Week 4 in Review: Marco Luciano busts loose
May ends on an upswing
We have more promotions to discuss! Matt Frisbee’s dominance of Double-A Northeast League has come to an end as he’s moving on up to Triple-A West. Of course, that’s what happens when you’re a #pitcherwhorakes!
Of course, Matt can pitch a bit, too!
Here’s what I wrote about Frisbee in yesterday’s weekend roundup post:
Matt Frisbee continues to dominate Double-A hitters by living in the shadow zone with his fastball and sequencing his kill pitches expertly. Frisbee once again issued no walks and now has a sterling 24 to 1 K/BB ratio this year. His first strike percentage (68.9%) is fourth best among all Double-A pitchers, and his percentage of Called or Swinging Strikes (36%) is in the top 15 among all Double-A levels.
Frisbee allowed a leadoff hitter on Sunday and then ripped off 21 consecutive outs to finish 7 full innings for the first time this year. He continues to thrive with a complete mastery of not-sexy but solid stuff. This is a man who knows exactly how precise he needs to be and executes that precision with an incredible consistency pitch to pitch. Richmond may not be seeing Big Friz for long!
Not long, indeed! Frisbee’s use of precision, movement, and some killer secondaries made him one of the most successful starting pitchers in Double-A over the season’s first month and now he’s on to new challenges. In honor of his brief Double-A career, let’s relive every strikeout that Frisbee recorded in his perfect six innings that started the Squirrels first ever nine-inning no hitter:
PLAYER of the Week: Marco Luciano, .409/.458/.947,
3 doubles, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 2 BB, 2 K
The bats of many of the Giants’ best prospects have turned cold as we’ve reached the end of May, but Marco Luciano is heading the white hot direction. The 19-year-old slugger grabbed a share of his league’s lead in HR this week, and only three Low-A players have hit more in any of the three leagues. He also sits in third place in Low-A West in total bases — just behind Seattle’s similarly talented teenage SS Noelvi Marte and just in front of the A’s Tyler Soderstrom. With the big BIG blasts, we’ve seen Luciano making much more contact this week and a better control of the strike zone. He struck out more than 27% of the time in the season’s first three weeks while walking just 4 times. His 2 BB to 2 K ratio last week was a major step in the right direction. Underneath the hood, he’s also done a better job at deciding which pitches to take a whack at. His Swing percentage is down to just 46%, one of the lower swing rates on the team — his talented teammate Luis Matos swings at more than 65% of the pitches thrown in his direction. Both of Luciano’s home runs this week came on 2-0 counts. He’s watching, he’s discriminating, and then he’s attacking — just the way the Giants like it! And when Marco attacks, things start to quake. Witness the blast that long time play by play man Joe Ritzo called “one of the most impressive home runs I’ve ever seen in San Jose.”
PITCHER of the Week: Matt Frisbee, 13.0 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 0 BB, 16 K
Matt Frisbee faced a difficult assignment this week — a two start week in the one true “launching pad” of the old Eastern League. And Frisbee did give up a couple of launches — Reading hit two home runs off of him in his Tuesday start. But overall Frisbee was the one to emerge victorious, throwing 13 innings over two starts and allowing just 3 runs while recording an extraordinary 16 K to 0 BB ratio. Solo home runs are going to happen — and there was some legitimate hard contact for the first time against his fastball in Reading — but there’s no other pitcher in the system who is controlling the strike zone the way Frisbee is. He’s also controlling the pace of at bats, attacking hitters quickly, and almost always getting ahead of them — then forcing them to contemplate whether he’s going to go up in their sight lines to put them away with a high fastball or zoink the splitter on them and leave them swinging at air. His pitch efficiency has him leading the system in innings pitched (29.0).
Frisbee’s success reminds me a bit of Chris Heston’s work with the Squirrels, and I always remember what a scout once told me about Heston’s chances to succeed in the big leagues: “he doesn’t have a lot of margin for error, but he sure knows what he’s doing.” That proved to be pretty accurate — when the arm felt good and the velocity was up, Heston was a terrifically effective big league pitcher. When there was the slightest degradation in the stuff, things went south for him. Frisbee’s lower-end velocity might set him up for the same sort of career, but he’s also coming up in an organization that knows how to get the most out of their pitchers, so we’ll see how the Giants help him fine-tune his repertoire to reach peak effectiveness.
Incoming
Hey, the Giants have another new player! Are you not surprised? While there’s every chance that Sam Delaplane will have been put on waivers again by the time I’ve finished typing this very sentence, on the off chance that he sticks around awhile let’s get to know him!
On first blush, this is may be the most exciting minor move the Giants have made this year (although my heart does belong to the Sam Long pickup). Delaplane has been an extreme up-and-comer in the Mariners system until Tommy John surgery slowed his roll. Seattle seems to have decided they weren’t willing to wait out the recovery and rehab time and sold Delaplane’s rights to the Giants for the ol’ “cash considerations.” Not a bad gamble on a pitcher who Fangraphs’ raved about in their Mariners’ prospect list:
Delaplane has power, vertical action stuff that I think is going to play in a high-leverage relief role. He creates a nearly perfect vertical arm slot by striding wide open, starting on the third base side of the rubber but landing in the middle of the mound. It helps give his fastball plus-plus carry and ride. Delaplane also has a power, Brad Lidge-style slider with late, downward movement. He has less raw arm strength than the Nick Andersons of the world, but the stuff works in the same way, and I think Delaplane will be a reliever of rare quality once he returns from Tommy John, which should be in the middle of 2022.
The Giants have some serious 40-man decisions to make in the very near future, so we’ll see how long they can keep Delaplane on the roster (and/or in the organization), but this is another exciting arm to add to a growing group of potential-impact relief arms.
Sacramento River Cats: 9-14
The River Cats stumbled through a rough week, winning just one of their six games. Most of the blame falls on a pitching staff that’s had trouble putting zeros up on the board — even at home in Sacramento — as they allowed more than 6 runs per game throughout the week. The team ERA now stands at 5.06 — and while that’s actually the 4th best in the league, it still puts a lot of pressure on the bats to perform.
One player who certainly did his best to bring that team ERA down is hometown hero Sam Long, who provided friends and family with a spectacular Triple-A debut in which he struck out the first eight batters he saw at the level. Remember, this is a player who had pitched just 16 innings above the Low-A level prior to this game, and managed to make advanced hitters look like this:
Long ended up going 3.2 innings, striking out 9 and allowing just one batter to reach base. He was removed after just 55 pitches — he has yet to throw more than 63 pitches in a game this year — leaving behind one of the greatest Triple-A debuts of all time. We don’t have any way of ascertaining whether his feat of striking out the first 8 hitters was a first, but it certainly would seem to be worthy of calling “historic,” nonetheless.
My ever-patient editor (thank you, Jeff!) had a few follow-ups for me yesterday regarding my comments about Tyler Beede, so I want to revisit his situation. Beede is currently on a Rehab Assignment and, administratively, that rehab must end at 30 days (which would be June 6). That gives him one more start in this rehab assignment. That does not, however, mean that he must be activated off the 60-day IL at that point. The Giants have several options to keep him on the 60-day if they feel he is not yet ready for active duty. They can stop the rehab and have him rest, work on the side, send him back to Scottsdale, etc. If they choose such a path they could then start a new 30 day Rehab Assignment for him at some point in the future. They could also bring him off the 60 day IL and then either have him join the Giants, or option him to Sacramento. However, if they choose that route, somebody will have to be DFA’d off the 40 man to make room for him. If they choose to terminate the rehab and keep him on the 60 day, he will need to take a short break from regular turns in the Sacramento rotation. So the question for the Giants (if they feel he’s not ready to join the big league club) will be: which is most important to them. If keeping Beede working regularly is the priority, he’ll need to brought back to the 40 man and somebody will be DFA’d. If protecting the inventory is most important, he’ll need to take, at least, a short break from his regular work before starting a new Rehab Assignment. Got all that?
Long-term I think the important elements of Beede’s rehab is that his stuff has bounced back well. His search for command is hardly unusual for pitchers rehabbing from Tommy John, and is almost to be expected in the case of someone like Beede who has always had some issues with wavering command. He’s still on a good track overall but maybe don’t plan your upcoming ticket requests around seeing him at Oracle.
We’ve spent the last few Week in Reviews peering at the micro-splits of the specific week at hand. But with a month of the season behind us, the time has come to take a step back and look at the overall trends. So let’s take a look at some of the season lines for the hitters.
Joey Bart missed most of the last week with some groin tightness — all that time in the SQWAAT — but the short time off didn’t cool his bat down any. He went 3 for 5 with a double last night, and has consistently been one of the most powerful bats in the Sacramento lineup when he’s played. The K rate is still a little high — and strikeouts are likely always going to be a part of his game, but you can see from the Isolated Slugging above that he’s impacted the ball when he’s made contact.
I should note that wRC+ is a stat that is more meaningful at the big league level than it is in minor leagues — where the competitive environment is less stable and more variable overall — but it still gives an idea of how players have performed relative to their peers. It looks at the overall batting line and weights it on a scale where 100 is a league average performance, 150 is 50% better than league average, 50 is 50% worse than league average, etc. From that perspective, the River Cats have five hitters performing better than the average in the Triple-A West, led by Thairo Estrada and Bart. Estrada has been a consistent force in the lineup all year — leading the team in hits, HR, RBI, extra-base hits, and Total Bases. If there’s a negative in his season, it’s that he’s also leading the team in Errors by quite a wide margin. Shortstops normally lead their teams in E’s but 7 in 17 games does seem like an unnecessarily rapid pace!
Only two teams in the Triple-A West have hit more home runs that Sacramento, and Estrada’s team-high 6 long balls is fifth highest in the league.
Richmond Flying Squirrels: 15-9
The Squirrels, on the other hand, have been carried by their pitching so far this year. Richmond’s 82 runs allowed is the second lowest in the Double-A NorthEast league — only the Northeast Division leading Somerset Patriots have been stingier (75). That’s true of nearly every statistical measure as well — Richmond is consistently the second best staff in the league, after Somerset, no matter what number you look at — hits allowed, K/BB, WHIP, HR allowed, those two teams are 1-2 everywhere. Squirrels pitchers have struck out the 4th most hitters in the league, while walking the 4th fewest.
And it’s been a team effort. A stout starting rotation hands the ball off to a terrific bullpen on a nightly basis. The rotation gets a lot of the prospect love (and deservingly so), but the pen has been the backbone of the team. A core group of Norwith Gudino, Joey Marciano, Matt Seelinger, and Ronnie Williams has simply shut the door on opposition hitters, allowing just four earned runs between them in 45.2 IP. Marciano has been close to perfect, allowing just 6 of the 36 batters he’s faced to reach base, while striking out 13 with his terrific mid-90s fastball and sharp slider. Gudino has struck out 40% of the batters he’s faced on the year (20 of 50), relying heavily on a dastardly splitter, while Seelinger, in less work, has done even better, striking out more than 50% of the batters he’s faced (17 of 33). Williams, who has often worked as a piggy-back starter throwing 3 or 4 innings in the middle of games, has a stingy 0.61 ERA and actually has a share of the league Wins lead! As I talked about with Squirrels radio man Trey Wilson this week, Double-A teams have a lot of guys who can craft major league careers beyond the big prospects — and the bullpen is a great place to look for them on this team.
Trey also mentioned that this pen was a bit unlike previous Richmond teams, in that it didn’t have anybody with huge, triple-digit velocity in it. But that was before Jose Marte showed up! Marte brought his 100 mph fastball and vicious downward breaking slider and immediately made his presence known in Reading, striking out former Royal Jorge Bonafacio (who was in the middle of a 3-homer performance):
Of course, the rotation still commands most of the attention, and Richmond’s trio of Sam Long, Sean Hjelle, and Matt Frisbee has been strong throughout the year. But with both Long and Frisbee in Sacramento, that strength is going to be challenged going forward. Beck has been inconsistent and also was pushed back in his last start with a little soreness, and fifth starter Gerson Garabito has been a clear weak link so far. The team will really need strong performances from Hjelle and newcomer Caleb Kilian. In his Double-A debut this weekend, Kilian found that Double-A hitters were harder to put away than the A ball folks.
On the hitting side, Heliot Ramos continues to lead the charge, while still showing that there are things for him to work on at this level.
Ramos still has a lot of swing and miss in his game as he’s swinging at half the pitches he sees (50.5%) and making contact with just 61% of them. Still, the overall line has been encouraging — he’s walking at a steady clip and hitting for decent power when he makes contact. But some of the numbers are being born on the wings of some lucky hitting — his average on balls in play is a sky high .462, and some of those singles are going to stop falling in soon (at higher levels they’d be gobbled up by advanced positioning). My observation is that he’s currently looking for breaking balls out over the plate and looking to drive them the opposite way — 40% of his balls in play have gone to right field this year, by far the highest percentage of his career. He’s got the strength to power balls that way, but pitchers are now challenging him with fastballs up and in and he’s swinging through a lot of them. We’ll see if he can make the adjustment back to turn on the hard stuff going forward.
Shane Matheny has given the team a steady presence at shortstop this year, but his offense had mostly been limited to working walks before he showed some pop this week with his first Double-A homer and an RBI double in Saturday’s double-header. As you can see from the above table, though, there’s been a lot of swinging and missing from the middle of the Squirrels order. Thank god for minor league free agent Kyle Mottice, who’s been a consistent source of contact — if not terribly hard contact — throughout the year.
Eugene Emeralds: 15-9
I suppose we need to talk about the Giants draft classes of 2019-20. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but so far in 2021, the hitters haven’t been off to great starts!
The 2019 top pick Hunter Bishop has, unfortunately, been kept off the field nearly all spring by injury — and it’s not clear when we’ll see the prodigiously talented slugger again as he rehabs a shoulder strain. Beyond Bishop’s medical issues, there’s not a single hitter selected in the top 10 rounds of 2019 or any of the rounds in 2020 who is off to a strong start at the plate.
Patrick Bailey has looked terrific behind the plate:
but at the dish with a stick in his hands, he’s been less sure of himself so far, striking out 33% of the time and hitting just .205 so far in his pro debut. We’ll get to his 2020 classmates with San Jose in a minute (sneak preview: not good!), but the top picks from the 2019 draft joining him in Eugene are struggling mightily as well. Second rounder Logan Wyatt has drawn his share of walks, but is also striking out a relatively excessive clip for a player who is displaying pitcher-level lack of power. I mean, .039 ISO is just a crazy lack of impact! That’s exactly two extra base hits in 87 plate appearances! Wyatt’s Louisville teammate Tyler Fitzgerald is also having trouble finding holes in the defense, though he’s still showing a strong hard hit rate. Fitzgerald also provided Eugene with one of the highlights of its week, when he rescued victory from the jaws of defeat, hitting a two-run bomb in the bottom of the 8th to help Eugene sneak out a split of their six-game series against Spokane.
But, yeah, man, these 2019-20 hitting drafts are having a tough time getting things going!
Fortunately, the pitching side of things has been more impressive for the Emeralds. Though they lost staff leader Caleb Kilian to promotion, the team continues to pile up Ks. Chris Wright, the former two-way player from Bryan University, came up from San Jose and gave the team an immediate boost with a Sam Long-esque debut. The left-hander struck out 7 of the 8 batters he faced, utilizing a 90-92 mph fastball at the top fo the zone and a sweeping breaking ball to totally befuddle Spokane hitters
In the rotation, Seth Corry continued his mercurial ways this week, allowing just 1 hit over two starts, while striking out 18 — but walking 10. Corry has been, once again, nearly impossible to hit when he’s in the strike zone — or enticing hitters to swing. He’s given up just five hits over his last four starts combined. But so far this year he’s virtually never had a feel for both his fastball and curve at the same time — and often not a consistent feel for either. He misses non-competitively far too often, helping boost his pitch counts into the stratosphere — he has yet to pitch 5 full innings. He’s thrown a first pitch strike to fewer than 40% of his batters faced and, ultimately, walked fully one-quarter of the batters he’s faced this year. Twenty-one walks in 19 innings just isn’t a pathway to success. Corry is obviously a highly talented arm and it’s clear where he needs to improve to take that next step in his development.
Eugene concluded a somewhat odd week that included their first walk-off win of the year, and also saw Kai-Wei Teng ejected for having a foreign substance on his glove. Potentially the most momentous moment of the week, however, came in their final inning of play, when Will Wilson, their best player so far, was struck by a ball off the bat of Logan Wyatt and went down in pain. Dalton Johnson has reported that the injury doesn’t appear to be as bad as it looked at first, and that Wilson is considered day to day. That’s a big sigh of relief if true, because this looked bad:
San Jose Giants: 15-9
San Jose is bashing their way to the top of the Low-A West standings, leading the league in long balls. And nobody’s been bashing them lately like Luciano, who continues to drop jaws with the might in his 19-year-old body. It’s really not normal for a teenager to have this kind of opposite field power.
But beyond Marco’s theatrics, it’s been a struggle for much of the young talent in San Jose.
As promised, the rest of the 2020 hitting class is really scuffling in Low A in their pro debuts — Casey Schmitt’s 28 wRC+ is particularly noticeable. Schmitt’s making a lot of contact, with just a 15% K rate, but so far it hasn’t been good quality contact. Garrett Frechette’s struggles have been so pronounced that he may be in for a trip back to extended. I remember another teenaged 1b who had to swallow that pill once upon a time, when Travis Ishikawa couldn’t get over the Low-A hump and had to go back to short season ball. Still, Frechette’s numbers really do show the depths of his struggles so far.
Alex Canario’s performance is also sinking fast. Canario might be struggling to change his approach, as seeking walks has perhaps made him a bit too passive. He’s swinging at just 42% of his pitches so far, and has boosted his walk rate well above career norms. But seeking walks has frequently put him in bad hitter’s counts, and the strikeouts are once again piling up, without the power numbers to support that level of whiff.
The Giants have gotten a big boost from a player they didn’t draft last year, but signed on the free agent market. Brett Auerbach has started games at C, 2b, 3b, and LF so far this year, and held his own at each spot. He’s drawing a ton of walks and has even been a threat on the base paths, stealing 5 bags. He was inserted into a 0-0 game this weekend as a pinch runner and immediately swiped a crucial bag that led to a 1-0 victory. He’s not hitting for much power, but this is clearly a player after Farhan’s heart.
They weren’t just flirting, Matt, they were going hot and heavy with the 20 K mark. Over a three day period this weekend, Giants pitchers struck out 48 Lake Elsinore hitters. Carson Ragsdale led the parade with a dominant 12-strikeout performance that suggested the Storm hitters were not firmly acquainted with the concept of the Curve Ball.
Ragsdale has pounded the strike zone with a hard fastball that sits in the 93-95 range and a power breaker that is completely dominating hitters at this level. Only the departed Chris Wright has a higher percentage of swinging strikes on the staff than Ragsdale, who is throwing 20% of his pitches past helpless waves. And his percentage of combined called and swinging strikes (CSW%) is 37.1%, even higher than prodigy Kyle Harrison’s. Sam Coonrod has been giving the Phillies the type of performance that the Giants could sure use out of their bullpen right about now, but it’s hard to feel bad about the return, given Ragsdale’s performance so far this year.
About Last Night
Sacramento lost vs. Las Vegas Aviators (A’s), 11-7
Rehabbing reliever John Brebbia has been perfect so far in his return from Tommy John surgery. The former Cardinal has set down each of the six hitters he’s faced in his two apperances, and last night all three went the Way of the Whiff. Brebbia’s been consistently excellent in his three years with the Cardinals, and stands to give the Giants some much-need help in the not too distant future.
Sadly, after Brebbia departed, things went south in a hurry, as every other pitcher the River Cats turned to kept giving away runs. Phil Pfeifer had the latest in a series of disastrous outings, and given the way he’s pitched, he might not last too much longer with the team. Pfeifer allowed 10 of the 19 batters he faced to reach safely and now sports an ERA of 11.25. Former Yankee Daniel Álvarez didn’t fare too much better, allowing three solo home runs in his first inning of work.
Sacramento made a valiant comeback effort with a five-run rally in the 5th, but Las Vegas just kept adding on and the Cats couldn’t keep up. Jason Vosler had a big day in his return to Triple-A, knocking his 3rd HR and adding a double. Joey Bart went 3 for 5 including his 4th double. And Thairo Estrada just keeps banging home runs, as he went deep for the 6th time this year.
What’s On Tap?
Sacramento (Shun Yamaguchi) vs. Las Vegas (Paul Blackburn), 7:05 pm
Richmond (Gerson Garabito) vs. Altoona (Roansy Contreras), 3:35 pm
Eugene (Aaron Phillips) @ Vancouver (Sean Wymer), 7:05 pm
San Jose (Kyle Harrison) vs. Modesto (TBD), 6:30 pm
Sacramento finishes out what’s been a discouraging homestand with one last game against Las Vegas. Meanwhile, the other three teams get brand new opponents. Kyle Harrison is the clear “must watch” out of tonight’s starters, as he’ll try to finish 5 full innings for the first time this year.
Keep swinging for the fences everybody, and we’ll see you back here with all the action tomorrow!
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I wonder if they might consider a position change for Estrada - depending on the kind of errors he’s making. Maybe try him in CF.