Why You Should Feel Good about the Giants' Player Development Progress this Year!
There's plenty of water in this glass, despite some setbacks
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There are reasons to grump. I think we all get that. Going from 107 wins and one of the most thrilling pennant races of all time to needing to beat up on the D’backs and Rox for an outside chance at a .500 season — continuing a long held pattern for an organization that has made the post-season in back to back years just once in its 64-season history — is more than enough reason to grouse, to gripe, more than enough for the airing of grievances and lodging of official protests.
Still, I think we’ve taken some of this a bit too far. The sourness of the major league experience has caused a narrative to proliferate amongst some Giants fans that it’s also been a [insert your adjective of choice: “bad,” “failed,” “lousy”] year of player development as well.
Not to throw any of my followers under the bus, but at some point over the last couple of months, I came to feel like I was seeing these depressing kinds of sentiments a little too frequently:
So I’m here today to tell you why you should be seeing the farm as “half full” this year, not “half empty,” and to answer my friend Harry by saying, no, I don’t believe that the disappointments have outweighed the successes.
In my mind, there’s definitely been more good than bad this year when in\t comes to player development. We must take stock of our treasures.
That’s not to say there haven’t been delays in development or that there haven’t been setbacks and missteps. There clearly have been — as there are in every organization. San Francisco Manager Gabe Kapler was quite clear about that recently, when discussing Heliot Ramos’ season.
“It hasn’t been great,” Kapler told assembled beat writers two weeks ago (I’m taking this quote from a Susan Slusser story in the Chronicle, but it was repeated throughout the various beat stories). “I think we were hoping and Heliot was hoping for a year that put him in the big leagues potentially regularly from the middle of this summer on. I know that was his ambition, even dating back to spring training. His thought was, ‘I’m going to make an impact and stick on this team early in the season,’ and he just hasn’t performed enough at the minor-league level to warrant that.”
Ramos’ second consecutive down season had a host of ramifications for the major league club, which went through a series of ultimately ineffective acquisitions in attempts to fill the production they had hoped they would receive from this valued internal source. After singling twice in his major league debut, Ramos never delivered another hit for the Giants and, a step down, he was, by most measures, the least productive player in the PCL. That legitimately hurt!
But, since we’re starting with the major league club, let’s talk about all of the things that went right at that level when it comes to player development.
While Ramos hasn’t fulfilled the role that the Giants had hoped to reserve for him this year, three other members of There R Giants’ Top 20 prospects in last winter’s rankings are establishing themselves as solid bets to be contributors heading forward. I know that some people have a mental “bright line” separating the major league staff from an organization’s player development work, but I tend to view it as part of the same continuum. The majors are truly the finishing school for development, and the Giants work hard to coordinate message and development work between the major league, minor league, and organizational coaching staffs.
That Camilo Doval went from a guy who walked 17% of the batters he faced in Triple A last year to a guy who now looks like he might be an elite MLB closer for several years to come is a pretty large development success story! The vicious two-seamer that he began unleashing midway through this summer that has elevated his game significantly is a pitch that the organization has been working with him on since the Alternate Site back in 2020! That pitch has been a real separator, actualizing the entire three-pitch repertoire into a hellish assignment for opposing hitters. Last winter, I felt a little timid pushing him all the way up to #11 on my rankings. This fall I’m feeling dumb for not boosting him up higher. That’s a pretty cool development story!
I can pat myself on the back a bit more for my faith in David Villar, whom the Giants didn’t protect from the Rule 5 draft last winter (possibly fortunate that the event never took place). I had to (politely!) castigate Baseball America’s Josh Norris when he was guest on the podcast last winter for not including him in the organization’s Top 30 in this year’s Prospect Handbook. I don’t think the Giants are quite sure yet what they have in Villar — whether he’s a true starter or a complimentary piece — but the man who leads the entire organization in home runs has certainly played his way into being a piece of the major league puzzle next year, and could well turn himself into an everyday player if he keeps up this kind of production. Going from afterthought non-prospect to “part of the new wave of talent” in about a year and half is a great tribute to Villar’s ability and work ethic, and it’s also a pretty great development story for the organization. Where Ramos didn’t fill the role that the org had hoped he would, Villar is forcing his way into a role unforeseen. If God opens a window when closing a door, Villar has deftly climbed his way through the transom.
The story of Bart’s mid-season turnaround — and the swing mechanics work that went into it — has been well discussed this year. While I think the jury is still out as to exactly what level of player Bart is going to become — his 105 wRC+ since returning to the big leagues on July 6 would be the 10th best offensive line for a starting catcher in baseball this year if produced over a full season, but the .295 OBP and 33% K rate suggest there’s still more improvement needed — he’s still put himself in position to be the likely answer at catcher going into next year, giving the team one less hole it needs to think seriously about filling.
And one last triumph in that “Development Finishing School” of the major leagues needs to be counted up. Thairo Estrada was in that quasi-state last winter: no longer a prospect but not quite a major leaguer either. After being acquired in a cash deal from the Yankees (who had DFA’d him), Estrada was recalled and optioned a non-illegal six times in 2021. A young player who had yet to establish himself in 2021, Estrada has transformed himself, rather amazingly, into the most productive position player on the Giants’ big league squad this year. That’s a pretty cool development win!
Ok, ok, I hear you “bright liners” out there saying all of those development triumphs go to the credit of Gabe Kapler’s staff (and the players, always!), they aren’t really farm system triumphs.
Well, bright liners, even while I’m furrowing my brow at your intransigent pedanticism, there are plenty of successes this year that should satisfy you as well. First and foremost, we can’t really overstate how extraordinary of a season Kyle Harrison just had — or what it means for the organization. But let’s start by stating the obvious: for many years, it’s been very clear that Madison Bumgarner’s 2008 season was the single best pitching prospect season of the century in this organization — or many others. Now MadBum has company.
Think about the incredible leaps that Harrison has taken over the last 24 months. Prior to the fall Instrux camp in 2020, Harrison was a 3rd round pick who had been given a bonus that many in the industry found curiously high for a young, “pitchability” lefty. From the buzz generated in that Instrux camp, Harrison leapt onto the scene with a huge debut season — good enough that he snuck into the back end of Baseball America’s Top 100 at position #95. That’s where he was (in general industry consensus) when the year began. As it ends, he plays a leading role in conversations about the best left-handed pitching prospects in baseball, he has almost totally dominated Double A as the youngest pitcher in Richmond Flying Squirrels history (Bumgarner came through Double A before the Giants had moved their affiliate to Richmond), and he posted a strikeout performance that was, by one measure at least, the greatest of the past 60 years.
More importantly, from the Giants’ perspective, he went from being an exciting low level arm to a pitcher who is certain to get a big league spring training invite, and could well be impacting the Giants’ starting rotation before 2023 gets very far along. His progress has, thus far (knock on whatever you can find in your near vicinity!), rapid and substantial — a development arc the likes of which this organization hasn’t really seen since the days of Bumgarner or Matt Cain.
While Harrison has been the most dramatic of the players who have gone from exciting low level talent to near big-league ready, he’s not the only one. When the year started, I wrote that I expected to see a big group of 20-year-olds and other top prospects in Richmond by the end of the season. Only Harrison fulfilled that 20-year-old prediction, and I suppose there has been some feeling of let down that he wasn’t joined by more of his Eugene teammates. But Richmond still did look like a roster of players who could have some big league impact in the not too distant future by the end of the season.
Casey Schmitt put a disappointing debut season behind him and forced a promotion to Double A, where, by the end of the year, he was arguably the best and most valuable player on the team. His end of season bump up to Sacramento suggests he may be starting 2023 just a short drive away from Oracle — he’s put himself into position to make a big league debut in 2023 if things go right for him. I’m not sure how many would have predicted that a year ago.
Surely nobody would have predicted Vaun Brown’s ascent. And though Brown ended the year anti-climatically on the IL with a knee injury (that hopefully won’t prevent him from showing up strong and ready in March), the work he did prior to that has him on a fast track, too. Likely, he gets a taste of Double A to start 2023, but at age 25 and dripping with physical ability, Brown’s another player who could etch his name into San Francisco history before 2023 is over — certainly if he continues to perform like he did this year, he will. Brown led all full-season minor leaguers with a .346 batting average AND a 1.059 OPS. His combination of HR, stolen bases, batting average, and OBP put him in some highly select company, as this BA story documents. The history of players who posted years as strong as Brown’s has solidly presaged productive big league futures, and there is a LOT to be excited about with this 10th rounder.
The Richmond team also included a couple of athletic middle infielders whose names might pop up in late November when the Giants make their 40-man cleanup moves. Will Wilson’s year was tattered by injury issues, and Tyler Fitzgerald’s strikeouts certainly give him more to work on, but both of them do a lot of things to help teams win, and could well be on a Thairo-like path to providing some big league value in the near future.
That Double A squad also was the locus for an incredible group of relief arms who could be helping Doval out in the near future. Cole Waites shot through Richmond on his way from A ball to the big leagues — actually his 18 games in Richmond was his longest stay at any minor league level thus far! And beyond Waites, R.J. Dabovich, Nick Avila, Chris Wright, Clay Helvey, and Ryan Walker all showed flashes of ability that could get them to the big leagues in the next year or two. It’s entirely possible that the makings of a young, diverse, and hard-throwing big league bullpen was pushing its way to the top of the organization in this 2022 season.
Nor was Harrison the only potential starting pitcher who had success in the upper minors this year. Sean Hjelle has shown promise in his big league efforts so far, and though Tristan Beck lived with a bloated ERA in his first year in the PCL, his ability to miss bats and stay in the strike zone with a diverse array of pitches is certainly promising. And down in Richmond, the pitching version of Brown — 12th round pick Landen Roupp — made his way through three levels this year, flashing a quality big league curve ball and riding, 93-mph sinker that could well have him pushing for some big league time in the next couple of years as well.
Which brings me back to my “farm half full/farm half empty” point at the top. Much of the consternation over the farm system in 2022 has focused on the big names, the first round picks, the high bonus signings. And truly, the return on 1st rounders hasn’t been as impactful as the Giants — or the players — would have hoped. Hunter Bishop simply hasn’t been on the field enough as a pro to make much progress. And certainly, when you watch the Giants play against someone like Corbin Carroll, a high school athlete taken six picks after Bishop, there’s an easy temptation to fall into some Monday Morning quarterbacking — but retrofitting the MLB draft is the cheapest and least fair sort of finger pointing the sport avails. It’s not an exact science, and every team has its share of misses. Yes, even the lauded Dodgers have had their share of Jordan Sheffields and Jeren Kendalls and Kyle Funkhousers over the last few years. Things happen.
But focusing too hard on the tribulations of Bishop can cause us to miss out on the success of Brown and Grant McCray — who both delivered on a lot of the promise that Bishop offered in the spring. To focus over-much on Will Bednar’s first season, when he simply wasn’t the best version of himself physically or performance-wise, can over-shadow what Roupp and Mason Black and Trevor McDonald were able to accomplish this year. As with Ramos and Villar, the players you were anticipating might not always be the ones you get, but that doesn’t mean their development was any less successful or impressive. We all wanted to see Marco Luciano move fast. That didn’t happen this year, but what he did accomplish was impressive. Aeverson Arteaga might not have lived up to the offensive success that Luciano and Luis Matos had had as 19-year-olds before him, but his work in full-season ball (in just his second year as a pro) suggested big things in his future. And in a lot of cases where injuries cropped up this season, they weren’t necessarily traumatic injuries that alter careers. They were just baseball stuff: strained muscles, backs sore from putting on the cleats and putting in the work — possibly yet another tail that the COVID season of 2020 has left in its wake.
It’s the ungainly reality of development that progress is messy and hard to see, moving forwards and backwards and sideways like a row of ants trying to move food towards the colony — it doesn’t always take the most efficient route, but over time the stores are filled up.
Even those players who disappointed may well have learned valuable lessons that will help them improve in the future. Matos is certainly one of the names that bitter fans have focused on when heaving castigations at the progress on the farm this season (along with the 1st round triad of Bishop, Bednar, and Patrick Bailey). His season, as Jim Callis said on the There R Giants podcast earlier this year, was one of the most perplexing and shocking disappointments in the minor leagues for much of the summer.
But Farhan Zaidi insisted several times this summer that the underlying hit data looked better than the overall numbers, and over the final six weeks, he finally began to resemble the incredibly talented natural hitter we’d seen in previous years, as he hit .293/.312/.462 after August 1st. On KNBR last week, Zaidi said he thought Matos’ late season progress had been strong enough that the organization would look to start him in Richmond next year (after completing a tour of the Arizona Fall League starting later this month) — so that hoped for Luciano and Matos pairing in Double A will maybe be just a couple months late in showing up after all.
So, while the year hasn’t gone exactly how any of us had hoped, when it comes to the farm, it has certainly brought its share of delights. There’s no need yet for rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. It’s the dark of night that sets off the Milky Way’s brilliance, after all. A lot of progress has been made this year — even in the upper levels of the system. There have been difficulties, tough adjustments, even failures. But, in my view anyway, the successes truly have outweighed the disappointments in 2022, which could yet be looked at as a pivotal season in the Giants’ development.
The crucial takeaways from this season are that real big league talent is arriving in numbers in the upper minors. Prospects who were in the upper minors are impacting the major league roster. And prospects on the major league roster have gotten better.
Those are all things we’ve been waiting on for a number of years.
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Sacramento lost series @ Salt Lake Bees (Angels), 1-5
Winning 12-7 on Saturday Night STATCAST
Losing 3-1 on Sunday Night STATCAST
As noted at the very top today, Casey Schmitt added to his rapid ascent through the system this year by getting a final push up the ladder to Sacramento for the final four games of the season. It’s a real indication of how high the organization is on Schmitt that they wanted to get him just this small taste of the final rung before heading into the winter, and could be a strong hint that his time in Double A is now over and we’ll see a Sacramento assignment for him come April.
Schmitt singled through the hole in his first at bat, going 1 for 4 with two strikeouts in his Triple A debut.
I also need to let you know that the River Cats’ social media folks unearthed a fact that I have failed to in my discussions with Schmitt so far:
Does this mean that Schmitt is destined to have as successful a baseball career as famed perfect-game roller Mookie Betts? Well, I’m certainly not NOT suggesting that!!!
It’s been a rough season for Heliot Ramos, but he’s still capable of doing pretty incredible things on the diamond. Ramos helped propel Sacramento to its lone win of the week, driving in four runs on Saturday night with an RBI double and a monstrous three-run jack to CF. The blast, measured at 452’ and 106.4 mph off the bat, tied the game up at 6 in the top of the 5th before Sacramento would pull away for the win.
The eventual winning runs in that game came later in that same 5th inning, when Yermin Mercedes went deep for a two-run shot. Mercedes would also homer on Sunday for the River Cats’ only run. Overall, the Yerminator went 7 for 20 during the week in Salt Lake with three home runs, a double, and five RBI.
R.J. Dabovich closed down the Saturday win with an impressive four out save that included three strikeouts and four swinging strikes out of 10. Dabovich hit 97 with his fastball on his final pitch of the night, but once again, it was the knuckle curve doing most of the damage. He struck out the final three batters of the night, two of them whiffing on the curve.
Tonight’s Scheduled Starters:
Sacramento (Hjelle) vs. Las Vegas (Harris), 6:35 pm, MiLBTV
For those of you in the Sacramento area, you have three more chances to see the River Cats — and only three chances to see Schmitt playing in Triple A in 2022, if you’re so inclined. Tonight is also possibly your last chance of the year at seeing the Tall Man head to the bump (though maybe he sneaks in one more game with the Giants?).
Great piece, Roger. I also am encouraged by the Giants having 4 affiliates make the post-season. I am in the camp that believes that winning and playoff game experience is an important part of player development.
"like a row of ants trying to move food towards the colony — it doesn’t always take the most efficient route, but over time the stores are filled up." Love your colorful writing!