Offensive Explosions Highlight the Night!

SF Giants Minor Lines, April 10, 2025

Photo Credit: Zack Bayrouty

I’m very sad that I used up my “rain” metaphor with yesterday’s headline, because “it’s raining runs” would have been a much better heading for today’s edition. Scoreboards were set to “Tilt-a-Whirl” all over the farm last night. In both Tacoma and Eugene, they made the metaphor tangible, by beginning the evening with literal rain, and then followed up with the metaphorical kind. Raining runs indeed! (Except in Harrisburg, where it simply rained).

But we’ll get to all that in just a moment. First, I want to take a moment to direct all of you to another Substack site that does great work in the prospect realm. My friends at Down on the Farm pump out fantastic, data-based work on prospect coverage of all types regularly, but in today’s post, they specifically handle a topic that I know a lot of my readers ask me about regularly: How valuable are prospect rankings?

The Rankings Audit: How Good Are Mainstream Prospect Rankings Really?

I highly suggest reading this entire post if this is a topic that you’re interested in, but I do want to highlight their topline takeaways from this post, as I think they’re all informative to anybody who is thinking about player development. In a very detailed study of mainstream prospect rankings from Baseball America, Fangraphs, and MLB Pipeline covering the years 2017-2021, they came up with the following nine major observations:

1. Baseball America and Fangraphs Are More Accurate Than Pipeline

2. Players 20 or Younger in the Top 25 Are a Cut Above

3. Rankings Often Miss Catchers and Utility Guys

4. Fangraphs Finds Diamonds in the Rough, MLB Pipeline Not So Much

5. COVID Messed Up the Trend, But We Think People Are Generally Getting Better at This

6. Pitcher Projections are Getting Worse; Hitter Projections are Getting Better

7. Ignore the Number in Pitcher Rankings; Be Skeptical Past the Top 10 for Hitters

8. Big Misses Are the Guys Who Refuse to Walk

9. Surprise Hitter Successes Command the Zone, But Are Yet to Find a Power Stroke

All of these make sense to me for various reasons — and perhaps we can discuss in more depth at some point in a mailbag if you’re interested. But for today, just give the fine folks at Down on the Farm a look and a read. They have occasional free posts and do truly outstanding work in this field.

HITTER of the NIGHT: Marco Luciano (Sac), 3 for 5, HR (2), 4 R, 2 RBI, 2 BB, 1 K
PITCHER of the NIGHT: Drake George (SJ), 4.0 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 3 K

Let’s get to the Lines.