There R Giants #37: Armani Smith
Photo Credit: Kevin Cunningham | Giant Futures
We’re into the There R Giants Top 50. Over the next few months, I’ll write a post on each of the fifty players in my rankings, leading us back to spring. So far, we’ve covered:
Welcome to a new week everyone! I hope you and yours had a very Merry Christmas weekend and enjoyed time spent with loved ones. We certainly did here at There R Giants Central. With the most wonderful time of the year behind us now, let’s jump back into the Top 50, shall we?
And now we come to the favorite prospect of NBC Sports Bay Area’s Alex Pavlovic and Cole Kuiper — both graduates of UC Santa Barbara, coincidentally! Yes, we’re featuring the Gauchos’ own Armani Smith today! Back when the Giants made Smith their 7th pick in the 2019 draft, I dropped a fairly lazy “poor man’s Hunter Bishop” comp on him. “Lazy” because all comps are lazy — but there were several elements that connected the two different 2019 draft picks in my mind.
Both were NorCal natives. Both were baseball players who came in football players’ bodies — big, powerful, fast! Both brought plus raw power connected to somewhat suspect hit tools, bringing higher than expected college strikeout rates with them. And both were statuesque, athletic, and just oozing potential. True, Bishop was left-handed while Smith bats from the right side, and Smith can’t quite match up to Bishop’s true plus speed. Still, you can see how my mind was working at the time — one way to ameliorate the risk of a high ceiling/low floor type of college outfielder was to pick up several editions of the phylum!
Three (admittedly atypical) years into the experiment, it’s time to check in and see where things stand.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to There R Giants to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.