What Sort of Farm System Has Buster Posey Inherited?

Today’s is a post that started out in one shape and gradually morphed its way to a very different one through the writing process. In my ongoing pursuit of #Content, I was going to write another Rule 5 Decision post today, focused on the two 1st round picks who are eligible for the draft: Hunter Bishop and Will Bednar.

But to be honest, my heart wasn’t really in it, and trying to craft compelling arguments in favor of adding either was likely to stretch the fabric of reality a little further than made me comfortable. As you have no doubt come to understand, we’ve already left behind all the real candidates for additions to the roster next week. There will be somewhere between 1 and 3 additions, with “1” being a very real possibility (Carson Ragsdale).

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve written seven posts in my annual Rule 5 Decisions series. But this year’s series has been very unlike years past. In those seven posts, I’ve looked at just one first time eligible protection decision. And even that one player, Carson Seymour, was not a Giants’ draftee (nor was Ragsdale). Implicitly, that doesn’t speak all that highly of the Giants’ 2021 draft. On a happy note, two members of that class have already appeared in the majors for the Giants (Mason Black and Landen Roupp), and there’s no need to ask whether they’re ready for addition to the roster (a third member of that draft class, Brooks Baldwin, didn’t sign with the Giants and returned to school. But, somewhat amazingly, he has also made his major league debut already, with the woebegone Chicago White Sox).

Still, Black was a third-round pick; Roupp a 12th rounder. Their successes are the silver outlining some clear failures above them. The top two picks, Bednar and Matt Mikulski, have essentially never gotten out of the starting gates in their development. And that 2021 draft doesn’t stand alone as an issue over the past six years of selecting. The 2019 draft looks like it could deliver some help from the mid rounds in Tyler Fitzgerald and Grant McCray, and Trevor McDonald and Cole Waites were strong Day 3 finds, but once again the top rounds have come up empty, as Bishop and the now-retired Logan Wyatt have failed to make much headway. The 2022 draft has been decimated by injuries (Reggie Crawford, William Kempner, Spencer Miles, and Liam Simon have all missed most or all of entire seasons), though, again, a lower round arm emerged in Hayden Birdsong, and 2nd rounder Carson Whisenhunt has steadily progressed.

In a strong farm system, late round scouting and success stories are the cherry on top, the prize in the Cracker Jacks box, the maple syrup — they provide the depth of a good system. But one of the epitaphs of the Farhan Zaidi era of the Giants is too many drafts in which those later round finds had to cover up top round missteps or poor fortune.

So, since our top draft picks from 2019 and 2021 really don’t have much of a case for being added to the 40-man next week (though, happy thought, 2020 top pick, Patrick Bailey, just picked up a well-deserved Gold Glove for his trophy case), today seems like a good day to try to grapple with the question of what the incoming President of Baseball Operations is inheriting on the farm.

Buster Posey and new-GM Zack Minasian have made no secret of the fact that they intend to run a club powered by internal answers. They have, as Posey said, a recent blueprint of success to work with — the championships of the last decade, which were fueled by a wealth of prospects that flooded the roster between 2005 and 2011. Andrew Baggarly’s bracing piece in The Athletic last week, suggesting that payroll reductions are coming for the Giants this year, certainly reinforces the notion that the Giants don’t intend to spend their way back to success. So, the question to be answered is: if they intend to build their way to success through Player Development, where are they currently on that success line, and what do they have to work with? It’s a Big Picture edition of There R Giants, as we take a look at the state of the system.