We’re into the There R Giants Top 50. Over the winter months, I’ll write a post on each of the fifty players in my rankings, leading us back to the much-needed spring. Our list of previously covered players is getting a little long, so from here on out I’m moving the links for the full list down the bottom of the post.
Welcome to the wild ride of Year 1 in pro ball for Patrick Bailey. Perhaps I should say “Years 1 and 2” since Bailey’s 2020 and 2021 were in some sense one long, nearly uninterrupted introduction of the professional work load. Bailey showed up in San Francisco to sign his contract in July of 2020 and ended up in the squat for much of the next 16 months. Just as he was agreeing to a deal, the belated 2020 major league season kicked into gear, folding him into the big league Summer Camp and then sending him to Sacramento for the remainder of the year for work at the Alternate Site. After a short winter (during which he was married, so first, congratulations, and second, not exactly the most restful offseason activity!), Bailey was right back at it starting February 14, catching bullpens in big league camp and participating in an honest to God big league spring training, followed by a little more Alternate Site work in Sacramento. All of that came before he took his first official professional at bat.
By the time his professional debut finally came in May of 2021, Bailey had spent more than five months working with the top of the Giants development staff and both catching and batting against the Giants’ major league and Triple A level pitchers. When the time finally came to get a professional batting line of his own, anticipation was high that he was a talent who could move very quickly through the system.
And then…. what came next was a hard fall, and dramatic return, and a lot of questions. How healthy was he? Was he overmatched by the level? Was he tired? Was he physically ready to to perform? What the heck was going on?
A tremendous final push rescued Bailey’s season from being a quote-unquote “lost year,” but when it was all said and done, perhaps only fellow 1st rounder Hunter Bishop headed into the off-season with more questions surrounding his future.
Let’s see if we can do our best Carnac the Magnificent and make some sense of what happened with the talented switch-hitting catcher (and Bat Flip King, as Alex Pavlovic was on, right from the start!).
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