Rule 5 Decision: Will Wilson

The Giants ended up with double the 2019 1st round picks, which means double the choices!

Photo Credit: Kirk Nawrotzky | Richmond Flying Squirrels

This is the fourth in a series focusing on the Giants’ upcoming Rule 5 protection choices. There’s a fairly large selection of players who present challenging decisions, so we’ll take a look at them one by one. In previous editions, we’ve looked at:

• Hunter Bishop

• Jose Cruz

• Tristan Beck

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When the Giants exercised their financial might to acquire the Angels most recent first round pick at the cost of picking up Zack Cozart and his $12 million salary for 2020, it seemed to herald an exciting new approach to bulking up the organization’s talent levels (because they immediately waived him, paying off the entire year, the unwanted Cozart ironically ended up one of the highest paid players in baseball in the pandemic-shortened season). Many Giants fans no doubt looked forward to many more such acquisitions, with the team going on a shopping spree of unwanted contracts that the Giants could greedily gobble down along with high-end talent from other org’s farm systems, providing the proverbial spoon full of sugar.

Instead, Will Wilson’s acquisition stands as a one-off so far — a path tentatively peered down, but not exactly a new direction boldly pursued. And, as of yet, the results from that high-priced “purchase” of an extra 1st round pick have been somewhat middling, with Wilson flashing intriguing tools, but not yet putting together consistent performances. After spending all of 2020 at the Alternate Site, Wilson has hit just .232/.324/.421, with 28 HR across three levels, good for an overall wRC+ of 102. In other words, he’s basically been a league average hitter during his minor league career — which isn’t exactly where you want to see future major league contributors’ stats lines sitting in their minor league journey. And even that level of production has come with a rather exorbitant 31% K rate.

Still, the Giants have long showered enthusiastic praise on their purloined 1st rounder — noting at the time of the deal that he was highly considered for the 10th overall pick of the 2019 draft before they settled on Hunter Bishop (Wilson would last just five more picks before the Angels called his name), and frequently calling out his unique skillset as a capable middle infielder with impressive raw power. They’ve backed up their praise by moving him aggressively. When Wilson was pushed up to Sacramento last June, he became the first member of the class of 2019 that the Giants had elevated to Triple A.

That should make today’s assignment pretty simple. First round pick whom the Giants love, who has made it to the upper minors — that’s an easy yes, right?

We shall see…