"Welcome to the Second Half" Edition of the Free for All Mailbag
The summer solstice isn’t the only major dividing line we crossed last week. We’ve also officially (and mathematically) turned the page on the first half of the 2025 minor league season. All full season clubs have now played 50% of their games (or in the case of the A-ball clubs, 50% + 3), and we’re as close to the end of the year as we are to the beginning.
That means that strong beginnings are building into potential breakthrough campaigns, while “slumps” and “slow starts” are hardening into back-sliding seasons. As Elvis Costello wrote, every day these players write the book of their seasons, and as we make our way into July, the plot lines of those books are becoming more and more clear.
Before we get to this week’s bag, let me quickly return to a question that was asked last week regarding the health of Keaton Winn. In my answer, I said that, as is always the case with 40-man members, when there was an update, it would come through official channels. Hardly had the words left my keyboard when we heard, through MLB beat writer, Maria Guardado, that Winn is ramping up slowly from “shoulder irritation,” and “is getting closer to throwing off the mound competitively.” Vague, but up to date!
Let’s pull open the bag!
If you were Buster, would you have done the Devers trade? I know you were a big Kyle Harrison fan. I don't think you were as high on James Tibbs III. I don't recall your thoughts on Jose Bello.
Absolutely, positively, slam dunk YES! And I think highly of both Tibbs and Bello in addition to Harrison (not the same degree of “highly” for all three, obviously, but still, highly). But talents like Rafael Devers just aren’t attainable all that often. Would the Giants be happy to offer Devers an eight-year deal for $233 million right now if he were a free agent today? Almost certainly. Would Devers sign that same deal with the Giants right now if he were a free agent? History tells us pretty clearly that the answer to that question is ‘No.’ They gave up some talent, but they got a top 15 hitter in baseball at the age of 28. It seems reasonable to imagine he will continue to be a top 20-30 hitter in MLB for the next four or five years. They got the best player in the deal, and that’s a strong position to be in when the trade dust settles.
When the opportunity knocks, you have to seize it and figure out the rest along the way, in my opinion. Fortune favors the bold!*
*hopefully
Seth Kenvin
With less money to throw at a Mike Yastrzemski replacement & Tibbs gone, how about Grant McCray as 3rd outfielder next season? He’s heating up, and Bo Davidson could be next in line if McCray falters?
McCray is the most gifted defensive outfielder on the 40-man, and he’s probably the fastest runner in the Giants’ organization (or very close to it). He also has 20 homer power. So, yes, put all that together and he is absolutely someone who can put himself in the competition for an important outfield position next year — or, heck, later this year, as the case may be!
But I go back to something that the redoubtable David B. Fleming said about McCray on my podcast last Fall: he has to prove that he can make more contact in the strike zone before you give him another chance at a significant role in the majors.
McCray is absolutely heating up at the plate. So far in the month of June, he’s hit .324/.370/.662 with seven home runs. It’s a classic McCray scorcher! But, even with that success, he’s been striking out at better than a 30% clip in that time, and he also continues to have issues with in-zone contact. According to Baseball Savant’s minor league search function, McCray’s whiff rate on pitches in the strike zone this year is 21%, which simple math then tells us is an extremely low in-zone contact rate of 79%. Even in what Statcast defines as the “heart of the zone,” his whiff rate is 14.5%. Again, quite high.
If that continues through the second half of the season, then I’m not sure the front office would be totally comfortable with just handing him a position, but might rather look for modest deals to be had on lower-scale corner outfield market next winter — something akin to what they did with Justin Verlander last winter. Or they could do what they’ve done with Fitzgerald this year — give him the first third of the year to prove himself and adjust from there. We’ll see. I’d guess the former would be more likely than the latter.
As for Bo, I certainly don’t believe the front office will make 2026 plans with him in mind as a serious contingency plan. He’s playing in Eugene. Just to take an example at hand — Casey Schmitt was in Eugene having about the same level of success back in 2022, and we’re just starting to see him turn himself into a productive big leaguer at this point a full three years later. Maybe Davidson beats that pace, but Schmitt’s evolution from then to now certainly couldn’t be defined as slow. Had he spent a year at a time per level since then, he’d be right on schedule. So, if McCray is getting a shot at major time next March, somebody else needs to be the contingency plan than an admittedly very talented player currently performing in the NWL. We’ve seen that movie already (with McCray himself, as well as Luis Matos the year before), and it didn’t end that well.
Dennis Touros
Hi Roger, I have a couple of questions. The first one is to look back at the 2020 draft where the Giants chose Patrick Bailey over Tyler Soderstrom. Hindsight is 20-20 but was Soderstrom considered Bailey's equal in catch & throw skills but ahead in the bat? Any idea what the Giants were thinking?
My second question is about birth record keeping in Santo Domingo, at the Hospital Metropolitana de Santiago. Are the ages of the kids in the international free agent market more verifiable as opposed to several years ago?
Hi Dennis, thanks for the questions.
It’s almost inconceivable for any high school catcher (especially from a tiny school like Turlock) to be considered the catch & throw equal of the most highly regarded defensive catcher in the ranks of D1 college play. And certainly, even if we can imagine such a high school wunderkind in theory, that certainly would not have been Soderstrom in reality. The juice with Soderstrom (son of former Giants’ 1st round pick, Steve Soderstrom) was always on his bat. Defensively, evaluators would give that “well, he coooooooould stick at catcher, maybe?” reply in much the same terms they’d used for Bryce Harper when he was a high school catcher. But even at that time, the likelihood of him moving to 1b or LF at some point along the way was considered the most likely outcome.
And that’s exactly the shape his career his taken. The A’s messed around a bit with him at catcher back in 2023, but he was almost exclusively a 1b last year and has spent all of 2025 in left (or DH). His catching days are likely done at this point.
What were the Giants thinking? I believe they were thinking that they preferred Bailey. Scouting Director Michael Holmes, who lives not far from where Bailey was reared and who had followed his amateur career for years, had full conviction in Bailey, both as a player and a person. Now, had the Giants employed a Scouting Director who was based out of Modesto, maybe things might have been different, but I feel very certain that Bailey was someone who would always get the full-throated and passionate support of Holmes in any debate about lining up that draft board.
In a very strange and uncertain draft year, Bailey also represented a bit of certainty — he had the glove to succeed as a big leaguer, and that meant a lot in the craziness of the 2020 draft, when uncertainty defined most teams’ draft boards. And, as a cherry on top, going with a college player in the top round allowed them to get creative, as Holmes likes to say, and find a way to add high schooler Kyle Harrison to their draft class as well. But, as I say, that was the cherry on top — I don’t believe it was the primary motivation for the Bailey pick. That pick was about preferring the player to other players on the board at the time.
As for your second question, I am very much not an expert in this topic. But, from listening to Ben Badler, who is, I would say that there have been ebbs and flows in this story over the years. In the wake of 9/11, and the Patriot Act that followed, a lot of age fraud was cleaned up due to much more vigorous State Department activity in investigating and approving visas. MLB responded in kind, upping their investigation efforts (MLB has to approve all international free agent contracts, and verifying age is an important part of their process). However, it does seem like instances of age fraud have been on the rise again in recent years. It makes sense. Shaving years off a teenager’s age makes a big difference in terms of money offered by teams, and whenever money is to be had with a little bit of fraud, it can be awfully hard to plug all the leaks.
I realize this is incredibly complicated in the domestic player limit era, but do you think there’s any way for the organization to improve its approach to managing catcher depth at the upper levels of the minors? As minimal as his prospect status may be, it feels like it’s not in the best interest of Drew Cavanaugh or the big league club that he’s caught so much in Triple-A this season, and I remember guys like Trevor Brown, Ben Turner, Fabian Peña, etc. being thrust into semi-long-term duty in Sacramento before they were ready as well, simply because they were at some point nearby in San Jose. Maybe that’s ultimately more enjoyable for guys who have little chance of reaching the big leagues anyway, but especially with San Jose now being a Low-A team, it seems like a negative for the pitching staff, the Triple-A lineup, organizational depth as a whole, etc. that they often choose to just summon the closest geographic catching option.
“Incredibly complicated” is a very fair assessment Patrick. And, honestly, I just don’t see how the situation could be handled better or more fairly. Maybe in a perfect world, but not in our material realm.
First, you have a number of different pressures from a roster management perspective as you suggest: a Triple-A squad can only have 28 active players, and a full organization can only have 165 players on its domestic reserve list (not counting 60-day and full-season injured list players). But the other pressure is one that just comes with the job: catchers get hurt an awful lot!
Last week, the Giants had a situation where, of the six catchers they had under contract with major league experience, four of them were injured (Patrick Bailey, Tom Murphy, Max Stassi, and Sam Huff). It’s pretty hard to imagine how you could create a system that can account for that sort of rate of attrition while keeping the best interests of everybody involved at a top line priority. Minor league free agents do have volition after all, and it’s hardly equitable to ask, say the Logan Porters or Jakson Reetzes of the world to sign contracts to sit around inactive, waiting for somebody else to get injured so they can step in as the fifth or sixth layer of depth — even if it were possible for teams to hoard that level of redundancy in the era of a 165-player maximum.
As a result, every club tries to identify guys who have the skills to catch top-level stuff who can fill in when necessary. I’ll give you just a couple of examples. Ronaldo Flores hung around the Giants’ org for several years, bouncing between the complex level and the A-ball teams as a fill in guy, rarely playing more than 40 games. The Angels grabbed him out of the system in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 draft for greater org depth, and he played with their affiliates regularly for two years. Last year, the Padres used the same method to select Andy Thomas, who has played in Richmond the last couple of years. Thomas has yet to play at any level this year, and when I asked someone I know in the San Diego organization about him recently, I was told he’s not injured, he’s just hanging out at the complex as depth, waiting for an injury to create a need — which is an expensive use of a player on the reserve list these days.
It’s far from an ideal system, but the real world will always demand its logistical sacrifices. Still, as Hamlet said, there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. So, I’ll leave you with a conversation I had with a member of the Giants’ organization during one of Cavanaugh’s sojourns to Sacramento. Talking about the strains of jumping up and down, this person told me: “I hope he looks at this as an opportunity.” He gets to work with Triple-A coaches, who are the best in any minor league system. He gets to compete against the best competition. It’s hard to deal with so much instability for sure…but it can also be a real chance to work and improve as well.
It seems like Marco Luciano's minor-league career so far is following the same arc as Heliot Ramos' — lots of national hype, a high ranking on the Baseball America 100 following by lots of dashed dreams — not to mention some brief, failed appearances with the major league club. The Ramos story has come with a happy ending (so far), but I'm curious what strengths/weaknesses you saw with Ramos in what seemed like an endless minor league career and how that compares with Luciano. Obviously, I'm looking for silver linings since I'd hate to see Luci's power swing flourish for another club if we choose not to squeeze him onto the 40 man.
I can see that analogy, Swaggy. Though I do think it’s funny that Ramos, in retrospect, seems to have had an “endless minor league career,” when he actually rocketed up to Triple-A quite quickly — making it to that level in just his third full season of minor league play, despite starting his pro career as a very young 17-year-old (one of the youngest players in his high school class).
Anyway, I always thought that Ramos was a player who was particularly hard hit by the pandemic. He had just made Double-A as a 19-year-old (the same age as Eldridge, believe it or not), and then his entire age-20 season was wiped away. And I think in that missing year of development, he lost not only reps, but a sense of his body moving athletically at a time when it was really going through some changes. Of course, 2020 affected everybody’s development, not just Ramos’, but everybody had to work their way through the ramifications of those affects.
And, for Ramos, I really think a lot of it was how his body moved when he came back. He had matured physically, and gotten more muscle-bound and barrel-chested, and it caused his swing — in a term he would use a year or so later — to become stiffer. Not slower, which is an important distinction. He always had plus bat speed. But he stiffened up, and had trouble clearing his hips, and that led to a lot of contact on the ground the other way. It took a couple of years working with Damon Minor in Sacramento for him to work through the mechanics of his swing with his body, and, in that time, I will freely admit I was very skeptical that the end result was going to be a positive one. In his worst season, in 2022, the combination of no contact (often driven by high chase rates) and contact on the ground made for a truly depressing cocktail. He hit the ball hard — he always had that — but he didn’t hit for much power. And, though he had terrific bat speed, he was often late on velocity.
As it turned out, hitting the ball hard was what we should have focused on. That, and the fact that his strikeout rate was never actually that high, even with a fair amount of chase. Once he rebuilt his swing, he started producing real results, and his 2023 season (in the minors) showed vast improvement, particularly after he returned from a stint on the 60-day IL. And that may be the place where your analogy really holds. For Baseball America subscribers, there was a great deep dive yesterday into Statcast metrics for various players — it includes an absolute must read on Eldridge’s hit data and swing decisions which is a deep, deep, deep analysis — and Luciano was included as a positive data case. In particular, though he’s missing more balls, he’s also hitting everything harder — with all of his EV and power metrics up by 3 or 4 mph this year. Maybe that’s something like a Christopher Morel outcome, when all is said and done, but that would still be a major league development, so a positive step forward.
Where the comparison falls down a bit, for me, is in some of the details. Ramos struck out a fair amount, but Luciano has been running 30%+ K rates for a number of years at multiple levels. Ramos’ feel for hitting has never gotten rave reviews from scouts, and his in-zone miss has been a tad high — but he’s always kept it below 20%, whereas Luciano, in his first attempt at Triple-A in 2023, had an incredible 35% whiff rate in zone. That has improved dramatically — which is a positive sign for you to hang your hat on — but it’s still 22% at this point, which is a bit above Ramos’ high-water mark. And, of course, Luciano’s batting averages have been very low really ever since he suffered his broken vertebrae back in June of 2022, whereas Ramos has had a number of .300 seasons along his minor league path and, only at his worst dropped down to the areas where Luciano has taken up seemingly permanent residence the last several years.
Luci has a peculiar combination of in-zone passivity (he’s offered at just 63% of pitches in the strike zone this year) and in-zone miss that makes it hard to imagine he’s ever going to hit for even an average average. He needs to make the walks and homers thing work for him despite low averages in a Max Muncy sort of way, and to do that, he’s going to really have to mash the balls that come into his zone in a 30-HR kind of frequency to make it all come together in an acceptable way. I would be very, very surprised to ever see him hitting .290 halfway through a major league season, the way we’ve seen with Ramos this year. But then, Ramos has surprised me, too, so who’s to say?
With Tyler Fitzgerald apparently floundering, how realistic is it to think that Wade Meckler can become a major-league-caliber second baseman soon enough to matter this year?
First, let me say that, whatever is going to happen with 2b, we’re about to start seeing it, as Fitzgerald was optioned back down to Sacramento yesterday (the offsetting move was Verlander’s return from the paternity list).
As for Meckler as a legitimate 2b option? Color me skeptical.
I certainly don’t believe you’re going to get anything like Casey Schmitt’s defensive aptitude at the position, and, if Schmitt continues to do well with the bat during his time filling in for Matt Chapman, that would be the obvious way to keep giving him playing time. And, to be honest, I think the odds of getting Meckler up to, say, Marco Luciano-level middle infield play any time soon would be somewhat long.
In particular, the things I’ve seen from Meckler so far at 2b that will require some long-term work is that both the footwork and the throwing motion still look like an outfielder, not an infielder. I’m not seeing the smooth, short choppy footwork of an infielder (Christian Koss once told me that movement in the infield should look like a duck — you see the graceful motion and never notice what the feet are doing down below). And his throws still have the long, over-head arm action of an outfielder as well. That’s going to take a lot of time to change, if it’s ever really possible.
For what it’s worth, if you dig around under the hood a little, there’s some reason to believe that the issues Meckler had with off-speed pitches in the majors (for those who don’t remember, he hit .000 with a 60% whiff rate against breaking balls in his brief time with the Giants, and .154 with a 60% whiff rate against all off-speed pitches) are still there bedeviling him. We’re still in short sample territory with Meckler this year, but so far this year, he’s seen 45 off-speed pitches, hit .091 against them with an .081 wOBA, a 40% whiff rate, and an average EV of 80 mph. If you combine 2025 and 2024 (in Sacramento), those numbers are .188 avg, .265 wOBA, 32% whiff, and 78-mph avg EV.
If they’re going to try Meckler at 2B… why not Matos? I know Meckler played infield in high school and a little in college, and I have no idea if Matos ever has, but I just don’t see how he ever fits in the outfield picture in S.F.
Now that I’ve asked about Matos, I’m wondering if the better question would be to look at Jung Hoo Lee as a candidate to move to the infield, maybe as soon as next season? How confident would the front office have to be in Grant McCray for them to even begin to consider asking Lee to move to 2B? Am I delusional because I can’t sleep? Or is this not such a dumb idea?
Transitioning from the infield to the outfield is an incredibly difficult athletic feat that only seems easy to us because these athletes are capable of making it look that way. Transitioning from the outfield to the infield is nigh on impossible. And, if there were a candidate to try it, someone like Matos, who is slow footed, particularly in getting started, would be a very bad one. Lee, whose ability to run down balls is his greatest asset would not likely be helped by this either. Get some sleep.
Similar question. I’m a Fitzgerald fan, but you need to get offense out of 2B. If we assume that Tyler takes a step back, what are the options, and what do you think of each? Is there a reasonable answer short of a trade?
I will say that it’s not a crazy idea that Fitzgerald’s broken rib is playing a role in his struggles this year. I remember my wife going through a broken rib, and things like walking and breathing were pretty difficult for a lot longer that Fitz was given to heal, so a real IL stint that comes with actual time for bones to heal could have a positive effect in the long run.
Of course, Fitzgerald being off the club doesn’t really help us solve the issue in the immediate term, does it? The Giants are currently 27th among the 30 MLB teams in offensive production at 2b with a 62 wRC+, and tied for 27th with a -0.4 fWAR. It’s an obvious issue.
Schmitt is the only really reasonable alternative in my eyes short of a trade. And a trade could well make a lot of sense within the next six weeks. But Schmitt is showing real gains on offense, and, though not a natural 2b, would represent an overall upgrade once Chapman returns to resume reps at 3b. Before yesterday, I had a line here saying that gives us another two or three weeks to see if Fitzgerald can gain some positive momentum. Now, however, I suppose it means a lot more of Christian Koss and Brett Wisely. Until Chapman shows up, allowing Schmitt to move over, I’d guess that’s what we’re going to see….unless Posey has another surprise early trade up his sleeve (Brandon Lowe, please?).
How does the org feel about Bryce Eldridge’s defensive progression at 1B? Does the Devers trade make revisiting RF a more realistic option?
They think it’s coming along, he’s making progress, and working hard at it. I think they also think there’s a good long ways to go. I saw that J.T. Snow was asked to come work with him again this week, and rotating different people to work with him, getting different voices and different looks along the way. I would say that getting him up to MLB speed on scoops is probably the lowest hanging fruit and the minimum bar he needs to get over — and I’ve seen real improvement from him on that topic from last year to this.
I don’t believe that they will be revisiting the idea of right field, and “realistic” is not a word I would associate with that experiment at this point. Get him up to speed at 1b: that’s the goal. Though it wouldn’t be shocking to see Eldridge ultimately come up and get some work in at DH with Devers taking reps at 1b as the season goes along.
Matos is raking at AAA. Does it look like the typical quad-A player raking or do you see any changes that could restore our hope?
Matos has always raked PCL pitching, and I don’t think what he’s doing now is greatly different from any of his other Triple-A appearances. For right now, it’s good that he’s getting regular reps and feeling comfortable. Ultimately, the things that have prevented him from success at the big league level are going to have to be solved by him at the big league level, I believe.
For what it’s worth, his swing rate on pitches outside the strike zone in Sacramento so far is 28%. In 2023 and 2024 (at the Triple-A level), that number was 35%. So, there is some improvement going on by that measure.
Who is most worthy of a promotion right now and why is it most of the San Jose pitching staff? I believe you recently said Eugene has given up the most runs in the league, and it seems like San Jose has arms that can help. Now that they’ve clinched, do guys start moving up? Or would you bet most moves come post draft?
Jacob Bresnahan is on fire right now, but he’s 19. I’m expecting him and Gerelmi Maldonado to stay in SJ all year.
But Hunter Dryden, Niko Mazza, Greg Farone, Drake George, and Evan Gray are all making the 2024 draft look really good so far. Charlie McDaniel also looks good, and wasn’t even drafted. Gray is 24, the rest are 23. That’s old for that league isn’t it? Do any of these arms truly excite you?
Bresnahan and Maldonado are absolutely the most exciting arms on that squad, and, as you say, there are reasons to expect them both to stay in San Jose for a good while. The rest are all solid older, experienced pitchers having their way with young competition at the moment. Farone has pretty good stuff from the left-hand side, so I do expect him to rise to the upper levels in time. Mazza’s stuff is intriguing, as is Dryden’s — though the small-framed Dryden has issues with stamina and maintaining his stuff. But I’d have trouble using the term “exciting” to describe that group to be honest. We’ll see how they develop and what improvements they can make in time. And yes, it wouldn’t be shocking to see any of them move up, though I don’t believe any of them are exactly kicking the door down.
The bigger question the Giants would probably want to answer before promoting them is who backfills the innings in San Jose. With that in mind, it’s possible that a Farone or Mazza promotion gets tied to a Luis de la Torre or Ricardo Estrada promotion from the ACL. Either way, after the draft and the end of the ACL season does seem most likely to me, especially now that both Dylan Carmouche and Nick Zwack have joined Eugene off of rehab stints.
But to return to your original question: who is the most worthy player of a promotion right now, the answer to me is very obviously Braxton Roxby. The former Reds’ reliever is now up to 85 IP at the Double-A level over parts of three seasons, and he’s hardly allowed a loud foul in about six weeks. Even being slow and deliberate, he’s mastered this level, I’d say.
I've been trying to figure out the meaning of the hand gesture the players all seem to make when they get a base hit. The hand or hands raises and the two fingers up, twisting of the wrists? Me, I would do a double fist pump in the same situation
It seems like every baseball team at every level probably down to Little League has these signs these days. They’re all coded messages, crafted in hitters’ meetings and meaningful only to the group that created them. You’ll never really know the meaning of them unless you’ve been on the inside and understood both the group’s working methods and communal jokes. Last year McCray explained to me what the Richmond one meant, and it was in essence partly an interpretation of some of hitting coach Cory Elasik’s favorite sayings, and partly a send up of Elasik for repeating the same things over and over.
Are you planning any draft-focused podcasts in the next few weeks?
Hey Lyle, I might look into that, but my experience is that once you get into this period of the draft cycle, it becomes really difficult to get on the calendar of someone like Carlos Collazo. This is the reason why I recorded my podcast with Joe Doyle a couple of weeks ago — to get a jump on this heavy part of the calendar.
But we’ll see — I might try to coax my old friend Brian Recca on for a pre-draft show. Certainly, I will have draft related podcasts once the draft has taken place, and really drill down on the incoming class. That’s when some of my favorite guests (Collazo or the wonderful Jim Callis) usually have a little more breathing room. So, we’ll see.
But to stump for some of the folks who have been so generous of their time with me, Doyle, Collazo, and Callis all have their own podcasts which do yeomen’s work in helping folks get prepped for the draft, and I’d absolutely recommend all of their great work.
Here’s a great twitter thread from Doyle, putting a whole bunch of his MLB Draft Show episodes in one easy-to-find place that I’d highly recommend (though they’re all from the winter). Collazo and Ben Badler do a great, extremely long form podcast (Future Projection) that covers draft (and international) scouting in extreme detail, but in an enjoyably conversational style.
And Jim Callis and his MLB Pipeline colleagues also have a regular podcast, and just last week did a great show covering the Draft Combine (where we know Michael Holmes finds all his players!).
In the absence of anything from me, enjoy these suggestions and more!
How do you think the strategy will be different this incoming draft compared to previous ones? This is an especially important draft considering the failure of the 2019 draft was pretty massive. The miss on Hunter Bishop hurts more when a division rival picks their franchise cornerstone seven picks later in Corbin Carroll and the one other guy we thought about taking at 9 turns into a serviceable big leaguer in Stott. Add on top that the Dodgers cleared our draft with one pick by picking Michael Busch at 28 who they turned into two more borderline top 100 prospects. I guess what I am saying is that a repeat of this draft would probably sink the future of the org, so what can Buster do to prevent that?
Townes, in answer to your initial question, my guess is that we’ll see a little more premium put on athleticism and all-around games and a little less on swing decision metrics when it comes to position players. And potentially, along with that, more velocity and stuff focus with arms.
However, with that said, I move that we all let go of 2019 at this point. Yes, Carroll is a great player whom 15 teams whiffed on. Aaron Judge in 2013 was a generational player whom every club in baseball (including the one that ultimately selected him) passed on — some twice. This is the nature of drafts — or any activity that involves trying to predict the future.
Where draft issues become organizational issues is when they stretch on for years. That’s certainly not the case with the Giants right now. The very next year, in an historically difficult draft to scout, the club found Patrick Bailey, Casey Schmitt, and Kyle Harrison — and have gotten pretty good value out of all of them. They plucked Landen Roupp with a 12th round pick the next year, and Hayden Birdsong with a 6th after that. Logan Webb, who is putting together the best of his many outstanding seasons, and Heliot Ramos, who has improved on his 2024 All-Star campaign, both came out of Giants’ maligned drafts of the 2010s.
They currently have the major’s best bullpen — and quite probably, MLB’s single best relief pitcher this year in Randy Rodriguez — and virtually all of it was scouted, signed, and developed by the Giants. And Rodriguez, Camilo Doval, and Ryan Walker combined barely cost the club $100,000 in original signing bonuses.
Can I humbly suggest that we all see the successes of the Giants’ scouting and development efforts with as much clarity and focus as we do their failures? Success of any kind is really hard in this game. Are the Giants best-in-class when it comes to recent drafts and development? That would be an over-statement, in my opinion. But they’ve certainly done enough to put the big league club in position to compete this year, and that’s the bottom line.
Hi Roger
Post Devers trade (like it very much) and with Roupp approaching unfamiliar innings totals, JV at 40+, and the eternal vagaries of the baseball gods, who after Carson Whisenhunt gets the call if the parent club happens at some point to need - gulp- 2 starters?
Jim, I think that is the big question looming over the second half. At some point, we’re going to see just how much “surplus” was really in that surplus of pitching. Whisenhunt is an obvious go to guy. But other than him, I’d have significantly less confidence in any of the other candidates.
Based on what happened in Dodger Stadium last Sunday, I don’t think it’s crazy to imagine that the Giants might lean on Sean Hjelle for some of this need, and Tristan Beck is another proven major league arm who can stretch out somewhat when needed. Then you have the triumvirate of Carson Seymour, Trevor McDonald, and Mason Black. I’d probably have them in that order right now, but they all come with some question marks as starters, I’d say, so it will really be a matter of who is successful with the opportunity.
Line it all up and it’s not out of the question that the Giants could find themselves on the market for a reliable starting pitcher a month from now along the Zac Gallen line.
How many major league starts do we get out of Whisenhunt and/or Seymour before the trade deadline?
Hmmmm…….let’s find out.
I say “Three!”
As usual, scientific precision and rigor have been applied to arrive at my conclusion.
See you next week everybody! Check the Stats Review for yesterday’s minor lines, and look forward to a new There R Giants podcast tomorrow. The second half rolls on….
Great, highly informative response to my question. Thanks!
> Scouting Director Michael Holmes, who lives not far from where Bailey was reared and who had followed his amateur career for years, had full conviction in Bailey, both as a player and a person.
I am surprised to learn that Michael Holmes lives not just outside of the bay area, but all the way in the east coast. Wonder if he moved there after COVID, or maybe even before that?