There R Giants' 2024 Top 50: #6 Rayner Arias

The short but sweet debut of a phenom

So far in the Top 50:

• Just Missed List

• #50-46 (Lisbel Diaz, Hayden Wynja, Alix Hernandez, Carson Ragsdale, Ben Madison)

• #45-41 (Jose Cruz, Tyler Myrick, Eric Silva, Nick Zwack, Josh Bostick)

• #40-36 (William Kempner, R.J. Dabovich, Scott Bandura, Cole Foster, Nick Avila)

• #35-31 (Jairo Pomares, Manuel Mercedes, Ryan Murphy, Erik Miller, Spencer Miles)

• #30-26 (Kai-Wei Teng, Cole Waites, Randy Rodriguez, Maui Ahuna, Liam Simon)

• #25-21 (Gerelmi Maldonado, Carson Seymour, Adrian Sugastey, Onil Perez, Diego Velasquez)

• #20-16 (Heliot Ramos, Trevor McDonald, Landen Roupp, Victor Bericoto, Wade Meckler)

• #15-12 (Tyler Fitzgerald, Joe Whitman, Vaun Brown, Reggie Crawford)

• #11-10 (Aeverson Arteaga, Grant McCray)

• #9: Mason Black

• #8: Keaton Winn

• #7: Hayden Birdsong

Sixteen games. That’s all it was. Just sixteen games.

That’s all it took to enflame the imagination of Giants’ prospect followers — and not a few folks inside the organization as well.

Just thirteen months ago, the Giants announced that they were signing Arias to the club’s largest international bonus since they blew out their pool with a $6 million dollar signing bonus to Lucius Fox way back in 2015. The $2.7 million they inked Arias to just eclipsed Marco Luciano’s $2.6 million bonus. They didn’t exactly shy away from sky-high expectations either, immediately comping Arias to a young Eloy Jimenez-type player.

And, just like Luciano, Arias didn’t take long to start cashing in on all that anticipation with some very loud swings of the bat. Back in his pro debut in the summer of 2019, Luciano produced eight hits, five of which went for extra bases and three of which left the building, in an explosive three-game stretch in his very first week of play. He’d go on to bash 10 HR in a 38-game debut in the rookie league.

Arias came very close to matching that explosive start to a career. After taking an 0-fer in his pro debut, he would go 11 for 21 over his next five games, including three homers of his own and seven XBH!

Injury cut his debut short to just sixteen games — but what a splendid stretch it was. The imagination fires with fervent activity at such a beginning!