Reaching the Halfway Point Free For All Mailbag
Heliot Ramos is pushing to break a 40-year-old curse, we’ve got guys journeying from baseball in France to the major leagues, and generally the farm system is having a positive overall impact on the Giants’ 2024 season. Which makes it a great time to bag!
This week you have questions regarding the upcoming draft, potential trade deadline moves, and much more regarding the mercurial Marco Luciano. Let’s pop open the mailbag for the week of June 10, and see what’s inside….
Deborah Peterson
Why do so-called experts within the industry of baseball not think too highly of the guys in the minors.
Based on Kyle Haines comments regarding players moving from one level to another, do you think that Bryce Eldridge will be on the move? Haines said the Giants like to see players have success on one level before moving up. Eldridge hasn't had a ton of experience yet. Your thoughts would be great.
Hi Deborah, I appreciate your question! This was one I didn’t get to last week, so let me start off with it, and add in a second question from you that came this week as well. I presume your question is referring to Giants’ prospects specifically, and why they don’t tend to produce the same sort of excitement as some other prospects around the game (like those other orange and black dudes!).
Let me see if I can answer the question this way: one thing that really appeals to me about talking to player development personnel is the endemic optimism that is essential to their work. If I talk with coaches, or Kyle Haines, or Michael Holmes after a draft class — they’re convinced that they’ve got an entire group full of future major leaguers on their hand. That’s not spin — it’s an important part of the job. You have to really believe in your players — and really care about them — if you’re going to help them follow their dreams. The people inside the org know how hard a kid works, how much aptitude they show, how coachable they are. They know the fire burning inside the players, and what good kids they are.
But pro scouts — who are most of the time evaluating players in other organizations — tend to bring a harsher and more “realistic” eye to their work. They know the level of play in the major leagues — the speed of that game, the power of that game, and the physical demands of that game — and know that, in any given year, only a small number of major league jobs will be taken for good by young players coming up from the minors. They look for athletes who have the physical tools to compete at the top level and the skills to deal with the explosive nature of the MLB game.
Those scouts know that pitchers in the majors average ~94 mph with their fastballs, so they look at young hitter’s ability to barrel up fastballs (which are typically slower than that in the minor leagues). They know that pitchers in the majors throw breaking balls in the 90s — and throw them in the strike zone — so they hone in on a hitter’s ability to hit breaking balls (of much lesser quality) in the minors. They know that major league hitters can identify even high-quality breaking balls out of a pitcher’s hand and spit on it if that pitcher hasn’t shown them the ability to throw the pitch for strikes, so hitters in the minors who can’t stop chasing sliders in the dirt get demerits.
In the minors, I’ll turn to a scout and ask how they like some slugger who just hit two different 108 mph howitzers a billion feet in a game, and they might say, “I don’t know that he can hit a fastball,” and only then will I realize that both of those shots came off hanging sliders.
In other words, “so-called experts” pick at the game because they know how monumentally hard it is to play at the highest level. The coaches and rovers and Player Development personnel in the Giants organization look at a player and see all of his virtues and the tools that can carry them to the majors if they polish up a problem area or two, while scouts and other industry folks will look at the same player and often come to a harsh conclusion about the likelihood of fixing that one glaring problem.
From the Giants’ perspective, there are a lot of players in the system with very intriguing skillsets that can be developed into a big leaguer. From the perspective of pro scouts from other clubs, nearly everyone in the system has some serious question marks in their games that prevent scouting reports from seeing a future big league starter. Neither is wrong! Both are doing their jobs. But right now, it’s hard to see a lot of starting player potential sprinkled throughout the Giants’ farm system, from the perspective of those industry insiders, because everybody has some significant area of weakness in their game that will be easy to exploit by the greatest players in the world, who know how to find and pick at weaknesses and build a “book,” and who are all equipped with the powerful klieg lamp of advanced scouting and data to help guide them. The tiniest crack in a player’s game in the minors is a fatal flaw in waiting for the major league game.
As for your second question, I think I know Kyle Haines’ comments you’re referring to, and, without in any way slighting Haines (because these things can change quickly), in that same interview he said he didn’t see Reggie Crawford moving any time soon, and Crawford was pushed up from Richmond to Sacramento within days of publication. That kind of thing happens — often because the front office is thinking about some potential scenario of need at the major league level — and ideas change.
My guess — and that’s all it is — is that Eldridge plays most of the year in San Jose, and, if all is going well at that time and he seems to be on an upswing, he’ll get a late season bump up to Eugene (sometime in August maybe) to help prepare for next year’s challenges. (Oh, and by the way, the experts inside the industry are extremely enamored of Eldridge, so it’s not like they dismiss all of the guys in our system).
It sounds like the White Sox are motivated to see what they can get for Luis Robert Jr. He isn't really a Farhan model player with the lack of strike zone discipline, but he seems like one of the more realistic opportunities to land a potential superstar caliber player. The Giants have not had the prospect firepower to pull off this type of trade in the past, and I'm still not sure they do, but maybe Robert's injury history makes it more doable. What type of package do you think the Giants could put together that would give them a realistic shot and is it worth it in your mind?
Let me just preface this by saying that I’m really REALLY bad at potential trade package suppositions. I think everybody is, to be honest — even the “so-called experts,” as Deborah might say. Certainly, Jim Bowden’s clickbait articles on potential trades never strike me as very rigorously exact. These types of conversations tend to come together quickly, or in strange and unanticipated ways, and they take on a life of their own based on the inner workings of teams and the things they prioritize.
Furthermore, I agree with you that Robert doesn’t really seem to be the type of player we’ve ever seen Zaidi go after, and he doesn’t match Farhan’s known player values, which makes it very hard for me to see him being the guy that Farhan goes all in after in a trade.
However, Robert has star-level ability. He’s coming off a 5 WAR season, plays a strong CF, and has enormous power and speed. In addition, his contract is attractive — he’s signed to highly affordable $20 million club options through 2027. That combination of talent and deal make him a highly desirable player. If he’s on the market, he’ll be the top of every team’s wish list and, consequently, very expensive to acquire.
I feel like I saw a twitter trade scenario from somebody I respect that suggested a Mariners deal for Robert including Harry Ford, Tai Peete and another top 10 guy plus a low level flyer, but staying away from their top two prospects, Colt Emerson and Cole Young. Now, repeating what I said above about nobody on the internet knowing anything about how real trades are made, I look at a wild rumor like that and it immediately brings up two real issues for me with regards to the Giants putting a winning package together:
they are very thin on potential starter type position players; and
they lack the depth to hold back their absolute best prospect and still make a worthwhile offer.
Put those two things together, and I’m pretty skeptical of their chances. If you take Eldridge off the board, which I think the Giants probably would want to, there just isn’t enough left over to put a really enticing deal together, even if you’re starting with Marco Luciano and Carson Whisenhunt and adding on from there.
But let me just repeat, I’m really bad at this aspect of the game. If you want a final package from me, I’d say something along the lines of Luciano, Whisenhunt, Rayner Arias, and Randy Rodriguez? (really, really bad….just don’t forget that part).
I get why they’re doing it (kinda), but it feels pretty irresponsible for the Giants to keep forcing Luciano and Matos to play positions that they clearly are not suited for at this time. Do you think it has hurt their development? This and the rushed promotions you’ve mentioned feel like a Farhan Hail-Mary to save his job.
Kinda of a piggyback question... If Luciano can't stick at short, where do you think his next best position is?
Irresponsible seems a tad strong for me. The team simply doesn’t have an actual CF on the major league roster with Jung Hoo Lee gone for the year, and they’re forced to choose somebody to put out there. This is certainly part (if not ALL) of the calculation for pushing Grant McCray up to Sacramento. I doubt the org is under any illusion regarding his offensive readiness for a potential big league role, but he’s also by far the best defensive CF they have anywhere near the majors. Having him and Hunter Bishop a level away gives them a patina of a backup plan there. Sometimes facts on the ground mean you’re forced with finding the least bad option available. (Though I would think that finding a real CF might be a trade deadline priority the way it was for the Phillies a couple years ago when they did very nicely in acquiring Brandon Marsh from the Angels).
As for Luciano, the team has certainly been stubbornly insistent — and bucking against the tide of opinion — that they can get him to become a consistent enough fielder to make shortstop realistic. Maybe they should have given up on that dream long ago — but as we saw last week, the value to be had if they could get that end result is so large that you can certainly understand the motivation. And Luciano does have all the physical tools — and a strong work ethic — even if the final product hasn’t ever quite looked like a big league shortstop.
Still, I’m sure we can find some Giants’ fans currently dreaming of a trade for Toronto’s Bo Bichette to fill the void. The irony here is that Bichette was never considered much of a defensive shortstop prospect coming up, and, over his big league career, has been a below average defender. But Bichette does two things that Luciano can’t yet claim — he consistently makes the plays he can make and he hits enough to make it not matter that he isn’t better with the glove.
If your suggestion is that playing CF or SS, respectively, has been in some way harmful to Matos’ and Luciano’s overall development, I’m not sure I can see that. Virtually everybody on a major league field has been brought up playing catcher, shortstop, or center field at some point in their past. And, obviously, it would ultimately be much easier for both of these guys to establish themselves as big league starters if they could stick up the middle — even if it’s more and more appearing that ship is sailing away before our eyes.
As for Yeti’s question, the most obvious spot ultimately would be 3b, where he just has to react and let his strong arm play. From my perspective, at this point, the more critical issue is to get his bat fully developed, because that’s what will determine his value and his ceiling no matter where he plays. To some degree, treating him the way they have Eldridge, and taking defensive worries mostly off his plate so he can focus on his offensive development is the best path forward right now. Of course, given that every position other than SS would require a significant learning curve for him, it’s less clear how that would work for him.
What's it like to be an injured player in the Giants system? If they are higher level players, do they go to SF or Scottsdale to work and rehab at the facilities there? What if they are in Richmond or Eugene? I sometimes see players on the injured list in uniform. What are the rules about them being in the dugout, clubhouse, etc.? For MLB pitchers, it seems like the rehab progression is soft toss, flat mound throwing, throwing off a normal mound, bullpen session, live hitter batting practice simulation, minor league appearance, and then back to the bigs. Is that right?
It’s funny, when I read the first line of Randy’s question, my instinctual response was: “it’s a little depressing!” That’s not any kind of reflection on the abilities of the Giants’ medical and rehab teams, but my mind instantly went to images of players I’ve seen over the years rehabbing at Papago, and, almost without exception, all of those images have come with expressions of dejection and boredom. Because being injured and rehabbing is really an unwanted purgatory for players, who so badly want to be on the field participating. But, of course, the players who come back best are the ones who are most diligent about putting in the work during the often long and frustrating time away from the game.
But to answer your question more directly, my understanding — or at least my observation — is that it mostly depends on the specific injury and the timeline involved. Minor issues — illness, contusions, minor soreness — will leave players rehabbing with their team. Just thinking of the Richmond squad, for instance, Jimmy Glowenke and Mat Olsen have both spent entire IL stints traveling with the club while they rehabbed, as have others this year. Matt Frisbee was still with the club last week after having been hit by a foul ball (as scary as that was). That’s perfectly fine. There are no rules that demand injured players depart the premises. In fact, you’ll often catch a sight of players who have yet to be officially promoted/assigned to a new team in the dugout. All of that is fine!
But injuries that involve a timeline of several weeks send players immediately back to Scottsdale, where the Papago Park facility and staff provide them the best home for recovery and rehab. Nearly any kind of significant muscle strain — be they obliques, lats, or groins — means 4-8 weeks and a stint in Scottsdale.
Players on the major league squad might do their rehab in San Francisco — I doubt Luciano ever went down to Scottsdale, for instance, while waiting out his leg strain recovery time. But even they are often down in Scottsdale, as we’ve seen from Robbie Ray and Keaton Winn in recent ACL appearances.
As for your progression for pitchers, I’d say that’s about right, but with the caveat that you’re skipping the work that gets pitchers to that point where they’re tossing — or position players to the point where they can participate in drills in BP. There’s a lot of body movement, range of motion drills, strength and flexibility, and other types of work that come before the “competitive” type activities. Much of TJ rehab, for instance, is strength training in the gym that will go on for months (focusing on various non-throwing arm parts of the body) before even the lightest throw can be attempted. There’s also various forms of massage, whirlpool, muscle stimulation, etc. for guys with back issues or muscle strains. In other words, it can be a lot of drudgery work, and not much baseball for weeks or months on end.
No wonder those kids often look downcast.
How do you see the Giants approaching this year's draft? With 100 picks between their first and 'second' picks do you think they'll perhaps try an under-slot deal in R1 and hope they can then spread more around, or do you think they'll just go as high as possible? 'Near-Giant' Vance Honeycutt keeps getting linked as he has dropped down the ranks, but would the Giants risk his K-rate?
With the 2nd and 3rd round picks gone — and more importantly the bonus pool money attached to those picks — going underslot in the 1st round doesn’t make much sense. You can’t save enough money to make up for the drop in slot value between the 2nd and 4th rounds.
With that in mind, I’d expect the Giants to play the draft pretty straight up this year and try to get as good a player as possible with that 13th pick, and then let the scouts do what they do for the second- and third day picks — beat the bushes and look for value.
With that said, I’ll repeat a conversation that I’ve had in basically this form on four different occasions over the last month:
Amateur Scout: Where are the Giants picking this year?
Me: 13th
Amateur Scout: Oh that’s a good spot for Caminiti!
Me: Yeah, you like him?
Amateur Scout: He’s ….uh….he’s….[chuckle]….he’s pretty good.
“He’s pretty good,” being just about the highest form of praise by some scouts, if they put just the right English on the phrase.
Personally, I’d really like to see more hitting talent in the system, and this draft has a lot of good college bats, but nobody ever went broke betting on lefties in this industry, and who am I to argue with the driving power of: “he’s….uh….pretty good.”
For now, I’ll go with Caminiti as the pick. Obviously, the Giants have a history with Honeycutt, and like the player — he’s an incredible athlete — so he’d make sense as well, though that kind of swing and miss can be really hard to develop successfully
For those of you wondering, Cam Caminiti is the cousin of the former NL MVP, Ken Caminiti. He’s a powerful young left-handed pitcher who can get his fastball into the upper 90s. He’s extremely young for the class — in fact, he was originally part of the 2025 class but he reclassified to join this year’s draft. He’s also played his entire high school career just down the road from the Giants’ Papago Park facility, so they certainly have every reason to have him well scouted.
Hi Roger - wanted to piggyback off of a question from last week about Luciano's bat speed metrics and how they seem to go against what he's been known for as a prospect. I was reading a great article in Fangraphs (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/maybe-the-launch-angle-revolution-wasnt-really-about-launch-angle/) about how bat speed, launch angle and spray angle are intertwined. Since Statcast measures bat speed at the point of contact, the players with the highest bat speed all hit the ball out in front, because that's the point in the swing where the bat is moving the fastest. He found that "every single player has a higher swing speed to the pull side than to the opposite field."
It made me think about Luciano's MLB hit spray chart, and how essentially every hit this year has been to the opposite field. His complete lack of pulling the ball could explain why his average EV and bat speed are so low, since he's letting the ball travel so far before swinging (presumably to cut down on his K rate), so he's not able to generate the level of bat speed he would if he were catching the ball out in front and hitting it when his bat is moving at its fastest. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, because if it's a conscious approach, it seems like an unsustainable way to more or less fake having a lower K rate at the cost of his natural power. Thanks!
Yes, this is a great point that I’ve meant to bring up myself, but never quite had the space to really get into it. Basically, the slowest part of a batter’s swing is, quite naturally, right at the beginning, when they’re firing off the starting line. The fastest part of a batter’s swing, by contract is at the end, when they’ve reached their maximum velocity, as it were. Therefore, batters with the shortest swings will invariably have slow ones, because they’re making contact with the ball early on, when the swing is still relatively slow.
Luis Arraez lets the ball travel extremely deep, giving him the longest possible time to make a decision, and then serving it into a hole. His targeted point of contact (something hitters talk about a lot) is very deep, in the middle or back half of home plate. His swing is extremely short, and, consequently, one of the slowest in the game.
Hitters whose intended point of contact is out in front of the plate — where home runs live — make contact with the ball at the fastest part of their swing. Think Giancarlo Stanton or Aaron Judge here. These hitters have both the longest and fastest swings in the game — and those two elements of their swing are tightly interconnected. A long swing that gets a hitter to their intended point of contact on time is good. A long swing that makes a hitter late (because the length is in the load and trigger, rather than in covering distance across the plate) is bad. All of these things are very complicated and tied to a lot of different elements.
So, yes, Olives, I believe you are piecing together the available data in a very intelligent way. Luciano absolutely has been focusing on letting balls travel deep — presumably as a way of cutting down on his swing and miss. And the natural result of that tweak in approach would be to lose some bat speed, the way that Statcast measures it.
Just editorializing, I’d like to see him get more aggressive and get back to his power swing, even though more whiffs might come with it. The power is what’s essential to his value. He’s never going to be Arraez. Of course, there’s a reason I’m not a hitting coach.
If you had to bet your house on one position player currently in the upper minors (who hasn't debuted) to have a 3-WAR season at some point in the future, who is deciding the fate of your house?
Wow. Currently in the upper minors but hasn’t debuted, huh? That’s definitely putting some constraint on my prognostications.
Let me first say that I value my house — it’s really nice and we’ve spent years getting it to fit us just right! So, positively, absolutely there is no WAY I would make such a bet, because I’m a little skeptical that there’s a right answer, and also because I have a loving partner who takes my medications away from me when I’m starting to act that crazy.
That said, it seems to me that the simplest way to answer this is to consult my rankings. Looking at my Top 50 from this past winter, Grant McCray was my #10 prospect in the system, and he is the highest ranked position player who is currently in the upper minors without having debuted. He also had my highest grade (45 FV) of any player that fits that description. So, he’s the guy I’ve got to go with. For transparency’s sake, the other players in the top 30 who would qualify were Vaun Brown, Victor Bericoto, and Adrian Sugastey, with Jairo Pomares in the ~top 40 range.
Bonus Q: The Oakland Ballers have already lost 3 players to MLB organizations in their short existence, most recently to the Giants. Do you ever scout the Indy leagues?
Clarifying statement: I am absolutely not a scout and make no such pretenses! So I don’t “scout” anywhere I go. Real scouts do however go scout the Indy leagues, although the 165 domestic reserve limit is making it harder and harder for teams to sign players out of there.
As to whether I go and enjoy some Indy ball, the answer is “No” and it’s one of those “had we but world enough and time,” dilemmas that make up most of life. There’s not much Indy ball play particularly close to me, but there is plenty of high-level college and high school activity, and there has often been a summer league in DC. Last summer I thought several times that I should make the trip out to my old neighborhood and catch Bryce Eldridge in action before his high school career ended.
I wish I had! But I also know that there are only so many hours in a day, and I’m stretched pretty thin as it is (and between you and me, the hourly wage doesn’t exactly justify the time commitment). So I must pick and choose my commitments.
My hope here is to provide the most comprehensive and insightful coverage of the Giants’ player development system, and so that is where I ultimately choose to devote myself.
But I will admit that this has me thinking about driving down to Petersburg, VA at some point and taking in a little Indy action for the pure spectacle of it:
Why are so many pitchers being developed as starters throughout the minor leagues when only a sliver of them have even a prayer of being a No. 5 starter in the big leagues? If it’s just to fill minor league innings, then it seems like player development isn’t the primary objective. I mean, if the Giants are pretty sure the best potential MLB role for a pitcher, say Carson Seymour, is as a reliever (in any form), why wouldn’t they help him hone that craft in the minors as early as possible?
The most important resource for honing any skill is reps, or volume of practice — we have to get our 10,000 hours in, right? Starters throw more innings and build up more experience. They have the chance to use a wider variety of pitches, face a wider variety of batters, and problem solve many, many more game situations. All of that is beneficial. Repetitions help build up muscle memory and, hopefully, lead to more repeated mechanics and enhanced command.
In fact, I’d argue that there are very few pitchers in the system who are treated like major league relievers in terms of their usage patterns. Especially once you get away from the Triple-A level, relievers are almost universally used in multi-inning stints, often up to three innings or more. They almost never appear on back-to-back days, they most often come into clean innings. I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve ever seen a minor league pitcher warm up in the bullpen and then not come into a game — you could watch an entire season and never see that happen even once!
The practices that make for a big league reliever are forged under big league conditions. And I don’t see that it’s harmed Sean Hjelle or Tristan Beck or Erik Miller in the least to have spent much or most of their minor league career starting games.
More reps are a good thing! Ultimately, they can provide the crucible for finding the pitch that helps you make it and workshopping in into perfection in a relatively low-risk environment. If you want a great example of this, by the way, look no further than Spencer Bivens. In the second half of 2023, he was pressed into duty as a starter for Richmond for several weeks — more or less because they were out of starting pitchers and had to fill innings. During that stretch he had a 1.77 ERA, chopped about .300 points of OPS off of opponents’ batting line, and, most importantly, threw consistent strikes. I think Bivens really found something during those longer outings that helped make his mechanics and execution much more consistent than they had previously been — and it’s consistency, much more than ability, that is the true separator at the highest levels of this game.
Those six weeks or so, when he threw better than he ever had as a pro, seemed to serve as a springboard for him into a very productive winter (dominating the Mexican Winter League), great spring camp, and ultimately, a big league call up. That’s why you let guys get starter innings, even if they’re not necessarily going to stick in that role!
I'm glad you wrote about Wade Meckler having a potential rehab setback; I was going to ask if you'd heard anything.
What's your impression of the DSL graduates who are in SJ right now? Thinking of Junior Flores, Ubert Mejias, Cesar Perdomo, Estanlin Cassiani, Javier Francisco, Cesar Quintas, Elian Rayo, Jean Carlos Sio esp. These are guys that didn't sign for enormous bonuses, who aren't expected to rocket through the levels, and who are experiencing their first full non-complex season. Do you think any of them have one carrying tool or some combination of factors that could get them up to the upper minors? In other words, do you see a potential Ismael Munguia (non-heralded guy who nonetheless rose up through the ranks) in this group?
Yes, it certainly does appear as if Meckler’s rehab has hit a snag — he hasn’t appeared in a game since June 4.
As for the various San Jose group of players, I guess they’re all surviving, which is a big first step. Flores has one of the biggest fastballs in the system in terms of pure velocity. It hasn’t exactly helped him cut a swath through the Cal League as of yet, but it’s also a pretty recent development in his career. Today more velo, tomorrow better shape? Mejias can really spin a breaking ball — more than one of them, in fact. And though his velo has a hard time getting out of the 80s, he has real mound presence and pitchability — it’s a pretty classic profile in the Cuban national league.
Perdomo’s slider has been one of the best performing pitches in the system this year, with a whiff rate above 40%. A lefty with a good body and a slider that is an elite performer? That’ll take you places in this world!
As for the hitters, none have particularly thrived so far in their first year, but all have a skill they can hang their hats on. Francisco has one of the best plate discipline tools in the org — his chase rate over the first two months of the season was under 15%. Cassiani, on the other hand, has shown outstanding in-zone contact ability (over 90%!). Sio, Rayo, and Guillermo Williamson, whom you didn’t mention, have all shown top end raw power, as measured in max EV. Of course, all of these players have their corresponding weaknesses as well — it might be great swing decisions but low impact on the ball, good contact ability but too much tendency to chase, or eye-popping EVs combined with brow-knitting contract rates. Still, it seems like all of these young players have managed to keep their head above water, which is a real achievement at this level.
Survive and advance as the late, great Jimmy V said. These are all young players — mostly all 20 to 22 — with potential and time still on their sides. And, as I said above to Deborah, if you’re inside the Giants’ organization, the mood is one of optimism that all will optimize their considerable skills over the long haul. Your reference to Munguia is a solid one here, as Munguia was himself a young player with strengths (great contact ability) and weaknesses (swing at everything) at the Low-A level. Of course, Munguia always separated himself by playing his ass of, which is one thing an athlete can always control.
Saw someone joke in the wake of the McCray promotion that “the Giants sure seem to want their top hitting prospects to spend as little time in Richmond as possible.” It was said in jest, but it got me seriously thinking.
We’ve heard a lot about how the quality of pitching in Triple A has declined precipitously. Has that created any sort of a flattening effect on the previously vaunted jump from Double A to Triple? Is there any chance that the Giants now just view Sacramento as a more favorable environment for hitter development and not that much of a jump in difficulty? Especially with the ABS in place. I know we’ve all realized it’s led to fake walk rates, but that’s because it rewards hitters for taking more, and we know that’s something the Giants value and have been trying to teach a lot of their hitters to do anyway. I wonder if that’s part of the calculus for why they’ve seemed to want to promote their top hitters out of the Diamond as soon as they wrap up their first sustained hot streak. Or, more cynically, do you think it’s just because they think the AAA hitting environment is better for preserving the prospect status of guys like Bishop and McCray?
I would very strongly suggest that there is a difference between a favorable hitting environment and an environment that is favorable for developing hitting. The ABS I think is a good example of that. While it led batters in the PCL to a general passivity — a lot of that led to taking pitches that are actually in the strike zone, and even more that would be called strikes in the major leagues, and I think that’s been one of things making transition to the majors difficult for Triple-A players throughout the game.
Anyway, yes, the Diamond is a rough hitting environment, the Eastern League is a rough hitting environment, and the PCL is much more generous in nearly every way. It has small parks, high altitude parks, and several that combine the two. And, at this point, the stuff in Triple-A is really low. Here’s a recent tweet from Eno Sarris that helps make the point:
In terms of velocity, I suspect there’s more in the aggregate in the Eastern League than in the PCL, where 89-91 mph fastballs are incredibly prevalent. That’s not to suggest that the EL has people blowing 99 every night — it’s a lot more 93-96 on any given night, but I would guess that compares favorably to the PCL. And now and again you find a dude scratching at triple digits, or a Jared Jones hitting 97 in the 6th when I saw him in the EL last year.
Still, every step up is a new challenge and the Triple-A still has that. Most of the league is made up of players who have been in the majors — it’s not unusual to find players dotting a Triple-A lineup with years of major league experience. Those are players with real strength and top level ability who just haven’t mastered that final necessity: day-to-day consistency. Pavin Smith, for instance, who stung the Giants in a D’backs uniform earlier in the year, has been a steady presence in the Reno lineup over the last couple of years. He’s older, he’s had an audition as a major league starter and comes to Triple-A with plenty of big league experience (a career 328 MLB games and 1,155 PA). That type of player is all over every PCL roster.
The pitching in the PCL is very slider heavy, which brings its own challenge.
As for your “cynical” proposition, I guarantee you that no team in MLB is going to be influenced by PCL performance stats. They all have pro scouts and data R&D departments who focus on process, the same way the Giants do, and a strong week in El Paso or Reno isn’t likely to have much of an effect.
I’d say that most of the promotions have had some real-world contingencies lurking behind them. The team doesn’t really have a CF on the 40-man. Last year they found themselves in a situation where there was almost literally no healthy catcher — or shortstop — on the 40-man! And a lot of these moves are 9D scenarios for what might be needed “just in case” sometime before a long year is over. Because before a major league season is over, every club in MLB is going to face a “best of bad options” scenario on multiple occasions. Witness the Dodgers now figuring out how to do without either Mookie Betts or Yoshinobu Yatamoto for the next couple months.
Hi Rog! Last week's mailbag was one of the densest and most interesting ones to my sensibilities! That said, I'm ready to lower the bar by tossing in a question for this round. I've only been a subscriber and following along for the last two seasons, and in that time, I've loved your frequent dispatches from Richmond and Scottsdale, as well as trips out to San Jose and Eugene, and a couple of trips up the seaboard to see some MLB debuts! Do you ever dream about making a pilgrimage to the Felipe Alou Baseball Academy in Boca Chica DR and taking in some DSL games? From reading your reports, I understand that the baseball there is raw (bat on the shoulder for a .300 OBP, etc) but just curious if you have an itch to put that "DR" flag on your traveling suitcase any time in the future or not. Thanks as always for the great reads!
First, jazz, let me say a huge thank you for your support and interest! I can only do what I do — and get to these locations and watch ball — because of the support I receive from you and the rest of my subscribers, so let me take your question as an opportunity to say a huge and very sincere “Thank you!” to all of you who do subscribe!
To your question: yes, this is absolutely Item #1 on my baseball bucket list, and I am very much hoping that 2025 will be the year I can make this happen. I will admit that I’m a little uncertain how to arrange this trip — unfamiliarity with the lay of the land and my disappointing uni-lingual skills insert a lot of unknowns into planning. But I am very hopeful that I can get some helpful tips from the right people and am able to pull it off. That would be the best dispatches from the farm ever!
If anyone has any information that would help, don’t be shy!
OK- one more: How many fans or even teammates of the 2005 Salem-Keizer Volcanoes are aware that these days Mark Minicozzi is writing Pablo Sandoval's name in the third spot for the 2024 Staten Island FerryHawks most nights?
69 games at 2B for Minicozzi and 70 games at 3B for Sandoval on that Volcanoes squad nearly 20 years ago (Sergio Romo went 7-1) and now Minicozzi is managing Pablo on Staten Island. Amazing. Pablo looks to be playing plenty of 3B and even tossed an inning out of the pen (0.00 ERA, of course). Sandoval is the first World Series MVP to play in the Atlantic League.
This is awesome for a variety of reasons — an illustration of the way that baseball stories keep folding across each other, over and over; a display of the Panda’s pure love of the game (he’s the first World Series MVP to appear in the Atlantic League, but it should be said that AL MVP and all time Hall of Famer, Ricky Henderson, headed to the Atlantic for a spell after his major league career was over as well).
But mostly, I like ending on this story because it gives me the chance to pull this photo of an 18-year-old Panda out of the There R Giants’ archives (courtesy of Mickey Walker, current day owner of the independent Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, and, back in the day, the little ball boy on the left).
Look for a new podcast episode featuring Eli Walsh of Baseball Prospectus later today, as well as the normal Tuesday Stats and Complex League post.
I’m far too late to this but thank you so much for the enlightening answers Roger! I know this has been one hell of a week for you and Giants fans everywhere, so I just wanted to say thank you for everything you do covering all these games and interesting players! You’re one of my favorite parts about rooting for the Giants.
Those of you who skimmed through, GO BACK to the Glow-in the-Dark video. I would pay good money to see that in person!