"Let's Start the 2nd Half" Free For All Mailbag!
It’s not really the start of the second half — as far as the schedule and the calendar goes, that came a couple of weeks ago. But with the long All Star break in the rearview, it feels like we’re launching into the second half today. Which, of course, means that in the next blink of an eye, we’ll be talking about the end of another great year and making plans for the off-season. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow….I don’t know what MacBeth was smoking, because the pace feels pretty rapid to me! It all goes by so fast.
So we make our stab at grabbing the tiger of time by the tail and making it sit tight and hold fast for a danged moment while we try to figure out what it all means. In other words, it’s time to dive back into the reader mailbag with our weekly Free For All Feature!
Lots of questions about Reggie Crawford, two-way players, and the draft…as we might have expected. So let’s jump into them…
Interesting promotion for Reggie Crawford considering he's not featured much recently
Reggie Crawford has not hit in like a month, but had been DHing every five days or so prior to this extended break. I noticed that he was promoted to Eugene, so perhaps preparation for that move would explain it, but is there another reason why Crawford has not been DHing?
Let’s jump right into the Crawford questions that seem to dominant your minds this week! The Giants really have two simple development goals for Crawford in 2023:
1) get him on the field competing on a regular basis, and 2) get him through the season healthy. That second one is over-riding and it’s the dominant factor in the development plan they have for him.
Crawford has been penciled into the lineup as DH just four times this year, the last of those coming more than a month ago. The Giants were extremely careful about his two-way work load, not even having him take batting practice, much less playing, on the day before or after he pitched. Effectively, the pattern that emerged in May and early June was that he would get one game to DH between starts, typically two days before his turn on the mound. However, after his game on June 14 (1 for 4 with a double), he disappeared from the lineup for two weeks, neither pitching nor hitting, and since he’s returned to the mound, we haven’t seen him hit at all. Another tiny bread crumb on the ground is that his pitching outings have gotten a bit shorter after that two week break from pitching — where he had pitched into the 2nd inning in all of his starts prior to that, and reached the 30-35 pitch mark in most of them, he’s been limited to just one inning stints, and 10-20 pitch limit, since then.
This is pure speculation on my part, but if you want me to try to read the tea leaves, it does seem probable to me that a physical setback of some kind occurred during his at bats in that June14 game that spooked the team a bit and increased their abundance of caution in getting him through this season healthy. They’ve made no secret of the fact that their goal is to develop him as a pitcher. And, while he wants to hit, I’m not sure how excited the team is about the additional risks that can come with that.
That said, the competitor in Crawford certainly craves new and greater challenges, and I would say pushing him up a level is a fairly no-harm, no-foul way to accomplish that. The difference between A ball and High A competition isn’t so great as to create undue stress on him in his short outings — and the stuff has certainly been good enough to perform at that level (97-99 from the left side with a couple of secondaries it plenty good for the NWL!). So, why not? It gives him a taste of forward momentum without piling on more innings.
When do we get to go buck wild on Meckler? Who’s gone up to Richmond and hit like crazy without being a major leaguer? I was daydreaming about an Ohtani trade and how that might clean out the system but how as long as Meckler is around I’d still feel pretty good.
Well, I put him in my midseason top 10, which feels fairly buck wild for an 8th round pick with 20 grade power! I think there’s definitely a major leaguer there, now what kind of major leaguer is an interesting question. I still feel good about my Steven Kwan comp. Kwan was a 4.5 WAR player as a rookie last season. In his second season, however, he’s lost about 30 points of BABIP and his ISO, which was already a dangerously low .101 last year, has dropped to a pitcheresque .086, all of which has knocked his wRC+ from an excellent 124 down to 93 in his sophomore season, though he’s still on target to be about a league average starter (~2 WAR) thanks to his defensive value and speed.
But that Kwan comp leads me to a question I’ve asked a few times — how many non-power guys can occupy a lineup at any one time. The Guardians lack of power is the primary ingredient that holds them back. Does a future Giants’ lineup have room for both Meckler and Luis Matos in the outfield without contributing to something of a lineup-wide power outage? It’s not necessarily a worry, but it is a question.
However, that’s a question for Farhan Zaidi and Pete Putila as they think about roster construction down the road. There’s little doubt at this point that Michael Holmes and his scouting group and Kyle Haines and his player development group — and most important of all, Meckler himself — have given Farhan a burgeoning major league talent to figure out how best to utilize.
Where would you roughly sandwich the top few picks into your rankings?
As my winter readers know, I’m generally a little bearish about integrating new players into my rankings — I like to get to see players once they’ve had a chance to integrate into professional development and start to take advantages of the various enhanced forms of training in pro ball before I start putting folks in the rankings. My experience is that there are big surprises that come in that first full season, both of the pleasant and unpleasant variety.
But, with that said, I do think that the top three picks will all be somewhere in the 10-20 range in this winter’s Top 50, and maybe others will sneak is as well, depending on what we see out of them in the final stretch of the year (last year, I was already hearing things about Hayden Birdsong that had him shooting up lists, and I should have paid more attention to Meckler’s strong start, too). I would say that my initial inclination, before I’ve seen either of them in action as pros, is that both Bryce Eldridge and Walker Martin will probably be around Rayner Arias’ position (right now I’m inclined to put Arias in front of both), which puts them right around the 10-15 area I’d think? Whitman is probably going to be battling it out in a pitching scrum that includes guys like Birdsong, Carson Seymour, Gerelmi Maldonado, and maybe Landen Roupp for primacy in the teens somewhere.
Do you think the recent emphasis on two-way players by the Giants is motivated more by the potential big league roster flexibility it could provide (even if hypothetically it were an average reliever combined with a situational bat) or are they attracted to those players because of the athleticism necessary to be a two way player and thus if/when they have to focus on one side they'll be well positioned to develop?
From a scouting perspective, I would say the latter is the biggest factor. This is something Senior Scouting Director Michael Holmes has emphasized repeatedly in his calls with the media each of the past two years: “we like versatility,” and “we like athleticism” ring like mantras throughout his comments. Two-way players offer both, but I think the athleticism is what’s really appealing to the organization. It suggests a level of body control and aptitude that will help them as they go through the process of changing and adapting to the high demands of pro ball.
That said, I’m sure that Farhan does have his eye on the possibility of a player who might be excluded from MLB roster limitations (currently no more than 13 pitchers on the active roster, but that number is widely expected to come down in future years). That said, the strictures on how much a player has to contribute on both sides to fit the “two-way designation” are demanding enough that only a true two-way player will ever qualify (I believe the current rule is 20 IP AND 20 games started as a hitter). And it’s entirely possible (dare I say ‘probable’) that neither Reggie Crawford nor Bryce Eldridge will actually still be performing on both sides of the ball as they get to the upper minors. If Crawford is ever the offensive force that Madison Bumgarner was, for instance, I’d say it would be a huge development achievement (Bumgarner’s career line, by the way: .172/.232/.292, 44 wRC+). Maybe some Kevin Gausman-esque late inning PH heroics lie in his future somewhere
Besides Wisely and Schmitty getting chances at middle IF, who else could we reasonably see called up if there aren’t any moves made at the trade deadline? Anyone that could potentially contribute more offensively?
Well, your second question trips me up a bit, since it’s easier to come up with pitchers who could potentially have opportunities fall in their laps if there are no changes made at the deadline — besides Keaton Winn, who has already gotten the chance to start, Farhan Zaidi has already said that Kyle Harrison is going to be part of the second half in some way, and Mason Black is starting to assert himself as a potential pice of the puzzle as well.
But if we’re looking for offense, the two guys who would seem most likely to get opportunities are players we’ve seen before: Heliot Ramos and Joey Bart. It’s been something of an under-the-radar issue that the team has really had a power outage over the last month, and the right-side bats in particular are failing to give the team the power it craves. With Ramos and Bart both right there on the 40-man (assuming Ramos returns today), they would seem to be likely candidates to turn to at some point. After that pair, it’s a little harder to come up with a good candidate. I continue to be high on Tyler Fitzgerald’s athleticism, and his right-hand bat might come in handy at some point. They’d have to create a 40-man spot for him, though, and that could be a sticking point for him. That might come down to whether or not they’ve made up their mind to add him to the 40-man this winter to protect him from the Rule 5 draft. If they’re going to make a spot for him anyway, it’s less painful to try to do so a couple months earlier.
Heliot Ramos’ recent upswing is great to see. Is this a result of a new approach? Any idea on how the Giants are viewing it?
Hey, speaking of which! The thing the Giants and Ramos have been working on for most of the last year and a half is to get more looseness into his swing. While he has plenty of batspeed, it’s generally created more by his strength than the kind of loose, handsy batspeed of Luis Matos, and that can cause him to get tight and what used to be called “musclebound.”
Looking at the hit data, I don’t see a lot that screams new approach. He still hits the ball very hard, but still puts it on the ground a lot (49% in Sacramento last year, 46% so far this year) and he hits it to the other way a good deal. There’s a little more chase than the Giants would ideally like to see, but the contact rates aren’t that concerning (15% swinging strike rate, in zone contact of about 85%). Nothing is really jumping off the page as a change in approach. But he is certainly having more success this year. Not only is his batting average currently about 90 points higher than it was with Sacramento last year, his Isolated Slugging has literally more than doubled, from .122 up to .255.
As for your last question, I suspect we’re going to find out very soon how the Giants are viewing it. They need right-handed power and they’re going to see some lefties on this trip. Ramos should be able to come off the 60-day IL as of today. If the Giants are believers in the new Heliot, we might see him added to the roster soon. If not, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s part of trade discussions in the coming weeks.
There currently are a slew of players with big league contracts coming off the injured lists here soon. Which rookies who have helped fuel the resurgence are in jeopardy of being sent to AAA?
So who are we talking about, here? The only guys who are imminently returning are Anthony DeSclafani and Luke Jackson, right? John Brebbia, as far as I understand, is a bit further away (maybe August), and Thairo Estrada and Mitch Haniger are still a good long ways away — in fact, if Haniger returns at all it won’t be before the rosters expand by two in September.
So, right now we’re just talking about the pitchers (in terms of IL returns, obviously as discussed above, some minor mix and matching of optionable players like Ramos might occur). You can usually count on some pitcher needing to hit the IL about the time the last one is ready to come back, so those are decisions that might just take care of themselves, but, assuming health, we have three pitchers preparing to come off the IL in the coming weeks and three pitchers on the active roster with options: Mauricio Llovera, Tristan Beck, and Ryan Walker. So that roster math works itself out pretty neatly if spots are needed (but again, there’s never any such thing as surplus arms — attrition will always have its way with the roster).
For Estrada, he won’t be back until after the trade deadline, which puts a whole other layer of complication on the topic, but as it stands right now, Wisely would be the obvious option if Thairo were ready to return today.
I enjoyed all the midseason and draft coverage, Roger. I was eagerly awaiting that content amidst the slog of the regular season. The extended pod banter with Delucchi was especially good. One related question. How do you view the farm system’s strengths and weaknesses at this juncture?
This is a little inside baseball. How did San Francisco snag Walker Martin at pick No. 52? He was viewed by many as a first-rounder and perhaps in consideration for the Giants at No. 16. I believe you said San Francisco is expected to give him a first-round-type signing bonus. From varied reporting, I gather that the Giants had at least some role in limiting other teams’ desire to draft Martin and their creativity helped ‘float’ him to their second pick. I’m interested in how that worked. Do you gather that no other team would meet Martin’s signing bonus ask? Do you expect he and his agent signaled he wouldn’t sign elsewhere? Care to guess what his bonus will be?
[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following paragraphs were written before yesterday’s news broke, which I suppose makes my bonus prediction a little less impressive to you today — but I really did have it done before the signing was announced, and I didn’t want to erase all my hard work. Anyway, the process behind the curtains is the real crux of Scott’s question and I hope I answered that well enough. Now that we know what the top two guys got, we know that the Giants still have work to do, as they have about a million more underslot money they have to come up with in the rest of the draft class to make up for Martin’s deal.]
A couple more draft questions from Scott. Generally the way this happens is that a player’s advisor gets on the phone and tries to make the best deal he can for his player — as he should! Now it goes without saying that until a player’s name is actually called, nothing is final. If a player has agreed to a number with one team and a second one swoops in with something better, then he’s certainly within his rights to say ‘Yes’ to the better deal — just as if a team has an agreement with one player but a different one unexpectedly falls into their lap, they might change plans at the last minute (that’s indirectly what happened to the Giants with Tim Lincecum, who had agreed with a deal with Tampa Bay until Colorado Rockied things up by taking Greg Reynolds instead of Evan Longoria. Once the #1 player on their board became available, the Rays called Lincecum’s advisor to let him know they would be making a different pick. That’s how the draft breaks sometimes!
Anyway, Keith Law did report prior to the draft that he’d heard a persistent rumor that the Giants had an agreement with Martin and it would appear that that agreement was strong enough (in $$$) to float him to #52 without any other team interceding with a larger offer (teams call all of these guys before they announce them to see if the number they have in mind is roughly acceptable — that’s why there are so few instances of players in the top 10 rounds not signing these days).
The logic is something like this: the Giants had enough interest in Martin at 16 to think about taking him there, but their intel said that after their pick, nobody was likely to want him before the end of the 1st round or maybe the supplemental round. The slot value of the 16th pick was $4.3m, while the slot value of the 30th pick was only $2.7m. So if Martin didn’t think anybody above that point was going to take him, he’d be interested in taking an offer that was around that late 1st round slot value amount. My guess is, you’ll see something in the $2.8-3.0 million dollar range for him in the end? Some of that will probably come out of the slot value for the #16 pick, but they’ll need to claw money back from a few other spots to make it all work out. They also traditionally use every last dollar of the 5% overage that MLB allows before penalties kick in. But I’m sure it’ll all work out and they’ll get all of these guys signed and into the organization.
I'm expecting this to be an impossible question to answer in full, but the Giants had announced Juan Henriquez as part of this year's signing class, and when the season rolled around, he popped up on the Red Sox roster as a June free agent signing. There are always rookie league (especially DSL) players lost in the public transactions log, but he's starting games, which is usually an indication of notoriety. The results are decent, too, so I was wondering if you know anything on this.
Rae is absolutely correct, the Giants did announce RHP Juan Henriquez as part of this year’s international signing class — see, he’s right here in the January 15 tweet from the official Giants’ prospect twitter account:
However, I’m told that Henriquez did not pass the Giants’ physical and so they didn’t ultimately execute the contract agreement. A couple of years ago, the Giants had a six-figure agreement with a corner outfielder, but when MLB was vetting the contract, they found an issue with the player’s identity and that deal was never executed. These kind of things happen in the international market, and, as we know, failed physicals can impact other free agent markets as well!
So do you see any significant difference between minor league Matos and major league Matos?
With the major caveat that I don’t think we’ve really seen “major league Matos” very fully yet, my answer to that question is: No. He’s very much the same player we’ve watched quickly climb up the minor league ladder. He’s always been more of a “whole is bigger than the sum of the parts” type than a tools monster (though any young, international player tends to get tagged with the “toolsy” moniker, in the way that racially coded language often infiltrates the way we talk about sports). Matos has swagger, plays great defense, and gets his bat on virtually everything. And in a particularly exciting development, he’s been able to keep his new found discipline at the plate even when facing major league pitching. That should be something for fans to get really excited about going forward.
That said, it may be awhile before we get the Matos who really impacts the game at the major league level. Back when he hit his first MLB HR, it was widely stated that he had become the youngest player to hit a homer for the Giants since Matt Williams, back in April of 1987. Williams, as we all know, is a truly great Giant, but maybe one thing that didn’t get discussed enough about that milestone HR was that when Williams launched his first homer with the Giants, he was still some 2.5 years away from sticking in the major league lineup for good — something that wouldn’t ultimately happen until the All Star break in 1989. It’s great that Matos is doing as well as he is at just 21 years old, but there’s plenty more growth to come in future years.
Nick Swiney has been a starter throughout his Giants career, yet has become a reliever upon hitting AAA. Do you see this as a long-term move or part of the way pitchers have been used this year?
I do think that with Swiney this is a long-term move. There just has never been enough fastball for him to stick as a starter. Even pitching in one inning relief stints, Swiney’s fastball has been sitting 88-89 mph, which is where it’s stubbornly persisted on sitting for most of his pro career. Swiney possesses a really outstanding changeup, but without a Tyler Rogers level of weirdness and deception, it’s really hard to pitch in the majors today with a fastball sitting in the 80s. I would think that at some point he’ll get a look, but he’s going to need to be really unique to make his stuff work at the highest level.
Another question for you: I understand that there is ample evidence that a two way player becomes much better at the discipline that the team wants them to concentrate on once they give up the other one, but that does not explain Ohtani. How do the Giants develop true two ways if all the evidence says that’s not possible?
Nothing explains Ohtani. His Japanese team didn’t want him to do it. American evaluators didn’t believe he could do it. He did it. Nothing explains it other than Ohtani is really a giant unicorn, standing astride this sport like the fabled Colossus of Rhodes.
Can they truly develop a two-way player? I wouldn’t have thought so prior to Ohtani’s existing, and so far, of the various experiments we’ve seen other teams try, by far the best example of success has been Michael Lorenzen, who, at this point, hasn’t taken an at bat in two seasons (or put another way, since the introduction of universal DH). If another two-way player emerges, it will take another true unicorn to do it — but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting. Crawford is a pitcher and Eldridge is likely a hitter — and if they can develop into big league talents in just one role they’ll represent big wins for the org and themselves!
Complex Level Games
ACL Giants Black won at ACL Brewers, 12-1
Giants Orange beat ACL Angels, 8-2
The two Arizona clubs had their hitting shoes on last night, belting seven home runs — including a multi-dinger effort from a player on each squad! Team Black scored 10 of their 12 runs on big flies, getting three of them in the final two innings, to make a massacre of things. Cesar Gonzalez didn’t even start the game, coming in as an injury substitution in the bottom of the 3rd inning. Still, he ended up the star of the night, going deep in both the 8th and 9th innings, driving in five runs in all. The 22-year-old backstop has bounced around the Giants’ complex leagues for six seasons now, filling in where needed — he even had a brief stint with Sacramento last year. He came into this season with just three home runs total in his career, but after last night’s outburst, he has now doubled that total with three more in 2023 alone.
I really liked Lazaro Morales in spring and thought he was primed for a big season. That hasn’t happened, as he’s hitting just .171 this year and striking out about a third of the time. But the Cuban got the dinger-splosion started last night, hitting his first of the year in the 5th inning. Elian Rayo dinged his 5th dong of the year in the 8th as well.
At Papago, Javier Francisco kept his recent power burst going, homering for the second straight game and the fifth time in his last 10 games. The 20-year-old Francisco is also walking 20% of the time this year — extreme patience has always been an important part of his game. More importantly though, he’s cut his K rate from a monstrous 37% in 2022, down to just 16.7% this year. Eighteen walks to 15 strikeouts and a .261 ISO is evidence of a lot of improvement over the past year. Francisco has always been a tremendously hard worker. It’s great to see that work leading to gains on the field.
Second baseman Ramon Peralta went deep twice for the Orange. Like Gonzalez, his double-dinger night gave him three for the year, tripling his output in just a night. Peralta was a mid-six-figure signing in the 2020-2021 international class, considered to have power-over-hit potential down the line. He’s quietly improved over the last three years after starting his career off hitting just .216 in 2021. He’s always walked a lot (boosting his overall line), but he’s just a .236 career hitter so far and the power hasn’t really shown up yet fully. With last night’s effort, he now has nine big flies in his three year career.
There was plenty more rehabbing going on with the ACL teams last night. Most prominently, Luke Jackson got in a quick inning of work, striking out two of the three batters he saw.
And 2022 rookie Luis Gonzalez got in his first action of the year, going 1 for 3. Gonzalez is working his way back from back surgery. With his rehab starting last night, he’ll need a 40-man spot opened for him to return from the 60-day IL in 20 days. Some 40-man decisions are going to start to get tight!
Both of the DSL games were suspended by rain in the early innings. We’ll catch up to that action when the games are completed in the future.
Coming Up
Sacramento (Yajure) vs. Tacoma (McCaughan), 6:45 pm, MiLBTV
Richmond (Bertrand) at Akron (Stanley), 9:05 am, MiLBTV
Eugene (TBD) at Hillsboro (TBD), 7:05 pm, MiLBTV
San Jose (Maldonado) vs Stockton (TBD), 6:30 pm, MiLBTV
ACL Giants Black (TBD) at ACL Padres (TBD), 6:00 pm
ACL Giants Orange (TBD) vs ACL Rockies (TBD), 6:00 pm
DSL Giants Black (TBD) at DSL Guardians Red (TBD), 8:00 am
DSL Giants Orange (TBD) vs DSL Twins (TBD), 8:00 am
No Stats Review today, but I am recording a new podcast this afternoon with the great Jim Callis that you’ll hear in the next day or so!
Oh Scott, I somehow didn't get around to answering your first question! Sorry about that! Let me just quickly say that I think the draft did an excellent job of plugging two real weaknesses in the system that I had noted last winter: left-handed power and left-handed pitching.
This is definitely a question that should have been asked before the mailbag, so take it more as me musing out loud after hearing you talk about the two-way futures of Crawford and Eldridge. But if Bryce Eldridge is thought to be more likely a hitter rather than a pitcher in the long term, why was he considered worth a first-round pick by the Giants? A high school 1B has to be near the highest risk/lowest reward phylum you could go for in the 1st. High school RHP is about the same or perhaps even riskier, but those guys come with a much greater payoff if you actually hit on the pick as opposed to a first baseman. Does Eldridge already have special enough power projection and feel to hit that you can overlook that he’s already at the bottom of the defensive spectrum? I’d been under the impression that what really elevated him up into first round discourse *was* how evenly matched his hitting and pitching was and how that seemingly gave him a slight chance to continue developing both. Thanks for the great work, Roger!