"While I'm on the Road" Free For All Mailbag

Hello….this is an auto-mated message from There R Giants’ AI: Roger’s not here right now. He’s either at a camp game or 60,000 feet above the surface of the Earth traveling to a different location where he will attend even more games. But he left these mailbag answers for me to disseminate while he’s gone. Please enjoy. Roger will be back on Earth soon and can engage with you personally at that time…

Before I jump into the bag, let me brag on myself just a moment and say that now is a great time to become a There R Giants’ full subscriber. Yesterday’s post was full of video from the extended camp games (and tomorrow’s likely will be as well), featuring many of the newest members of the draft class. By the end of the week, I’ll have laid eyes on nearly everybody in this organization at some point during the year and brought you tons of video, interviews, and commentary covering as wide a range of the Giants’ farm system as I believe you can get anywhere. So, if that sounds like your kind of content, sign up and become part of the There R Giants’ community!

Now, let’s get into your questions.

Dan Brooking

Roger, Can the Giants assign players from the DSL Orange team to Black for the playoffs?

Hi Dan. Yes, they absolutely can. The Giants move players from their Orange to Black squads fairly often. In fact, DSL All-Star Jesus Alexander and right-hander Argenis Cayama have each made the cross-roster journey in the last few days to help bolster Team Black for the stretch drive.

A couple of years ago, when the Giants Black team in Arizona was making its championship run, a couple of pitchers were moved over from the Orange roster, and among them was a fairly anonymous 6th round pick from that summer named Hayden Birdsong. That was the first indication I had that the Giants thought they really had something in that young man. I remember him joking with me the next year that picking up a ring for throwing something like an inning and 2/3 with the team was a pretty sweet deal.

And speaking of that, yes, all the players on a minor league championship roster in the Giants’ system do actually get rings. They may not be quite as expensive or jewel-encrusted as the big league versions, but they’re apparently a pretty nice perk — as is the ceremony that goes with them. The Giants will gather all of their farmhands together at Papago Park at some point in the spring and hand out each ring individually, so the players can get a nice hand from their peers.

Henrique Goncalves

Thank you as always for all your work!

Who should we expect to move up from the DSL to the ACL this offseason? All of Jhonny Level, Angel Guzman, and Oliver Tejada? Anyone else with a good chance?

Also - do you know how the DSL Black stacks up against their potential playoff opponents?

Errol S.

Can you provide insights into the success of this year's DSL teams? Seems like it's been a banner year. Thanks again.

I appreciate your support Henrique! Without you guys, I don’t get to do all my work!

I would say that Level and Tejada are gimmes, and, although he’s been injured most of the season, history says that there’s a good chance they’ll elevate Yohendry Sanchez as well — they did invest over a million dollars in him this year, after all. But there are probably more questions to be answered with his case. Guzman and Jesus Alexander have been the top performers, so they both stand a reasonable chance of being considered for advancement. Guzman had a strong statistical year in 2023 as well, however, and was not elevated at that time. So, we have to ask ourselves why that decision was made and whether the underlying questions about him and his skillset have been answered this year. There are things beyond the batting line that matter! The other position player who has made an extremely strong case for himself is Sandy Camacho, the left-handed hitting catcher who has quietly put himself into the DSL top 10 in a lot of important offensive categories. I think we could be seeing him next year in Arizona.

After that group, I think it mostly becomes a question of roster construction — the extended group has to be able to play games after all. Do they need middle infielders? Are they short outfielders? And, of course, can the club fit any of these guys under the 165 limit? Those kinds of logistical concerns will drive most of the decisions.

From the pitching side, it feels like Ricardo Estrada should be a call up at this point if he’s ever going to be. I wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed Cayama, despite his tender age and limited experience. The organization really likes this kid (as with the Birdsong example above, moving him onto the playoff roster should ring a few bells). There are a couple of huge arms in relief who could be ready for the next level like Jeison Jimenez and Jhon Leon, and I think maybe Frainer Mejias is putting himself in the discussion as well. Jose Bello, who was the top performer for most of this year, was assigned to the domestic list in the final week of the ACL, so he’s already on this side of the pond. As with the position players, the 165 player limit forces the club to be extremely conservative in the number of players they can bring over at any one time.

As for how the team stacks up with the competition? They do have the league’s best record — and the best record against winning clubs. But there is some stiff competition. There’s a Red Sox club that is just a game behind them and a Rangers club hot on both their heels. The Black has a strong offense backed by some stout pitching, but in a three-game series? Who knows how things shake out.

The same basic shoulder shrug goes for Errol’s question. What insights can we ever apply to winning teams? They have some good players giving big performances. They’re relatively balanced between run scoring and run prevention. The starters have been very good. And they’ve played a winning brand of baseball — which is what it’s all about. It’ll be fun to watch them compete.

Joseph Young

Hi Roger! I know that you have expressed some concern about “where all the innings will come from.” Well, here we are in August with a fairly stable rotation, but it does look like Kyle Harrison is running out of gas, and Hayden Birdsong, no doubt, still has a few MLB-level lessons to learn. So my question is, if there are stumbles in the next 50 days or so, where are the innings going to come from?

A core baseball belief of mine is that the baseball season is always a war of attrition. The meaningful portion of the baseball season really begins about now, and everything preceding is mostly set dressing that is created to make the next 6-8 weeks as challenging a task as possible. It’s the original Survivor and you mostly try not to get voted off the island before the calendar reaches August and then scramble like crazy to reach the season finale. You will see teams head into September with a head of steam and suddenly hit that wall and never recover (the 2023 Cubs are a great example of this). Others start leaking oil before they even get to August 1, and by Labor Day the engine has caught fire. There will absolutely be teams that look great today who will be dumpster fires by September 30th, and it’s possible that the opposite will be true as well. It happens! At exactly this time last year, Arizona was on the tail end of a stretch that saw them go 7-25. They had more forks poked in them on August 12, 2023 than a slow roasted pork loin just coming out of the firepit.

So yes, I think you’re right Joseph — this continues to be the most important question (as it is for most teams). And I do think that Harrison’s sudden drop in velocity is a huge concern. I don’t know if he’s hurt or out of gas, or if fatigue has simply brought its more subtly poisonous ally to the party: mechanical issues! Right now, Harrison is looking like that version of Madison Bumgarner who was so messed up mechanically down the stretch in 2012 that the Giants were forced to turn to ….gulp….Barry Zito with the playoffs on the line! (Ron Howard voice: it turned out ok).

That said, Farhan Zaidi kicked the training wheels off this team. Alex Cobb isn’t there as a safety net. Keaton Winn is gone. Mason Black did not pass his audition. Kai-Wei Teng is suffering through one of the most difficult years in recent memory, and Trevor McDonald is absolutely not in a place where you would want to throw him into the middle of a playoff chase. That’s the case with Carson Whisenhunt as well, especially as he works to return from a foot injury, though he at least has a true big league pitch in his back pocket — if the time comes for a Hail Mary throw, he might be the target. But generally, the heat of playoff chase isn’t the greatest spot to be trying to transition into the majors — the ghost of Salomon Torres still thrashes, tormented, around the waters of Candlestick Point.

The near-return of Tristan Beck and Ethan Small are probably the life rafts here, I think. Though neither is anybody’s first choice for taking critical starts, they are at least capable arms with some experience who can help take down innings to ease the burden on the two young guys. Especially now that everybody in the bullpen has had to move up a chair in the wake of the dramatic (and, in my opinion, questionable) Camilo Doval demotion, getting Beck and Small into that pen could end up playing a small but critical role down the stretch.

But really, the answer is that this team is going to go as far as those five guys — Webb, Snell, Ray, Harry, and Birdsong — take them. At this point in the season, you win with the guys you have or you don’t win.

Brian Warnes

Hi Roger, Thanks for doing this!

1. What do you think of calling up Trevor McDonald and sending Birdsong down to AAA for a breather? Something seems off with him compared to his last two starts, and, while he has been limited to around 53 innings this season, McDonald has had solid numbers. In particular, his three outings in AAA have looked great thus far. Plus he is on the 40-man roster already, so they wouldn't need to take someone off it to make room for him. Or would it be better to just let him throw in the minors and just focus on him finishing the year healthy?

Hi Brian. My pleasure! I briefly answered this above, but just to flesh it out a little more: you’re right that McDonald has the virtue of being a 40-man member who wouldn’t require a move to get him on the roster, and that’s in his favor if, at some point, a short-term arm is needed. But I don’t see him as being a replacement for Birdsong in the rotation. For one thing, McDonald really doesn’t have Birdsong’s pure stuff, especially this year, as the groin injury he suffered in spring has caused the fastball to sit a little lower than we’ve seen it in previous years. And top-level stuff really matters in the majors, as we’ve seen with some of the other debuts this year.

But more importantly, as I’ve said in response to other, similar questions in the past: if you swap out Birdsong for someone who has never pitched in the majors, you’re really just exchanging one learning curve that’s already absorbed some crucial lessons for another one that is back down at square one. You’re Sisyphus intentionally rolling the boulder back down to the base of the mountain after suffering a slight bobble a third of the way up. When and if McDonald gets to MLB, he’ll have to go through these same lessons — he’ll learn what happens when your command is off, when the stuff isn’t next world great, or just when a great hitter puts a world class swing on a pitch he thought he executed well.

Choices get limited this time of year, but these are the moves teams make out of extreme duress, not proactively.

Scott C.

The Giants will get a 'player to be named later' from the Guardians as a part of the Alex Cobb trade. I'm curious about how that process works. Did the teams agree at the time on 2-4 players that the Giants will pick from? Do the Guardians retain some control of which player it becomes? Any idea when it’s finalized? I doubt it would ever happen, but it’d be fun if fans knew the potential players in a situation like this — us prospect hounds would eat that up!

That’s basically the idea. There’s a pool of potential players that are agreed upon up front, and then the teams circle back sometime later to finalize. Sometimes, there can be an agreement on two different tiers of players, depending on the performance of the major league piece that is dealt. For instance, if Alex Cobb ends up being a nonentity for the Guardians the rest of the way, sidelined by more health issues, then maybe the pool of players is something akin to an org catcher type, while if he ends up having a successful run for the team and gives them a quality performance in the post-season, the group to select from moves up to “hard throwing A-ball reliever,” tier. Sometimes, the low end-outcome is to downshift to the old favorite “cash considerations.”

Memorably, the Padres once included Trea Turner as a player to be named later, using the PTBNL mechanism as a way to circumvent the rule that no drafted player could be dealt within a year of their drafting. MLB has since closed that loophole down (with the eponymous “Trea Turner Rule”), and, despite sometimes fevered anticipation that PTBNL might be some sneakily agreed upon super prospect,” there is really no reason to do that anymore. Players to be named later thus steadfastly remain “players that fans have never heard of before” and we can assume that will be the case with this deal (although studying the Guardians ACL and Low-A roster is probably a good idea if you’d like to get a head start on familiarizing yourself with them.

As for “when,” by rule, the naming of a PTBNL must happen within six months of the transaction. With a deadline deal, the winter meetings often offer a good platform for the two teams to return to the topic and seal the deal.

And, yes, you are quite right that a published list of potential PTBNLs will never happen — and for good reason! Would you like to spend six months knowing that there’s a chance you will be snatched away from your home organization? Not a very comfortable way to try to develop your game.

Justin

What are 75th percentile and 50th percentile outcomes for 2025 seasons for Hunter Bishop and Will Bednar?

Justin, that is a great question — and a really difficult one to answer, which I think makes for the most interesting questions from my perspective (whether they make for interesting answers is a topic I’ll leave to you folks). So congratulations on making me think.

And let’s be up front here, though 50th and 75th percentiles imply mathematical precision and certainty, my answer will be much more on the line of trying to hit the broad side of a barn with a mud pie. Still, let’s try…

Let me start with Bednar, because I think he’s the easier answer. I was just having a conversation last week with a scout about Bednar, and the crux of this scout’s questions were: what is it that separates him at this point? You still see the slider in flashes, the fastball can look good. But the overall impression of the stuff right now — when he hasn’t thrown much in a couple of years — is kind of vanilla. And there’s no outlierish release point or deceptive delivery, or plus command or anything like that to make up for the overall vanillaness. So if you didn’t know that Bednar was a College World Series MVP and a 1st round pick, would you necessarily pick him out of a minor league pitching staff as “the guy?” Not in his current incarnation. He looks like a lot of other minor league arms right now.

While I took the scout’s meaning (and have had some of the same thoughts myself), my response was that the hope is that once he makes it through a full season healthy and can go into a “normal” off-season of work (rather than an offseason of trying to get healthy), we’ll see that separation next March when he shows up for a very important year.

With that as a back drop, I think the mid-case and best-case scenarios are pretty simple. In a 50th percentile outcome, he gets strong enough that he can come out next year and shoulder a starter’s work load, throw 5-6 innings an outing — but, the overall impression is still that stuff is kinda vanilla, and it’s hard to see what makes him special. In a best-case scenario, he comes in next March not only strong but with the real crispness back to his game. He takes a starting role and pitches 100 innings, and the slider doesn’t flash now and again, it’s there as a potent weapon consistently. And the fastball most always has its hop. AND, when the strike zone starts bouncing around on him, he can make the adjustments at an in-game tempo and not fall into the ruts we’ve seen this year where he just loses the strike zone for several batters in a row. In the 75th percentile outcome, he’s out there in the 5th inning and scouts watching him, say: “yeah, he’s a different beast than the other guys out there.”

Bishop was really tossed into the deep end this year, being asked to spend the summer taking at bats off guys who have mostly thrown in the majors for some short period, after basically having skipped all the other levels of the minors. And it hasn’t gone well. Currently, he’s posted a wRC+ of just 67, with a .219/.303/.377 batting line. The Giants approach to Bishop has been that he just needed reps and it didn’t matter all that much where he got them, though it might have been easier on his mental health to get them in a less challenging environment for a little while. On the other hand, he’s 26 and basically at his physical peak, and if things are going to happen for him, they need to happen relatively soon, because time’s a relentless bastard.

His 50th percentile is probably something like: return to Sacramento and do a little bit better, but still just be league average or a little worse, say 90 wRC+. The best case scenario for Bishop is something like what we’re seeing right now from Grant McCray, I’d say: the strikeouts are still a very prevalent element of the offensive package, but there’s enough hard contact to have an impact around the swing and miss. So, yeah, I’ll say coming back and having exactly McCray’s line right now would be a pretty good 75th percentile outcome for Hunter.

JK

This might only matter in future trade considerations, but with success from Patrick Bailey, Heliot Ramos, Tyler Fitzgerald, and Birdsong (all unranked prospects), do you think this will help outside perception of the Giants’ farm system? The rankings don't matter, only future performance in the big leagues, but it might help put together a future trade or two.

JK, I think that’s totally fair. After all, it’s the struggles of guys like Joey Bart (with the Giants), Luis Matos, Casey Schmitt, and even Marco Luciano that has led to some tongue-wagging negativity around the water coolers of the industry. So, it’s only fair that some real success — especially surprising ones like Fitzgerald — should bring some more favorable Yelp reviews from the other clubs.

Ultimately, when it comes to trades, most clubs rely on their own internal models more than anything else (often to the disgruntlement of their hard-working pro scouts), but certainly human perceptions and biases linger on as the ghost in the machine.

Actually, I’m really glad you asked this question, JK, because it reminds me that I had wanted to revisit a question that was asked in a mailbag at the start of the season. Somebody asked me whether I thought the Giants had erred in promoting Pat Burrell to the major league hitting coach position, given the relatively mild performance of the farm’s hitters during his time as a rover.

Now feels like a good time to revisit that question with some benefit of hindsight. Ramos, the All-Star himself, has very publicly showered Burrell with praise for his evolution. And around the industry, I will say that I’ve heard almost nothing but full-throated commendation of Burrell’s skills. Just this week, a real old dog scout I know who was a big league hitter himself delivered a salty and passionate hymn of praise, calling Burrell maybe the best person he’d ever talked to about the mental side of hitting and performing under pressure in the major leagues. It seems clear to me that Burrell has become an important mentor for young players navigating the transition from “prospect” to “big leaguer.”

I’d also like to mention one other person who I think is an under-appreciated part of the Giants’ player development apparatus. Damon Minor, the Sacramento hitting coach, deserves plenty of praise for the work he’s done with players at that level — some coming up, others coming back down. He’s been crucial to the development of both Ramos and Fitzgerald, and he’s another guy I hear pretty much nothing but universal praise for. Even when the higher ups in the front office might be skeptical of a player’s development, the “boots on the ground guys” are working with those players every day to help them achieve their best. Burrell, Minor, Travis Ishikawa — there are some hitting coaches up and down this organization whose names keep coming up in conversations I have about guys who are helping players get better.

Hey, I was there for that!

Michael

These mailbags are fantastic, Roger.

Fingers crossed this doesn’t happen — but if the Giants fall out of the wild card picture, what changes to the lineup and pitching staff would you forecast? How do you feel the brass would prioritize preparing for the 2025 season?

You’re too kind, Michael. I really enjoy doing them!

I suppose it depends on when exactly that happened, but I guess there are only a couple of differences — and they’re probably pretty obvious. They’d finally prioritize really giving Luciano daily at bats no matter what, and stop just talking about doing that. Maybe they’d want to give Matos daily at bats as well — though as I said last week, I’m not all that sure that he’s really done much to earn that in 2024, either through output or process (and honestly, Michael Conforto, who has been a very good major league player, probably deserves the opportunity to create his best market this winter. They may bring McCray up and give him a run in center field — though honestly, that’s something that might be more important if they are still in it.

On the pitching side of things, the difference would probably be not in giving more opportunities, but rather in shutting guys down who have really been pushed this year.

But, to be honest, the underlying issue that makes it virtually impossible to answer your question — How do you feel the brass would prioritize preparing for the 2025 season? — is knowing who is going to be making the decisions about the 2025 season if the Giants fall out of the wild card race. I don’t think anybody who isn’t in Greg Johnson’s inner circle will be able to answer that question until the year’s over, and I don’t think even Johnson really knows, from the perspective of August 13, how he’s going to feel about that come September 30.

Scott C.

I always enjoy your bigger picture thoughts about the org, Roger. (This includes the KROG pods!) So, I'd like to hear your 30,000-foot perspective about this: How do you rate the strengths and weaknesses of the Giants’ farm system right now?

Scott, I haven’t yet thought very seriously about my off-season projects of putting together the Depth Charts and Future Value grades leading to the Top 50. But one thing feels certain: we are going to be looking at a very different farm system this winter, as I would imagine that six members of last year’s top 20 should graduate by the time this year is over, including the four members of the top 10. That level of graduation will tend to thin an org out, and that, along with an unfortunate load of injuries, does have the Giants a little thinner in “prospect” talent right now than they’ve been the past few years — although they are stronger in “young talent,” which is the more important consideration.

Pitching development has generally been more of a strength of the Giants’ development the last few years than hitting. But I’m not sure how much we can extrapolate useful lessons from that. Generally, the paths by which pitchers can be improved are much better understood inside and outside of pro ball — it’s easier to make them better, because they are the originators of action. Hitters, who have to respond to pitchers forever throwing harder and nastier stuff, are much more difficult for anybody to develop. In addition, before the last two years, the top of the Giants’ drafts had been pitcher heavy, so it makes sense that their development successes would tend to come from that pool. We’ll see as guys like Eldridge, Martin, James Tibbs III and Dakota Jordan begin their development journeys whether the Giants’ reputation for developing hitting improves with the increased turn to top-end inventory.

And then drilling down a level further, within the hitters, I think there’s a paucity of up-the-middle athletes (a situation that hasn’t been helped by the puzzling regression of Vaun Brown and the health of Aeverson Arteaga). Interestingly, despite his struggles, I keep getting very strong scouting reports on Walker Martin, but even those giving the most full-throated support of his future potential were strong in suggesting that the shortstop era of his career should be over post-haste. I don’t want to over-state that as a failing or a weakness — most hitters are corner guys in every organization. It’s easier to be “just” a hitter than to be a hitter AND a dynamic, up-the-middle defender, and those guys don’t generally grow on trees, even though they do tend make up a heavy percentage of big league stars. You can’t really do this, because deals aren’t deals until they’re written in ink, but the two shortstops who are connected to the Giants’ next two international classes might figure pretty highly in my rankings this winter were they officially part of the organization.

Mostly, when I look at the state of the org right now, I feel like we’re back, in a way, to April of 2021. There are a couple near-ready guys at the top (Whisenhunt, McCray), there’s one potential star-level bat (Bryce Eldridge) ….. and then there’s a whole lot of guys who are just starting out on their journeys. Some will get side tracked. Some will fall short of their dreams. Some may exceed them! But mostly, it’s just a lot of unknown right now. A year from now, we may have a very different view of the system. But right now, Fangraphs has ranked them as the 22nd best organization, and Baseball America last week had them ranked as the 20th best organization, and…we’ll see how accurate those are as guys start getting into their pro careers, but I see no reason to think they’re out of line right now.

For what it’s worth, BA had the Giants ranked at #20 in their organizational rankings going into the 2007 season, when the prospects on the farm included Tim Lincecum, Pablo Sandoval, Brian Wilson, Sergio Romo, Jonathan Sanchez, Nate Schierholtz, Travis Ishikawa, and various other bit players in the major leaguers. Shockingly, it’s much easier to see clearly when looking into the known of the past than when peering into the mysteries of the future.

Errol S.

You may get variations of this: now that it seems High-A teams are pitching around Eldridge and he's happy to take the walk, is it possible for the young man to be moved to Richmond or do you see this as a bit too aggressive given his age? Thanks, I will hang up and listen.

Given the moves of the last two years, I don’t think you can set any limit on the Giants’ aggressive moves for their top prospects. The old wisdom of “a guy needs to dominate a level” clearly isn’t being applied anymore — at least not with the top guys. So, yes, it’s certainly possible. It might be probable! Who knows! Richmond’s year lasts one week longer than Eugene’s, and, as Eldridge’s Northern Virginia home is a fairly easy drive from The Diamond, they could send him out there just for that final week to get five or six more games worth of reps. I also think that Eldridge is the type of high-level hitting prospect you could see sent to the AFL this year. After all, Marco Luciano went to the AFL at the same age and relative experience level that Eldridge has right now — and Luciano didn’t have nearly as successful a transition to High-A at the end of that 2021 season. That might be the real move — sending Eldridge to the Scottsdale Scorpions for some high profile ABs in November.

Small Winged Yeti

Should we worry about Walker Martin yet?

Forty percent K rates are worrisome anywhere — I’m worried like heck for Vaun Brown, for example. And they are absolutely worrisome when attached to a 20-year-old in rookie ball. The ACL’s status as Rehab Central for all teams means that you can’t make a blanket statement about the level of competition — Martin almost certainly saw big-league and upper-level arms this summer. But that doesn’t explain away everything.

That said, I was talking with a group of scouts this weekend who saw a lot of Martin this summer, and I was a little surprised to hear the level of conviction that they all still had in his bat. They were unanimous in suggesting the Giants should torpedo the shortstop experiment post haste (with some thinking the defensive pressures were only adding to the mental burdens of a player who was clearly pressing). But in general, people really liked the bat. They liked his ability to work long counts. At least one veteran scout, who played in the majors, passionately defended Martin’s ability to recognize spin. They liked the way the swing worked. I didn’t hear any panic buttons being pushed.

So, I’d say: prepare for a fairly slow and maybe arduous development journey, but recognize that professional observers still see a lot of elements to like in the young man.

Brian Warnes

I believe you have answered questions about Brett Auerbach's breakout in AAA in previous mailbags, and thus far he is showing that this breakout could be legitimate and he may have just needed a change of scenery. So now that there are signs that he's figuring out the hitting side of things, how is he defensively at the various positions he plays? In particular, how do you view his ability at catcher? Because, when it comes to finding a catcher that hits from the right side to complement Bailey, it looks like Curt Casali's second stint with the team is starting to go poorly, Jakson Reetz hasn't looked like a strong option in his short stints this season, and Tom Murphy is far from a reliable option due to his injury history. Could Auerbach provide adequate defense at catcher?

I guess I would caution against the “change of scenery” narrative when it comes to prospects and levels. This isn’t a major leaguer with a guaranteed salary who has started punching the clock due to some variety of disgruntlement with the way the big league club is being managed (or simply prolonged losing). The levels are all there for a reason, and Auerbach’s troubles in Double-A weren’t the result of simply not liking it there or caring enough to try his best.

In fact, one thing you could always say about Auerbach is, no matter how badly things went on the offensive side of things, he always brought the energy with his defensive game. That’s hard to do and it’s absolutely to his credit.

It’s possible that, like Mike Yastrzemski, for instance, he’s found some fundamental change that has helped him improve (going back to what I said about Damon Minor, who is a heck of a coach). But it’s also possible that there’s something that was tripping him up in the Eastern League that isn’t as prevalent in the PCL. Who knows?

Anyway, to your question: Auerbach is much more of a real catcher than Blake Sabol. He’s a decent receiver and he has an excellent throwing arm with a good pop time. That said, I think the best-case use of Auerbach is as a super-utility guy who can also catch, rather than as a dedicated backup. In part, that’s because I think he’s better in other positions (2b and 3b). But also, I think you have to remember how much smaller Auerbach is physically than most catchers. His listed height of 5’8” is certainly not understating things, and he’s slender framed on top of that. I think the demands of catching every day would likely wear him down to a nub. It’s a truly demanding position! That’s why most of those guys don’t hit!

Really, I think your answer is: unless they can find a landing spot for the final two years of Murphy’s contract, he’s the guy.

Small Winged Yeti

Looking ahead to this off-season / Rule 5 draft, who do you think will need to be put on the 40-man?

Yes, indeed, it is that time of year again. Obviously, I’ll be getting into this in more depth come November, but the important thing to know now is that this is the year when the pandemic will really have an effect on Rule 5 decisions. Because the draft in 2020 was limited to five rounds, there are a lot fewer high school kids who were taken that year. And, because the international signing deadline that year was moved from July (before the Rule 5 draft) to January (after the Rule 5 draft), none of that year’s international signings qualify for Rule 5 eligibility this year (eligibility is, by rule, determined by how many Rule 5 drafts have passed since a player’s signing).

So, the Giants have no international signings from 2020 to worry about, and the only high school draftee in that year (Harrison) is already on the big league roster. That means that the only potential pool for first-time candidates is the college players selected in 2021. And that’s a draft that hasn’t performed particularly well for the Giants. I’m as happy to see Will Bednar back on a mound and competing as anybody, but he’s certainly not in a place right now where teams would think about trying to keep him on a big league roster for a full year. As is the case with Harrison, the guys from that draft who have developed (Black, Landen Roupp), are already on the 40-man. The most interesting question mark from the 2021 draft at this point might be Brown, and he’s suffering through a lost year for the ages, which would make him a truly “out of left field” Rule 5 pick. Tyler Myrick? Mat Olsen? I have a hard time imagining their cases are all that strong right now.

All of that means that the only real considerations for the Giants this year will be players who have already been eligible for the draft in prior years. Even there, the choices seem pretty straightforward. Their handling of McCray suggests they consider him a slam dunk. Carson Ragsdale, a product of the Phillies’ 2020 draft, is probably in that same category. Aeverson Arteaga’s lost year due to thoracic outlet surgery means they get to kick that can down the road another year. The aforementioned Auerbach is a somewhat intriguing case, based on his versatility and energy, in addition to his performance in Triple-A this year, and Christian Koss, whom the Rockies selected back in the 2019 draft, is probably worth having a conversation about as well.

After that, you’re talking about guys like Jairo Pomares, Victor Bericoto, Ryan Murphy, Jimmy Glowenke, Manuel Mercedes, and others from the pre-pandemic days. Not too far before the pandemic, however, as players originally signed in 2018 are now set to become minor league free agents, which might end up meaning that someone like Juan Sanchez gets signed to a big league deal to keep him in the organization (as we’ve seen the Giants do with Isan Diaz or Yunior Marte in the past).

As I said, I’ll get into this in more depth in the fall, but at first glance, it doesn’t look like there will be a ton of additions this year.

And with that, let’s close up the bag for this week. Season’s coming to an end soon, so we’re running out of the weekly free for alls, though I’ll make sure to sprinkle a few into the offseason. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date to sit and chat with Mr. Eldridge and I must not make him wait!