There R Giants #38: Luis Toribio
Photo Credit: Michelle Valenzuela | San Jose Giants
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:
As an early Christmas gift, today is a Free For All post! Hope you enjoy it and have a wonderful holiday!
Pardon me for a slight delay. Before starting today’s post I need to write “Development is not linear” 1 hundred zillion times on the chalkboard (busy, busy, busy!) — just to make sure that I’m in the right frame of mind to discuss what was, truly one of the more disappointing seasons on the farm this year. I need to confront that disappointment while also getting the point across that one rough season does not necessarily determine the future. Baseball is hard and it comes to players in their own specific timeframe. Development is not linear, and sometimes good prospects are going to stumble in trying to find the path. Luis Toribio is a good prospect. Man, did Luis Toribio stumble this year. But he also continued to make some impressive strides. Both things can be true. As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
So, our challenge for today is to tread that fine line, held taut by opposition, look equally on the forward steps and the backwards, and try to give a feel for the various outcomes in front of this still-talented young player. So buckle up, and let’s take a spin around Luis Toribio’s 2021 adventures.
Background
A native of the Dominican Republic, Toribio signed with the Giants in 2017 — the last of three years in which the Giants’ ability to sign international free agents was capped at $300,000 as penalty for exceeding their bonus pool (considerably) in signing Lucius Fox. As an aside, it’s worth pointing out the tremendous scouting job the Giants did during that three year penalty window. While the 2016 class has mostly washed out at this point (other than Ghordy Santos), in 2015 the Giants were able to uncover a bumper crop of low dollar talent that included Camilo Doval, Kervin Castro, Ricardo Genoves, Diego Rincones, and Ismael Munguia. The 2017 class doesn’t look like it will be quite that productive, but in addition to Toribio, the Giants produced terrific five figure signings like Randy Rodriguez and the now-departed Alexander Canario and Ivan Armstrong. While the big money splash of 2018 is absolutely an epochal moment in the turnaround of this farm system, the international scouting group had clearly turned a major corner in their ability to find talent in the years leading up to that point. Tangent: concluded!
Toribio was one of six players to whom the Giants gave their maximum $300,000 signing bonus that year, and it didn’t take long for him to establish himself as the best of that group. As a 17-year-old making his pro debut in the DSL, Toribio showed two very loud skillsets: a highly advanced approach at the plate and some very big power from the left-hand side. His 10 home runs that season was the third highest total in the DSL (a league that included Seattle’s soon to be superstar prospect Julio Rodriguez, who hit five). Toribio became the first Giants’ DSL player to reach double figures in home runs since 2009 (Rey Duran), and the first 17-year-old to do so in the team’s recorded history (Rayner Santana would best him the following season, hitting 10 home runs at age 16).
Perhaps even more impressive, he seemed to come to pro ball with a ready made understanding of what he wanted to swing at and an iron-clad discipline in not going outside of his personal zone. While walk rates in the DSL are frequently more an indication of the wildness of teenaged pitchers than an advanced approach of teenaged hitters, in Toribio’s case the scouting reports matched the indications of his 18.6% walk rate. This was a player who carried a real plan to the plate and knew how to execute it well.
His timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous. Just as reports were coming out of the Giants’ Dominican camp that they had a young lefty hitter whose finest attribute was a mature approach at the plate, the Giants shook up their front office and brought in an executive who prized that skill above nearly all others. All available data has led teams to one crucial element of hitting success: the vast majority of damage done against big league pitching comes against middle-middle pitches, just as you might imagine. Thus, the most successful hitters are likely to be those who force pitchers into the middle and are most circumscribed about leaving it themselves. As Farhan Zaidi undertook the process of learning the farm system of his new club, he no doubt lingered awhile over the reports that the DSL staff was sending for this young 3b.
And internal reports weren’t the only ones blowing Toribio up. In the 2019 Prospect Handbook, Baseball America ranked the just-turned 18-year-old Toribio the system’s #9 prospect, before he’d ever played a game stateside. That was, in part, a nod to the lack of depth in the farm system, but it also suggested Toribio had turned a lot of heads in his DSL debut.
While it was certainly difficult to attract attention on the 2019 Arizona rookie league team that also included Marco Luciano, Alex Canario and more, Toribio held his own there and quietly garnered more fans. He hit .297 with an .895 OPS while maintaining his strong walk (19%) rate from DSL and keeping his strikeout rate (23%) stable as well. The power dropped significantly from his previous summer (just three HR) and some questions emerged as to whether his swing had enough loft for power, but he generated a lot of hard contact, with frequent 100+ mph exit velocities. Friend of the show (and current Twins scout) Jason Pennini, wrote of him that summer:
Toribio has good plate discipline and a powerful rotational swing that projects for plus raw [power]. He is very selective and will lay off pitches that are near misses, tracking pitches well and spitting on spin. Mechanically, his hands are quiet pre-slot; Toribio stays back and reacts. When he barrels up, contact is loud, and he is capable of high EV lasers, but he also swings with a lot of effort. The max-effort swings could eat into his contact rate as [he] faces more advanced pitching.
Coming into 2020, it looked like Toribio was primed for an explosion. Baseball America mentioned him on their list of players primed for Top 100 breakouts. More impressively, after COVID disrupted the spring, the Giants included him in the very small group of prospects who received invites to Summer Camp that July. He would spend the rest of the summer working against advanced arms at the Alternate Site in Sacramento. Along with his fellow teenagers in Sacramento, Kyle Haines expressed the hope that “when they head back to the A-ball level, they [will be] able to share a lot of what they learned from the veteran players with our other young players . . . and basically . . . become the veteran presence among their peers.” He ended his 2020 with a strong performance in the Instructs and looked prime to take off in his full season debut in 2021.
Scouting Report
JP handles the heavy lifting just above. Toribio’s greatest strengths lie in the batter’s box, where he shows off a heavily rotational swing straight out of Ted Williams’ The Science of Hitting, and a sense of patience and purpose at the plate that owes a little something to the Splinter, as well. Though he hasn’t shown off much home run power since his big DSL season, he consistently generates hard line drive contact. In the AZL in 2019, his average exit velocity (according to the data Eric Longenhagen was able to obtain at Fangraphs) was 93 mph with a maximum of 109 — both comparable to Luciano’s numbers at the same level.
Outside the batters’ box, Toribio’s overall limitations begin to show. Even as a 17-year-old in the DSL, there were signs that he lacked the athleticism, speed, and footwork necessary to stick at 3b. Though his arm plays at 3b and he shows decent hands and reactions, he lacked the agility that would help project 3b as his long term home. He also posted below average run times while still in his teens, leading to further concerns he would slow down further as he matured. Though his offensive potential was always the star attraction in his profile, it was still important for him to show defensive versatility and hold off a slide to “1b only” profile for as long as possible, given the extreme demands that puts on the development of the bat. So long as he maintains some basic versatility around the infield (the Giants have given him some action at 2b as well in camp settings), his solid approach to hitting and sound swing give him a good chance of turning into, at least, a platoon bat with potential for more.
This Season
…at least that was the report heading into the 2021 season! But during a rough year in San Jose in which he hit just .229, Toribio basically collided headlong with a worst case scenario: a full-time move to 1b combined with a steep drop in offensive production. It was, indeed, not great! But let’s see if we can figure out what happened and salvage some hopes for the future from the wreckage of the past summer.
At first blush, one might guess that it was Casey Schmitt’s inclusion on the San Jose roster that pushed Toribio over to 1b in deference to Schmitt’s plus glove. But that doesn’t actually appear to be the case. Throughout the first two months of the season, the pair were given consistent reps at the hot corner, with off days and revolutions through the DH position creating a satisfactory tag-team approach. Through the team’s first 50 games, Toribio started 24 games at 3b, while DH’ing 10 times. Schmitt had had 21 starts at 3b with 14 appearances as DH. It wasn’t until July 8 that Toribio made an appearance as the starting 1b. But from that point on, he made just three more starts at the hot corner, with the last of those coming on July 21.
No, it appears that the presence of Schmitt was not the prompt for Toribio to move over to 1b. Rather, it was a sort of “facts on the ground” scouting report from Lenn Sakata and his staff. Even more damning than the original move was the fact that Toribio didn’t return to 3b once Schmitt suffered the injury that cut short his season on August 10. Instead, Yorlis Rodriguez was brought up from the rookie league to help plug the 3b gap. It was difficult not to read that as a referendum on Toribio’s abilities at the position. His agility and athleticism had taken enough of a backwards step to move him off the position — for the season, if not for good.
At the same time, the man with the smooth left-handed swing frequently looked lost at the plate for large stretches of the year. Toribio fell into a deep hole right off the bat after a brutal slump that saw him SLUG just .250 over the first month, while reaching base less than 30% of the time. Things got slightly better after that, but he still posted just a .685 OPS through the end of June. In all, Toribio hit under .230 in four of the five months of the season. He ended the season with a .229/.351/.356 slash line, with just seven home runs. By Fangraphs wRC+ calculation, that was 5% worse than an average line of production for the league.
That’s not to say that his year didn’t offer some silver linings. He was still a remarkably patient hitter. Even in the worst of his early season slump, Toribio could be counted on to give pitchers a tough battle. Over the course of the year, he saw 4.08 pitches per plate appearance — by far the best on the team. He maintained a strong walk rate of 15.4%, which helped him put up a fairly strong OBP (.351) despite the low average. Of players who saw any significant amount of playing time, only Brett Auerbach swung less frequently than Toribio’s 42% swing rate. Toribio also continued to really blister balls throughout the year — frequently producing exit velocities over 100 with a high on the year of 114. That’s up where the big boys go! Though he didn’t produce gaudy numbers, he was a daily presence in the starting lineup of the league’s best team and a frequent contributor to the Giants’ highest win total in years.
However, a major chink in his armor did appear this year. His strikeout rate took a significant spike upwards to 28%. The culprit seems to have been an issue with pitch recognition as he was beat repeatedly by breaking balls. Working long at bats is a quality the Giants want to see in their young hitters, but too often for Toribio in this season, the result of those long at bats was swinging over a breaking ball — leading to 113 strikeouts in just 94 games.
One thing about being a starter on a championship team, however, is that the playoffs offer an opportunity to start afresh. Toribio took that opportunity and ran with it, as his bat provided most of the production in the Giants’ 3-1 victory over Fresno in Game 1 of the Low A championship series. His two hit night included an RBI double and a booming home run.
Yes, the sweet taste of champagne will wash some of the bad taste out of your mouth at season’s end!
The Future
This is a tricky one! In my “Way Too Early” roster previews, I took a guess that Toribio would be pushed up to Eugene to start the year, even off of his lackluster 2021. In part, that was related to wanting to give Garrett Frechette a clear opportunity to succeed in his second go round with San Jose. But I can definitely see the Giants wanting to see more out of Toribio and returning him to Low A with the hope that he would force a promotion to Eugene with a strong start.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Giants still value Toribio and believe strongly in is future. We’re still just eighteen months removed from his surprising inclusion at big league camp in July of 2020. He’s the type of hitter this organization prizes, and scouts from other NL West clubs talked to me very enthusiastically about his swing even as he struggled through his rough full season debut.
But with that said, we’re still stuck with a harsh truth: if he’s a 1b for good, the bat will need to develop to something like a best case outcome, and obviously .230 with seven home runs isn’t that. Personally, I’m not that worried about the home run power — I think that will come over time, at least to a modest 15-20 level. But his inability to pick up or fight off spin this year was a disturbing sign. That it came with an apparent backwards step in his athleticism defensively was something of a horn attached to the flashing light. Those trends need to head in a more positive direction next year.
The good news is: they can! Allow me to pluck at random a scouting report from the Wayback Machine:
A shortstop in high school, [Player X] has moved to third base as a pro and has a strong, accurate arm. He needs to work on his first-step quickness to develop better range, and he could end up at first base. He's not athletic and has below-average speed.
Why, bless my hide, how did I manage to pull Gold Glove 3b Nolan Arenado’s 2010 Prospect Handbook report out of the hat? Perhaps, though, it’s more important to show what came after that. This is from the 2013 Prospect Handbook:
After the 2010 season, the Rockies expected Arenado to move to first base because he was such a defensive liability at the hot corner, with minimal range and no feel for the position. But he got in better shape, worked hard on his first-step quickness and has blossomed into a quality third baseman. He lacks speed but compensates by reading and reacting to balls instinctively.
And here we complete our circle, returning again to the mantra at the top. In 2021, Toribio took a step backwards, but the path forwards is still there, waiting in front of him. He can work on his first step quickness and agility to the point of convincing the Giants he deserves more time at 3b. He can take curve after curve from the pitching machines to improve his pitch recognition and make himself a harder out at the plate. Or, in a best case scenario, he can do both — move back up the defensive spectrum while recovering some of his tarnished reputation at the plate.
One bad year does not a bad prospect make. It’s true that Toribio has taken a Humpty Dumpty level tumble down my rankings this year. But, as I’ve said in other places, don’t get too concerned with the ordinal rankings. He’s fallen down to this level in large part because the baseball industry generally downgrades 1b prospects, he’s coming off a rough year, and a lot of other players in the system took big steps forward this year.
But he’s also just turned 21 — the same age as many college juniors who are looking to boost their draft stock by putting disappointing sophomore years behind them. Some will! While some will go the opposite direction.
The future isn’t written. Luis Toribio has some definite work to do to recover his former top prospect status. He also has time in which to do that work and a solid foundation from which to build. Hopefully, 2022 will bring the zag to this year’s zig.
Merry Christmas to all of my readers here at There R Giants. This has been a really fun year for me and I truly appreciate all of your support. Just a note for the next week — I’ll be taking Christmas Eve off, so this is the last post for this week. There is still one more stocking stuffer planned — a podcast with Josh Norris of Baseball America. That should hit your Inbox sometime tomorrow. For next week, I don’t have a guest lined up but I would like to record a solo edition of the podcast and answer some listener questions — if I get some good ones anyway. So please leave some questions below or email them to me at ThereRGiants@gmail.com and I’ll record that for the end of year.
To all of you and yours, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a new year filled with joy, health, happiness and peace — and another ring for the Giants, too!
This really caught my eye: "in 2015 the Giants were able to uncover a bumper crop of low dollar talent that included Camilo Doval, Kervin Castro, Ricardo Genoves, Diego Rincones, and Ismael Munguia." Holy shinola! That is GREAT scouting.