Trent Harris is Having a Season of Discovery

SF Giants Minor Lines, May 29, 2024

Yesterday, a new TK Podcast dropped from Tim Kawakami, featuring his conversation with Giants’ Chairman Greg Johnson. The episode is interesting, if not particularly illuminating — I would say that Johnson has learned the hard way to think carefully about what he says in public by this point (he stresses repeatedly that the words “break even” will never escape his lips again).

For our purposes, the most important element of Johnson’s comments is his repeated use of the term “frustrating” when asked to speak about the farm system and player development. It’s a topic he continually returns to — bringing nearly all conversation back to it. The lackluster records of the past two years, the high payroll of this year, with its many CBT implications, the fruitless search for a star — all, in Johnson’s mind, are connected to the frustration of the farm system’s failure to produce ready talent over the past four or five years.

I think it’s reasonable to wonder, given a long-building sense of internal frustration, whether or not there will be some reckoning for those frustrations. At one point in the conversation, Kawakami asked directly if the club was addressing its player development processes or thinking about changes, and Johnson more or less ignored that question in his answer. I know this is a question that many of you have asked me in the mailbags as well.

Perhaps the success we’re starting to see at the big league level this year by players like Heliot Ramos, Luis Matos, Randy Rodriguez, and the continued evolution of Patrick Bailey, will forestall any internal consequences — Johnson did say he felt like things were in a good place now and trending in the right direction. We shall see how things feel at the end of the year, but this does feel like an important year for the PD system to prove its worth.

Anyway, it’s worth a listen.

HITTER of the NIGHT: Zach Morgan (Eug), 2 for 4, HR (2), 2b, 1 R, 1 RBI
PITCHER of the NIGHT: Trent Harris (SJ), 3.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 3 K

But let’s not lose our grip on things — it’s time for the daily roundup of Minor Lines!