What was Churchill’s famous line about Russia? “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” Somehow that nugget is buzzing around my mind as I try to wrap my arms around the Richmond Flying Squirrels’ 2022. The team made the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons….but it also finished below .500 for the fifth time in its past six seasons. Some players who many (including farm director Kyle Haines) expected to play significant roles for the team in the second half (e.g., Marco Luciano, and Luis Matos) failed to show up, but others did (Kyle Harrison, Casey Schmitt) and had a huge impact on both the team and the organization’s future prospects. At the end of the season, one of the most anticipated promotions belonged to a player who was almost completely unknown at the start of the year (Vaun Brown) — and when it finally did come, that promotion sadly augured an ending, rather than a new beginning.
Yes, the Richmond season was a bit of a conundrum. Successful in many ways, not quite so successful in others. Manager Dennis Pelfrey told me at the end of the year that he thought, developmentally speaking, that the team was playing the game better in the second half of the season, when their record was a dismal 26-42, than they had been in the first half, when their 40-29 mark got them into the playoffs.
Though the team was swept in their best of three playoff series against Erie, getting just one game in front of a playoff hungry fanbase in Richmond that had waited eight long years to see post-season action up close again, the importance of getting that far can’t be overstated. One of the key elements that has been missing from the Giants’ farm system the last several years is the ability to move prospects successfully up to the upper minors. The last competitive Richmond team before this year dates all the way back to 2015 — a team that not so surprisingly included a lot of players who have had useful big league careers (Austin Slater, Kelby Tomlinson, Tyler Rogers, Kyle Crick, Tyler Beede etc.). Since then, the Richmond outpost of the Giants’ system has been mostly barren of both victories and successful development stories. So, getting a team into the league’s post-season, even if they didn’t stay long, has to be counted a step in the right direction — though the Richmond faithful would certainly like to host more than just one solitary playoff game next year!
But, while winning is the point of competitive sports, development is the point of minor league ball, and from that perspective, Richmond certainly offered up several significant success stories: they produced a big leaguer, a super-prospect (who the front office is already talking about playing a big role next year), and a few position players who could be working their way into contributing, or even starting, roles in the not-too-distant future. Why, they even managed to find a few at bats for Luciano before the year was through.
As was true of so much of the Giants’ work on the farm this year, it didn’t go quite as planned, but it worked out pretty well regardless!
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