Let's Give Thanks for Free For All Mailbags!
Let's See What's On Your Minds
Hello again! With the fun and excitement of 40-man guessing games behind us, I thought it was a good time to crank up the ol’ mailbag and see what was on the minds of There R Giants’ readers as we head into the off-season. Surprisingly, this week’s transactions doesn’t appear to be a topic of great interest, nor the non-tender deadline, which comes later today (I would imagine all the arb eligible players are tendered contracts, but I can see the Giants non-tendering Cole Waites and re-signing him to a multi-year minor league deal, as they did with Melvin Adón a couple of years ago under similar circumstances). Instead, we have a melange of different players and staffing issues tickling your fancy.
So buckle up and settle in — we’ve got a backload of questions to get to, and I’ll admit I spilled some ink on this baby. First, of course, I tap the sign:
And now, curtain’s up on this month’s Free For All Mailbag….
Hi Roger. Your post this morning prompted a question. What is the imperative that is driving the reduction in overall organizational size limits? It does not seem to be in the interest of the game. Are smaller market teams looking to reduce costs? And if the larger market teams disagree, are they in a clear minority? And related - will we see growth in independent leagues as a likely counterweight to these moves?
Allow me to answer this question in animated form:
I know it seems ludicrous on the face of it. The owners of major league baseball have long tended to what would seem to be contradictory stances: paying tens of millions for the services of players of somewhat limited roles, while pinching every last penny that might do some good elsewhere in the organization. It’s oft been pointed out that the amount of savings that can be gained from eliminating 15 minor leaguers (or even from eliminating short season ball in general) wouldn’t pay for the salary of a somewhat fungible relief pitcher on the free agent market. One year of Luke Jackson, for instance (who will make $6.5 million in 2024 with a $7 million club option to follow in 2025), would pay for all 30 teams’ lost allotment of minor leaguers and then some.
But that is the way that this industry functions. On a recent podcast, The Athletic’s esteemed national writer Andy McCullough said something that applies here. Discussing a completely different topic, he noted that while MLB is a multi-billion-dollar industry, on a team-by-team basis, clubs often still function like “mom and pop” businesses, and there’s no line item in the budget too small to haggle over. Thus, for years, when advocates talked about improving nutrition for minor leaguers, you’d hear whispers that owners didn’t see how such an investment would improve their bottom line. Instead, Chipotles and PB&J it was, and an obvious avenue for improving the quality and effectiveness of player development was ignored for being “too costly.” (It essentially took the Dodgers implementing better nutrition and seeing phenomenal success result from that to act as a case study that moved other teams to take action).
Specifically to your point, there has always been a segment of owners that gets bent out of shape about the idea that they spend money on players who will never play in the majors. No ROI means money poorly spent. There’s a famous story involving Tommy Lasorda when he was managing in Spokane. Lasorda discovered that most of the veterans on his squad were aggressively antagonistic towards a young Bobby Valentine, who was a hotshot prospect on the club. Lasorda brought the team together, and then, in typically colorful language, told them that they should all be thanking Valentine, because he was the only reason the rest of them were getting a paycheck. None of them were going to amount to anything in the game, and the only reason they were in pro ball was to fill out a squad so someone with real talent like Valentine could practice his skills. (Whether any of the players took this advice and thanked Valentine for their paycheck goes unrecorded, though I suspect it was not a highly motivating speech.)
Apocryphal or not, that notion — that owners are paying money to players just so that a much smaller group of other players might one day develop into major leaguers — sits like a burr under the saddles of certain segments of ownership. As technology has become a more and more crucial element of player development, the idea that the infrastructure of minor league baseball has been built up to a larger degree than strictly speaking is necessary has caught hold within certain ownership suites, and that is what’s behind the continual drive to whittle some of that infrastructure away.
For my part, the most annoying aspect is the one you lay your finger on. MLB has generally adopted a “least common denominator” attitude towards the player development, rather than letting teams pursue the approach that they believe suits them best. If one team wants to have a wealth of talent to try to develop and another wants to cut down to the bone, why not let both pursue their own strategies and see who builds the better mousetrap? Instead, MLB is forcing teams that wish to invest in broader player development strategies to cut down to the level of those of their colleagues who want to invest the least. That’s aggravating, and doesn’t really seem designed to provoke innovation. If I were writing this in a different era, I might unironically refer to that behavior as being unAmerican, dagnabit! But yes, owners who want to spend more money are always in a clear minority in this fraternity.
As for your final question, we have indeed seen the growth of independent leagues. In fact, some of the leagues and clubs that were eliminated from affiliated ball in 2021 were repurposed as Indy Ball, giving undrafted players a place to go to show their wares — on somebody else’s dime, naturally. The irony of all this is that, with the success of places like Driveline in dramatically increasing fastball velocity or bat speed, we’re in an era where more players are developing into big leaguers than ever before. The success of someone like 31st rounder, Ryan Walker, could make one think that throwing a wider net into the talent pool could pay unexpected dividends. Alas, it seems that only a small minority of owners think so, and we will see 31st rounders no more.
Hi Roger. Have you heard anything on the International signings front? Not seeing any sign of the Giants being in on MLB's draft rankings.
I haven’t heard anything to suggest that the Giants will have a big dollar signing this year. Each of the last two seasons they’ve signed at least one player to a deal over $2 million (with varying levels of success so far from those investments), but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case this year.
I suspect what we’re going to see is something more like the 2019-2020 IFA classes, where the bonus pool is spread around more evenly, looking for depth instead of sinking most of the money on just one or two players. That’s not a bad strategy, it needs to be said. Those classes will certainly be well represented on this year’s Top 50, for instance, with players like Aeverson Arteaga, Diego Velasquez, Adrian Sugastey, Onil Perez, Gerelmi Maldonado and others coming at values in the mid to high six figures. Even last year, while Rayner Arias took much of the attention (and bonus money!) and is the clear star of the group, it looks like the Giants got some very solid lower-dollar talents in the class, with Carlos Concepcion, Carlos Gutierrez, Lisbel Diaz, and others looking intriguing at much lower figures. None of those are the type of players that we’re going to see in those outlets’ rankings (because, after all, they aren’t going 500 players deep), but they can turn into huge values later on. You wouldn’t have seen Ronald Acuña, Jr. in one of those articles either back when he was 15.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to get a new Rayner Arias into the system every year, but teams find a lot of value at lower price points on the international market every year. It looks like, for this year at least, there will be no Lucianos for the Giants, but hopefully a Camilo Doval or Pablo Sandoval gets mixed into the group. Maybe even a Luis Matos!
Dennis Touros
Do you it was just bad luck with former No 1 picks Hunter Bishop or Will Bednar or was there a flaw in the Giants scouting evaluation? Brian Sabean was not perfect either. In other words, what do you think the Giants learned from it and changed?
I incline towards bad luck mostly. You just can’t develop players who aren’t on the field. And predicting future injuries is not really an area where the industry has made much headway. Certainly, you couldn’t find two much different types of athletes than Bishop and Bednar, so I can’t really see that there’s some blind spot that would have connected both picks.
Which isn’t to say that the Giants don’t wince when thinking about the 2019 draft. As they watched the Diamondbacks run circles around them in those two days in the desert in September, certainly there had to be some rueful thoughts of what might have been had they chosen different paths. Both of the unanimous Rookies of the Year named this week were on the board when they chose (along with many other players who have made a splash already), and they went a different direction. I also imagine the organization has done some internal assessments to see if there are process improvements in the strength and conditioning programs that might help avoid some of the rash of back injuries we’ve seen the last few years (in addition to Bednar, Spencer Miles, Jairo Pomares, Marco Luciano, and others have lost time to back soreness).
But I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that two 1st rounders running into injury issues is some kind of systemic failure. I just don’t think there’s much to learn from the fact that Bishop has been waylaid by a litany of physical issues that seem to come at him like waves to the shore, nor to the fact that Bednar has lost two full seasons to back troubles that had never surfaced previously. There are many, many health-related “if onlys” in sports.
I guess what I would say is this: the 2014 draft now appears to be the most impactful draft that the Giants had in the decade of the teens — and for at least half of the ten years since that draft took place, most fans probably consigned it to the same wastebin in which the years around it were dumped. It’s only been in the last couple of seasons, with Logan Webb’s rise to prominence, that the legacy of that draft has really taken shape (the 2014 draft got another wrinkle this year, when we saw how good of a reliever Kevin Ginkel has become, ten years after the Giants failed to sign the 16th round pick out of a Chula Vista JC).
While the top of the 2019 and 2021 drafts may leave a sour taste in your (or the Giants’) mouth now, remember that the final book on those classes hasn’t been written. Tyler Fitzgerald, Grant McCray, Mason Black, Vaun Brown and other players still have plenty of opportunity to make the memories of those draft years stand out in your mind. Every team has first round misses. What cripples an organization is prolonged spells of misses — as the Giants mostly suffered through the last decade. But I do think we have some reason to believe that that spell is mostly behind us at this point, and the draft hits appear to have been coming more frequently over the past five years — though the results haven’t fully proved out at the top level just yet.
What was the level of injury on Rayner Arias? He missed most of the DSL. I believe it was his wrist. Mysterious injuries to the wrists of top prospects gives me Gustavo Cabrera vibes. While I’m sure it’s not that serious, do you have any clue what happened and why he disappeared?
First and foremost, as the late, tragically ill-fated Cabrera suffered a gruesome and calamitous accident that took multiple miraculous surgeries to even save his hand, I think we can dispense with his specter in this case. There’s no need to traumaticize, as a colleague of mine used to say.
Arias sprained his wrist attempting to make a sliding catch in CF. His glove caught in the grass and bent backwards. It wasn’t particularly mysterious at all; just a normal baseball play. And, more importantly, it shouldn’t have any long-term impacts on his impressive physicality. I’m told that he’s back to full activities at this point and should head into spring training good to go and ready for a big year. I’ve gotten some really exciting reports underlying his brief but sensational success this year, so prepare to see him high on the Top 50 this winter.
Why are some writers down on Aeverson Arteaga (you sound down on him based on your Rule 5 piece). Fangraphs says his glove isn’t legit; MLB says it’s one of the best in the minors. People are worried about his hit tool but he’s a 20-year-old in High-A and cut his strikeout rate. I watched his hitting lines game by game and there were stretches where he carried the team in July and August. He’s still what 2 to 3 years young for the league and the home away splits are absurd. For me he screams Brandon Crawford with more there if the bat is average. What’s the knock on this kid because he’s one of my favorites in the system.
My Rule 5 piece suggested that Arteaga needed to be added to the 40-man roster and protected from the Rule 5 draft. I would hardly characterize that as being down on him.
That said, I see that last year in the Depth Charts, I had Arteaga listed as a 55-grade player, and I guess that does feel a little rich to me right now. I probably will have him more in the 45+/50 range this year, so I guess I have backed off on a little of my highest-end enthusiasm, though he still does certainly look like a big leaguer to me.
I can’t answer for other writers, but let me give you a sense of what evaluators I’ve talked to internally and externally have had to say about Arteaga. He’s a gifted defender who combines range, physical instincts, a plus arm, and a strong internal clock. The tool he’s lacking defensively is speed, though he does have a quick first step and excellent footwork. However, scouts tend to have a level of skepticism with up-the-middle players who lack speed at a young age. The question is, as they fill out in the lower half, will they lose that burst of quickness that is necessary to range around the middle infield. The Giants will definitely be monitoring his physical progress moving forward. They want him to gain strength (this is basically a ubiquitous desire for all of their players) and, in his case, it will be important for him to maintain a lean frame to allow for the kind of quickness necessary to excel at his position. You don’t want to see him get a “thick lower half,” something that, for instance, has helped move the Reds’ Noelvi Marte off the position (as one of many examples).
Offensively, it’s definitely fair to put a somewhat low grade on the hit tool. Arteaga has done a good job cutting down the strikeout rate, starting from the frightfully high 30% in the low-level rookie league. When he gets off his A swing, he’s shown that he can impact the ball, but his strikeouts tend to result from two different issues: he still chases outside the zone far too much, and he has a fairly pronounced whiff rate inside the strike zone as well. Separately, each of these issues can present a difficult development challenge. Together, they’re certainly imposing.
Still, as you say, he’s operating at a very young age for his level, and the age vs. level study that I referenced a few times earlier this summer suggests that his 89 wRC+ season in the NWL is the development equivalent of a ~160 wRC+ for a player at the same level who was age appropriate. That suggests that we should still see plenty of growth from him in the future but that there’s much work left to do to get there.
Piggyback question. Why do players and the front office believe the NWL is a difficult environment to play in? Several prospects have had issues there but hit fine elsewhere. What’s the deal with the NWL? (Jerry Seinfeld voice?)
I’ve had a few different theories suggested. The elimination of short season ball has lowered the quality of Low-A pitching, making the jump to High-A a bigger one. The spring weather plays a role, as does the increased degree of travel from the Cal League to NWL. The shared facility with the University of Oregon doesn’t help.
But really, I think the issue is that the NWL is hard because the game is hard and development is hard. Yes, there are some players who have tripped on the Eugene step. But there are also a good many who have thrived there — Casey Schmitt, Vaun Brown, Victor Bericoto, Kyle Harrison, Wade Meckler, Marco Luciano, Tyler Fitzgerald. And that’s just in the Giants’ organization. Beyond our constrained view of the world, there have been spectacular performances in the full-season NWL. Julio Rodriguez tromped all over the level in a year that essentially launched him into his ROY campaign with Seattle. And while there are elements that make Eugene a difficult hitting environment, it has also been the most homer friendly environment in the league the last couple of years, according to Baseball America’s minor league park factors.
Baseball is incredibly difficult. Every step gets more competitive. Failure is omnipresent. And development isn’t linear. We probably don’t need to construct narratives more complicated than that to explain anything specific to Eugene.
Diego Velazquez and Luis Matos parallel question? People keep saying Matos needs to bulk up to hit for more power to tap into his potential as a 20+ HR everyday outfielder. Diego has an insane hit tool with doubles gap power and is still young. Can Diego hit the gym with Vaun Brown and project to hit 20 some day?
Goodness. That’s a lot of questions, John! Last one!
I’ll go beyond “people say.” The Giants say this — very directly. I’ve had conversations with people at very high levels of the Giants’ baseball ops who’ve discussed the necessity of Matos increasing his strength, his speed, and his explosiveness in order to become the type of player who can have an impact at the big league level. Even at that, I’m not sure that potential will ever be a 20 HR type player, but certainly an above average all-around starting outfielder is still the outcome hoped for in Matos.
Velasquez does bear some similarities to Matos in ways both good and bad. He has outstanding coverage of the strike zone and ability to make contact from both sides of the plate. But he’s also an up-the-middle defender lacking in real speed or explosiveness — much more so that Arteaga, I’d say — and I’ve spoken with some scouts who worry that that will ultimately move him out of the middle infield, making his path forward much more difficult.
So yes, there are some parallels between the pair. And without a doubt, Velasquez, too, will need to make some significant improvements in his physicality. SIGNIFICANT! He’ll need to get stronger and quicker and a little twitchier and more explosive all around to hit his ceiling as an offensive minded 2b, or even to become a solid utility option at the top level. Twenty homers may be dreaming a little high (as it might with Matos), but, on the other hand, I remember that Ray Durham year well!
Hi Roger. Question coming out of the conversation with Jeremiah K. How involved is the affiliate staff in spring training, if at all? Does Pelf, for example, watch the guys likely to get assigned to Richmond and maybe even provide input into the process of who goes where?
It can depend on a few things. A couple of years ago, for instance, Dennis Pelfrey was frequently invited to take part in the Giants’ dugout during most of the major league games, which was a huge treat for him and opportunity to see how that side of the organization operated.
Normally however, what happens is the coaching staffs for each of the full season affiliate levels staff four squads for spring training games. Those teams have equivalent names to the affiliates — Sacramento, Richmond, Eugene, and San Jose — but the groups that participate in those games aren’t necessarily the players who get assigned to those teams at the end of camp. Most of the players who will ultimately make up the Sacramento roster are typically part of Giants’ camp for most of the spring, and there’s a cascading ripple effect from that that causes a lot of the minor leaguers to play a level or more above their eventual assignment during spring camp. And, of course, various other minor leaguers are called up to the big league side from day to day and players are moved around to fill in for them. It’s not unusual to see players who will end up in extended spring awaiting rookie ball to fill in as starters in the Triple-A or Double-A game on any given day.
Consequently, while the coaches are all coaching their putative levels, they’re not necessarily working with the kids who will be assigned to them on Opening Day. That’s all fine — the role of minor league coaches is to teach whoever’s on hand, and that can tend to change pretty dramatically from day to day or week to week, as Knackstedt’s story of having his bench increase by five players during the course of a game illustrated.
As for the assignment process, that’s above the team coaches’ pay grade. That’s not to say that there aren’t ongoing conversations with the various coaches about individual players, but it’s not the Richmond coaching staff’s job to put together the Richmond roster (on Opening Day or at any other point in the year). That falls to Farm Director Kyle Haines and his team, in coordination with the upper levels of Baseball Operations.
There were a couple of surprises to me in the Giants MiLB free agency news beyond the big names (Melvin Adón! Seth Corry! Sam Delaplane! Richmond leader Shane Matheny!), so I wanted to hear your thoughts on whether a few players could return or on their intrigue. Of the new free agents, Armando Alvarez had a really nice year, and Joe Ross barely got back from TJ (but had great velo), so I thought both might return. On the opposite side, I thought Michael Wielansky and Cody Stashak should have been eligible for free agency but (assuming no error in the log) they're still with SF.
I was quite surprised by Ross’ departure, as I was absolutely sure that Andy Baggarly had reported that deal being for 2 years originally, but I haven’t been able to find that news on a Google search, so it’s quite possible I’m just remembering wrong. Alvarez, who will turn 30 next year, was perfectly fine Triple-A depth, but he’s also the type of player a productive farm system shouldn’t be in continual need of. It’s unavoidable at some point, but certainly if you’re looking to inject the major league squad with more youth and athleticism, you want to have pools of youth and athleticism in your Triple-A roster to reach for. However, to your final point, both could still return. The minor league free agent market can often be a little slow in developing as teams focus on their big league roster before turning their attention to the NRI market.
Wielansky and Stashak are, I think, two different cases here. Let’s start with Stashak, since he would appear to be relatively straight forward. Stashak was a draft pick for the Twins way back in 2015. He’s been a professional ever since then, and was a member of the Twins 40-man roster from 2019 through the end of 2022, when he became a free agent. Failing to hook on with any major league club for spring training, he played in the independent Atlantic League until the end of August, when he signed with the Giants. Sometimes veterans who sign deals in the waning weeks of a minor league season ink two-year deals — in effect they’re signing a deal for the following season and getting a head start on it in the closing days of the present one. You may recall that the Giants did this two years ago with 1b John Nogwoski, signing him to a deal in the final week of the minor league season that covered the following year as well (ironically, Nogowski didn’t make it through the winter in the Giants’ organization, as he was selected by Atlanta in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 draft that December). This appears to be the case with Stashak. Note, however, that it’s not always the case that late year deals cover multiple seasons. Witness the case of Yoshi Tsutsugo, who was signed out of the Atlantic League at about the same time as Stashak on a deal which only expired after the season.
Wielansky is a different case, and we might as well bring in Tanner Kiest here — who’s caused me a bit of confusion this offseason — because I believe he and Wielansky are covered by the same section of the rulebook. By rule, all players signing their first professional contract are signed for a term of seven minor league seasons. That is, the club that inks them to their initial professional contract controls their rights for a period of seven years, after which, they may become minor league free agents (thus the class of 2017 has now reached free agency). Once they reach that term, their contracts are in most cases, year to year from that point on (though as noted above, there are some rare exceptions).
Where it gets a little more muddled is players who are released by their original club prior to those seven seasons elapsing — as is the case with both Wielansky and Kiest. Those players, by rule, may sign a contract of any length up to seven years in length. So Wielansky, for instance, originally signed his first contract with the Astros in 2018, and played in the Houston organization until March of 2022, when he was released. At that point, he had played four of the original seven-year term. He and the Giants could come to an agreement on a deal of any length up to seven years. Kiest’s story is longer, stranger, and covers much more time, but essentially the same context applies. He has not played for seven seasons in affiliated ball, so he hasn’t reached minor league free agency yet and his deal with the Giants thus can be — and apparently is — a longer term.
All of which should make it apparent that the rules that govern player contracts and transactions are arcane and obscure and if you understand them really well, there might be a place for you in an MLB front office!
[EDITOR’S NOTE: post-writing and pre-publishing, the Giants released Stashak yesterday. Classic! There R Giants wishes Cody well wherever his journey takes him]
I'm interested in what you're hearing about development "outside the lines" in the Giants' system. Which prospects do you feel the Giants PD staff would like to see real strides from in terms of preparation and dedication to improving their craft? Which players would benefit the most from an enhanced focus in these areas?
Scott, I appreciate the question, but to be honest I can’t see any way of answering that question without 1) casting undue aspersions at some young kids and possibly helping create a public narrative that is undeserved; and 2) sounding awfully condescending. I don’t work anything like as hard as these players (or coaches) do, so who am I to be calling them out?
It’s true that I’ll catch wind of some frustrations with certain players now and again, but I think everybody involved understands that that’s part of the development process. Learning what it takes to succeed at the highest level is an all-encompassing obsession for the vast majority of these players. Certainly, we’re also talking about kids who are at a stage of life when the maturation process is still ongoing — physically, mentally, and emotionally — and that means that learning who they are and what they really want is something that is always taking place in the background of their professional development, just as it was for all of us starting out on our personal or professional journeys.
One thing that Dennis Pelfrey said to me last year that has really stuck with me is that, when players get humbled at a certain level, they’ll spend their offseason focusing on how to beat that level. That will lead them, almost naturally, to greater degrees of preparation when their inherent gifts and abilities cease to be enough to excel in games. They learn what wasn’t enough, and go through an internal assessment of what it will take to do better next time. That’s an ongoing process of discovery, and it’s part of the reason why the various levels of the minors exist. There’s no A-ball player alive who “goes about his business” the way a major leaguer does. But those major leaguers learned it one step at a time as well, learning from their elders in turn along the way.
The flip side of that coin, of course, is that when a player has had success, when they’ve kicked a level’s tail, it can be a lot harder to see what kind of adjustments or process improvements are necessary. Everyone loves success, but failure is the more valuable instructor.
So, for instance, the Giants want Luis Matos to get more physical. But I don’t think that should be taken to mean that he was lacking in dedication on that score before this. For one thing, he’s still maturing physically. More than that though, he’s only now reached a point where it’s clear what it will take to get to the next level of his ability vs this level of competition — which is really a crucial bit of nuance. This is, by the by, very similar to Patrick Bailey’s path. The Giants really wanted to see him build up his strength and physicality. When he showed up with significantly more muscle mass on him last spring, it opened the door for him to move fast — very fast as it turned out. And then, in a snake-swallowing-its-tail plot twist, his workload expanded with that success to the point that he was completely exhausted by the end of the year, no doubt teaching him that maintaining even more strength in-season will be necessary to shoulder the role he’s laid claim to going forward.
In some sense, then, the answer to your question is this: assume that all young players are on a path to learning what else they can do to further their ambitions, and the ones who reach the highest levels have probably learned their lessons pretty well.
How do you expect the Giants to handle their two-way talents in 2024? Will they give Reggie Crawford more chances as a batter after his AFL stint appeared to show his pitching is far ahead of his offense? Your recent note that pitching prospects with a refined repertoire don't need to throw many innings in the minors got me thinking: might that cause the Giants to fast track Crawford as an ace OR enable them to give him more hitting opportunities with a still modest pitching ramp-up post-injury? And then with Bryce Eldridge, his offensive skills stood out in his short debut (and it looked like he picked up RF nicely, too), but we have yet to see him on the bump. What do you think the Giants feel about his pitching ability and how do you think he'll be deployed as a two-way guy next season?
Now here’s a question I feel much better about answering, Scott!
The Giants have made no secret about the fact that the like each of their two-way players much more from one side of the game. Crawford, they like much more as a pitcher, and Eldridge much more as a hitter, however, each of the players is invested in trying to stretch themselves beyond the standard one-way development path, and the Giants have been willing to work with them on that.
It’s been more than clear in conversations I’ve had that the Giants will place the emphasis of their player development plans for each on the preferred side and work around that as may be. My guess would be that means that they will decide assignments and promotions based on Crawford’s pitching and Eldridge’s hitting, and if/when the point comes that the other side can’t keep up it will naturally fall to the wayside.
My guess would be that we see Crawford open the year in Richmond, and if they take the gloves off of him this year, we’ll see what’s what in his ability to move rapidly as a power-armed lefty. I would guess that he’ll get in some DH assignments in between starts, but if he proves to be a non-entity at the plate at that advanced level, then those opportunities might begin to go to other, more deserving players on the team.
Eldridge’s case is a little trickier as an everyday player. Will the team try to carve out a day per week when he’s not in the lineup but rather is available to work out of the pen? That’s going to be a fascinating story to watch. I noticed when I was in Arizona a couple of weeks ago that Eldridge was working out with a group of outfielders, continuing to develop his reads and routes on flyballs. It seems to me that the more we see him in RF, as opposed to 1b, the less likely we are to see him climb the bump, but I could be mistaken in that impression (as I so often am).
Either way, I don’t think the club will be inclined to hold these players back to let the weaker side of their game catch up. They are going to be moved based on the ability of their strong side to push them forward and that will have inevitable consequences for them as two-way players I would imagine.
Hi Roger, regarding Tyler Fitzgerald, MLB pipeline has him rated as a 50 runner with average speed and that his instincts help the average speed play up. I’ve never seen him in person, but on video, it sure looks like he has plus speed. Seeing him quite a bit in person, where do you grade his speed?
Also, looking forward to a healthy 2024 for Vaun Brown, still believe he’s the most dynamic player in their system?
Fitzgerald is a plus runner at the very least. Possibly plus plus. I think that he’s actually improved his speed in the last couple of years as he’s focused on taking advantage of that element of his game. In his short major league stint this year, Fitzgerald’s sprint speed was 99th percentile in the majors, and he had a sprint speed measured in Sacramento that was actually as good as Corbin Carroll’s best burst. You can, I believe, argue persuasively that the way “sprint speed” is measured by Statcast isn’t the best way to quantify speed, but regardless, there’s certainly enough evidence to suggest that Fitz is a couple grades above average.
The caveat to that, of course, is that he turned 26 recently, which means the decline years for that speed aren’t too far away. That’s the disadvantage of trying to break in at a relatively older age. You have to get up that learning curve quickly before the physical tools start heading the wrong way on you.
The same applies to Brown, who will turn 26 next June, so YES! let us all form a prayer circle and wish heartily for a fully healthy year for him in 2024. Absolutely, I would say that there is nobody else in the system as explosively athletic as Brown is, and nobody who has his combination of plus strength and plus speed. However, I’ll just drop a hint here of something I’ll no doubt be returning to later this winter, and say that if there’s a challenger on the horizon for Brown’s dynamic strength+speed combo, it might just be young 2nd round pick Walker Martin, about whom I’ve received really exciting reports lately (look for a podcast next week in which he’s a major topic of discussion).
Hi Roger, do you think the loss of Brian Bannister and Andrew Bailey will damage the Giants’ ability to develop pitchers?
I would say generally “no.” Bailey, who has worked as the Pitching Coach for the big league staff for the past four years certainly shouldn’t have any effect on player development, as that really wasn’t his bailiwick. Aside from the assorted comments during bullpen sessions for non-roster spring invites, he hasn’t been at all involved in minor league player development in his tenure, so as talented and well-regarded as he is, his departure shouldn’t impact that side of the shop much at all.
Bannister, whose Director of Pitching moniker did encompass involvement at both the major and minor league levels, is a different case, and Melissa Lockard and I discussed that a bit on yesterday’s podcast (plug!).
I will say that my sense — and this is only a “sense,” not anything definitive that I’ve had conversations about — is that he hasn’t been terribly hands-on with the minor leaguers the past couple of years (particularly in 2022, when he was restricted to Zoom interactions because of his refusal to take a COVID vaccine). Rather, I think his influence over player development has been more a function of setting up systems and philosophies and practices that are handled in a day-to-day manner by other coaches and coordinators. And, as Melissa said, those systems and ideas will remain in place after he has gone away.
That’s not to say that a bright mind will not be missed. But as it is with players, so it is with other resources — organizations always need to be replenishing talent. The Giants have brought a lot of talented minds into the organization over the past five years, and as some of those resources depart, they need to keep making good hires to backfill behind them. So, as Michael Brdar was an extremely well-regarded hitting instructor, since he’s gone Ed Lucas has had the opportunity to shine in the same role, and has also gotten rave reviews from those who work with him. And so on and so on.
One thing that I think has flown a little bit under the radar is that when Farhan Zaidi talked about Bannister’s departure at the end of the year, he said quite directly that the Giants had informed Bannister that they did not intend to renew his contract and gave him permission to interview for other opportunities that came his way. That is why Bannister was able to take his new position in Chicago before the season had concluded and his contract with the Giants had come to an official end. From this, I would say we can deduce that Zaidi’s answer to your question is a clear “No.” If they had felt he was irreplaceable, they certainly would have made extending his contract a priority. Instead, they believed they had the resources to continue what has been an obvious bright spot on the player development side over the past few years.
That’ll do it for this edition of the mailbag; expect me to open it up again in a month or so when we’ll no doubt have plenty of Christmas cards to sort through — some complete with fascinating questions on the Giants’ farm.
Short week next week, as I’ll be taking off Friday, but I think that I’m going to have two podcasts available to help make up for the lack of writing — one with Baseball America’s Carlos Collazo is already in the can, and we’re hoping to tape another KROG pod next week.
I’ll also start looking forward to next year with my annual “Way Too Early” roster previews, because apparently I haven’t had enough of being wrong in public just yet. Have a great weekend everybody!
Very interesting point about Bannister's contract not being renewed. That changes my view of that loss quite a bit.
Thanks so much Roger. Full of gems for prospects to watch.
Walker Martin vs. Vaun Brown for athletic prowess shows me I am way behind on newer guys.
You should not speak poorly of Chipotle though.
Fresh Mex has to be better than 90% of food outlets out there.
And it has become more Bang For Your Buck than Subway now.
Free traveler insights for all.