There R Giants #15: Nick Swiney

Photo Credit: Michelle Valenzuela | San Jose Giants

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.

If Nick Swiney’s last two seasons of baseball were the subject of a reality show, it could easily be titled: “Pardon the Interruption.” Four dominant games into his transition from bullpen to the NC State’s starting rotation, the college baseball season (and the world, generally) collapsed around him in 2020. A year later, he made it just one start into his pro career before a freak accident once again took the game away from him for an extended period.

But throughout the stops and starts, Swiney has charted a steady, upwards trend line that shows no signs of slowing down, rocketing near the top of the Giants’ pitching prospect depth chart — with potentially more growth to come. He’s a New School take on an Old School trope: the crafty lefty with pitch data that will knock your sox off. Pitching backwards off of a pair of wicked secondaries, his fastball doesn’t exactly garner enthusiastic hymns of praise. However, the advanced pitch data he can generate absolutely gets the data geeks humming. While the fastball velocity seems to make him a better fit for 20th century baseball than today’s fire breathing incarnation, his spin efficiency and pitch movement profiles make him very au courant.

He doesn’t seem like the type of guy who will dominate teams, but check out this stat: since the start of 2020, Swiney has faced 237 batters in college, rookie ball, and Low A. He’s struck out 100 of them. At some point, the numbers don’t lie, and those numbers are telling a story of an old fashioned craft lefty with modern day dominating traits.

Let’s dive into the paradox and see how, exactly, the Soft Tossing Assassin does it.

SFGProspects @SFGProspects

Nick Swiney struck out six in 4 2/3 scoreless innings on Sunday for San Jose