jordan “had the tools to go in the top-10 picks” (!!) and MLB Pipeline ranked him No. 34 heading in. I understand Jordan has strikeout concerns, and Law also wrote “he’s a longshot to get to that enormous ceiling.” But it seems like getting him at No. 116 was a coup. I imagine teams knew his bonus demand — what do you guess it is, by the way? — and the Giants were willing to meet it. Drafting and signing a way-over-slot-value guy signals a big investment/ a player they really want, and Farhan & Co. seem to tab one of those guys most years. So I’m curious if you think Jordan is that guy in 2024 and how you feel his selection went down.

It was the money, Michael. The class that college players belong to makes a huge difference in the amount of money they can ask for. It doesn’t matter how great a year a college senior has, the fact that he’s a senior means he has to sign at a discount (usually a steep one), because he lacks the negotiating leverage of saying he’s just going to go back to school and try to improve his standing.

Jordan, as a draft-eligible sophomore, is in the exact opposite position. He not only has the leverage of returning to campus, but as a rising junior, he can go back to campus without negatively impacting his negotiating position a year from now. It’s not quite the same as the leverage a top high school player has, but it’s very strong, and it costs money. And, in Jordan’s case, whatever number his team was putting out there, combined with his boom/bust potential, led teams to pass on him.

And that made him a perfect fit for the Giants. Just like the Reggie Crawford pick two years ago, the Giants responded to their position at the back of the line by taking a swing at the biggest tools available to them — tools that would have been gone under “more perfect” circumstances. The whole thing makes perfect sense from both sides to me. The Giants got tools in the 4th round that couldn’t reasonably have expected to be there, while Jordan should get one of, if not the biggest signing bonus in that round.

As for a guess at what that bonus might be? Somewhere in the $1.5-2 million range I’d guess. It looks like the Giants’ have gained around $800,000 in slot savings with their picks thus far. I don’t guess there are any other overslot deals coming, with the possible exception of 19th round pick, Ryan Ure. I can see them clawing some million dollars back from James Tibbs III’s slot value of $5.272 million. I’d imagine Jordan ends up pretty close to the $2 million mark.

Get ready for some mega-dingers!

By the way, my podcast this week is with my friend, draft expert Brian Recca of Prospects Live, and he’ll have more insights on the Jordan selection and the entire Giants’ draft. Look for that in your Inbox in a little bit — it’s going to be a good one!

joe

I’m sure there are other examples but why have guys like Grant McCray stolen much fewer baess this year? He had 50+ last year and only 11 this year. Curious why he would steal less the closer he gets to the bigs. It can’t be because of a regression in the speed category I’d imagine.

I never spoke with McCray on this specific topic this year, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a combination of things that deprioritized that side of his game for the time being.

On a very positive note, it’s likely been a significant factor that a huge percentage of the time McCray has gotten on base this year, he hasn’t stopped at 1b. More than half of his hits on the season have gone for extra bases (34 of 67), and more than one in five have left him at either 3b or back in the dugout again. Pretty tough to steal from there! But those extra bases are an important avenue for his speed to play as an offensive force. Whenever he lines a ball that makes an outfielder move laterally, he’s immediately thinking beyond one base.

Another part of the story I suspect, is the fact that, for much of the year now, he hasn’t been hitting leadoff. His early season struggles with Richmond caused coaches to drop him down in the order in early May.

Prior to that point, he was only reaching base at a .244 clip — so the opportunities to steal bases weren’t quite as plentiful as normal. And once he was hitting lower in the order, he was getting on base more often behind other teammates, again limiting his opportunities. There may also have been a psychological component to what he referred to me later as: “losing my job.” Getting on and stealing bases is part of the identity of a leadoff hitter, but it’s less important in the 7-hole. From that perspective, it’s also worth noting that since being promoted to the PCL, his walk rate has been down a bit from his career norms, as he works to adjust to the new competitive challenge.

Bottom line: I don’t think there’s anything nefarious going on there. The opportunities for running have been hampered for a variety of reasons, both good and bad, and it just hasn’t been a development priority for him this year. But I don’t think we’ve seen the last of McCray as a base thief.

Small Winged Yeti

Hi Roger, how does Luciano look at 2B so far? Do you think he will stay there?

A lot of folks have asked me some variety of this question. I don’t know that I expected any big revelation with the move. If you have the arm to play the left side (which Luciano does), it seems to me that the difference is fairly minimal. Maybe things happen a smidge slower on the right side and the internal clock doesn’t need to be as fine-tuned. And maybe it works as a refresh for Luciano.

But generally, my response to this question is “about the same.” He has the tools to play solid defense in the infield, but I don’t think Luciano will ever be a particularly instinctual player or make things look natural and smooth. It’s really all about trying to find a level of consistency with the glove and making the plays that are there to be made. That’s a tale that will be told in time, not over a few weeks in Sacramento.

There are more questions in the queue, but I think that’s plenty enough mailbag for this week. I’ll try to get to the leftovers in next week’s edition.

No Post-Pourri today. The DSL games were washed out and a weekend’s mini-series doesn’t seem like enough action to update the Stats Review from last week. That means that I won’t be giving you a full rundown of last night’s ACL Giants game — but, as I said above, Aeverson Arteaga DID make his season debut in that game. My guess is, we’ll see him get his legs underneath him in A-ball for the final month, and then be sent to the Fall League to make up some at bats. Walker Martin and Ryan Reckley both homered last night as well — perhaps we’ll be seeing that tomorrow!

Look for a podcast coming your way later today, digging into the Giants’ draft with my friend and Prospects Live draft expert, Brian Recca.