There R Giants #25: Will Wilson

Photo Credit: Kirk Nawrotzky | Richmond Flying Squirrels

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.

Context matters, of course. Text matters, certainly it does! But context matters, too. Our stupid human brains have a variety of ways of distorting context mercilessly with a full battalion of bias filters. We’re forever seeking certainty in a world that offers only ambiguity. First impressions stick, recent impressions stick harder — the way it was is the way it’s always going to be. Did a player strike out three times the day I watched or blast a home run? That’s who they are. I saw it! Yes, our stupid broken brains are always playing us for suckers. What do you have to say for yourself, brain?

Ok fine. That is a pretty good trick.

Three 1st round picks began last year as a celebrated triad on the Eugene Emeralds’ roster: Hunter Bishop (Giants 2019, #10 pick), Patrick Bailey (Giants 2020, #13 pick), and Will Wilson (Angels 2019, #15 pick). Each of them went through an assortment of trials and tribulations as the year went along. All three of them ended up together again at season’s end on the Arizona Fall League Scottsdale Scorpions.

And yet, as the summer and fall faded, Bishop and Bailey each, in the popular mind, finished their years on something of a redemption note, while Wilson’s struggles were viewed with a harsher eye by Giants’ fans — this despite the fact that he had been pushed the hardest, the quickest. Our mission today, if we accept it, is to investigate how much of that assessment is fair and how much is due to the distorting lens of our stupid broken brains.

So let’s open the course book to chapter 1, shall we, and see what there is to be seen in a season of ups and downs ….

Josh Norris @jnorris427

And here's Will Wilson's bomb as well #Giants