Photo Credit: Kirk Nawrotzky | Richmond Flying Squirrels
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:
One of the major categories in my “Just Missed” list this year was pitchers coming off (or still on) injuries. I can’t tell you how close my #46 prospect came to being on that list, instead of this one. Tristan Beck won’t be the last player in this series who fits neatly into a folder labeled: “if only he could stay healthy.” However, there might not be another player in the system who would seem to be so assured of a productive big league career if he could just stay out of the trainer’s room for awhile. By talent alone, Beck should probably be about 30 spots higher on this list. But talent is never alone — it’s always just one element of a complicated nexus of health and happenstance, opportunity and output. “If onlys” are the rule of the development world, not the exception, and Beck has endured more than his fair share of them. Entering 2022, the right-hander hopes to find his way back to a place where we spend more time talking about his ability than we do about his happenstance.
