Send in Your Questions for the All Star Break Free For All Mailbag
We’ve reached the halfway point folks! With the arrival of All Star Games, home run derbies, draft days, and a looming trade deadline, I’m sure you have much to occupy your baseball minds! Let me know what you’re thinking about and I’ll do my best to respond!
Kyle Harrison, Mason Black, and Hayden Birdsong all received various amounts of praise during their minor league stints for their fastballs. You yourself stated in the past that Black’s fastball gets by on its good shape, and called Birdsong’s “electric”. Not trying to phrase this question as any sort of “gotcha” with that, just providing context for where my question comes from. Which is: why do stuff models hate them all then? Harrison’s FB not being the whiff monster it was in the minors has been a talking point all season, but I feel like Black and Birdsong are even more striking to me from a dev standpoint. Stuff+ thinks both of Black’s fastballs are bad, and it rates Birdsong’s worse, even with the velo difference. I’d say the pitches have generally performed like that too- Mason’s fastballs got crushed in the majors, and Hayden is already throwing ~50% non-fastballs three starts into his major league career (though also surely because his non-fastballs are filthy)
So I’m left wondering how these prospects had so much genuine success and garnered (varying) levels of hype on fastballs that turned out to have what we seemingly think are sub-optimal movement profiles. Do the Giants just see fastballs that much differently than consensus?
There’s been much discussion in the last couple of years about the org’s challenge of developing starter-level hitters. I think it’s fair to say that was an alarming deficiency. Now the Giants have two home-grown pieces in the middle of the lineup in Heliot Ramos (age 24) and Patrick Bailey (25). Has the narrative shifted in your mind? Or do you feel the jury is still out about whether this regime has what it takes to produce capable bats?