There R Giants #7: Luis Matos
In which we do not talk of strikeouts!
Top 50 time is here! So far we’ve looked at:
50: Victor Bericoto
49: Chris Wright
48: Sean Roby
47: P.J. Hilson
46: Alexander Suarez
45: Mikell Manzano
44: Diego Velasquez
43: Carson Ragsdale
42: William Kempner
41: Seth Lonsway
40: Shane Matheny
39: Sean Hjelle
38: Brett Auerbach
37: Ricardo Genovés
36: Hunter Bishop
35: Nick Zwack
34: Erik Miller
33: Spencer Miles
32: Manuel Mercedes
31: Trevor McDonald
30: Ryan Reckley
29: Gerelmi Maldonado
28: Will Bednar
27: Ryan Murphy
26: Will Wilson
25: Nick Swiney
24: Jose Cruz
23: R.J. Dabovich
22: Adrian Sugastey
21: Patrick Bailey
20: Tristan Beck
19: Randy Rodriguez
18: Jairo Pomares
17: Carson Seymour
16: Landen Roupp
15: Tyler Fitzgerald
14: Heliot Ramos
13: Keaton Winn
12: Eric Silva
11: Cole Waites
#10: Reggie Crawford
#8: Mason Black
Finally, the hitters! After some long, lonely stretches down Pitcher Highway, we’re finally taking a left onto Sweet Swinging Lane. It’s time to talk exit velocities and sparkling up the middle D — the favorite baseball focus of all right-minded fans! Finally, we get to watch guys thwack spherical objects with a stick. No lie!
But today’s lesson in stick thwacking will be different in one significant respect from nearly all of the ones to come after. As Melissa Lockard mentioned in yesterday’s podcast, one omnipresent and unsettling element of the 2022 Giants’ player development program was the plague of strikeouts that swooped down upon the farm and hovered over virtually everyone in sight. Whole swaths of the year looked just like this:
(I would say, presumably, without the aid of any mysterious wood-repelling formulas, but you never know what teams are cooking up in their pitcher labs these days!)
Only Luis Matos, the subject of today’s post, seemed to make it through unafflicted, moving through his season showing nary a symptom of whiffus incresco. And yet, here we find him at #7, having dropped five critical spots in There R Giants’ annual rankings, regardless of his imperviousness to various troubles with the curve. This, it would seem, presents us with something of a mystery. How did the one guy who didn’t suffer from mushrooming K rates still fail to thrive — and what does it mean for the future of one of our favorite guys in the system.
Solving that little puzzle, is today’s assignment, as the There R Giants’ Top 50 rolls along…
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