There R Giants #7: Will Bednar
Photo Credit: Mississippi State Athletics Department
We’re almost to the finish line of the There R Giants Top 50. Over the winter months, I’m writing 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.
A bulldog of a Bulldog — that’s what the Giants believe they’ve gotten in last year’s 1st round pick Will Bednar. Not just a talented pitcher with a wicked slider and a fastball with hops, but a competitor, a leader, a winner! And with this pick, the Giants are hoping they’ll break something of a franchise drought. The previous Giants’ regime made taking pitchers at the top of their drafts something of a regular occurrence: over the first 16 years of the century, the Giants selected a pitcher in the first round of the draft 14 times! And yet, after an incredible stretch of selections in the ‘00s, their magic touch seemed to desert them over the last decade. Though the Giants have taken a string of future big league pitchers over the last decade — Kyle Crick (2011), Chris Stratton (2012), Tyler Beede (2014), Phil Bickford (2015) — they haven’t selected a pitcher who has truly made an impact on their big league roster since way back in 2007, when they took a gangy left-handed teenager out of North Carolina who would go on to be one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time.
Like the MadBum himself, the Giants believe they’ve gotten, in Bednar, another pitcher who elevates his game at the most important moments. If they’re right, perhaps a future post-season rotation is beginning to come into focus for the organization. If the Giants and Bednar can write the perfect script, old legends will make way for new legends and championship stories will begin anew.
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