Giants brings unprecedented approach in draft

They select nine straight pitchers

Vaun Brown, a 23-yearold outfielder who played Division II ball at Florida Southern, is a 10th round pick whose name would likely appear next to a bullet point at the bottom of most stories summarizing a team’s MLB Draft haul. Not this year.

Not when Brown was the only position player chosen in the first 10 rounds by a Giants organization that took an unprecedented approach to the 2021 amateur draft.

After selecting Mississippi State right-hander Will Bednar with the 14th overall pick in round one on Sunday, the Giants tabbed eight more pitchers including seven college arms as they executed an unusual draft strategy that should create more balance in a farm system led by several highly touted position players.

The Giants hadn’t used their first three selections on pitchers since 1999 when the organization drafted Kurt Ainsworth out of LSU, Jerome Williams of Waipahu High in Hawaii and John Thomas of Righetti High in Santa Maria, California, but president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, general manager Scott Harris and amateur scouting director Michael Holmes entered this year’s draft with a clear mission.

The Los Angeles Angels remarkably made an even greater commitment to adding pitching as new general manager Perry Minasian, the brother of Giants pro scouting director Zack Minasian, has overseen a draft in which the Angels have selected 10 consecutive college pitchers.

Of the nine pitchers the Giants selected in the first 10 rounds of this year’s 20-round MLB Draft which continues Tuesday, fourth round pick, Eric Silva, out of Jserra High in San Juan Capistrano, California was the only high school pitcher the organization drafted.

Silva, a UCLA commit, was ranked as the 126th overall draft eligible prospect by Mlb.com and the 140th draft eligible prospect by ESPN and multiple reports say his fastball has been clocked at 97 miles per hour.

The Giants’ approach in the first 10 rounds of the 2021 draft is nearly a complete reversal from their strategy in 2019, when nine of the first 10 players they chose were position players. The eighth round selection from that draft, right-hander Caleb Kilian, was the only pitcher the Giants tabbed and he’s off to the best start of any player from the class as Kilian was recently named the DoubleA Northeast Pitcher of the Week for the first time this season.

After drafting Bednar on Sunday, the Giants chose lefty Matt Mikulski of Fordham with their second round pick and Mason Black of Lehigh in the third round. Following the selection of Silva, the Giants made one of their most interesting selections when they chose Yale lefthander Rohan Handa in the fifth round.

Handa didn’t play for Yale this year as the Ivy League season was canceled due to COVID-19, but the Indian-american left-hander made a handful of appearances in the New England Collegiate Baseball League this summer where his fastball reportedly topped out at 97 miles per hour.

The Giants added two more lefties in rounds six and seven by selecting Seth Lonsway of Ohio State and Nick Sinacola of Maine, who posted the second-highest strikeoutper-nine innings total in Division I this year behind Mikulski, who led the nation with 16.1 at Fordham.

The organization added a local pick in the eighth round by tabbing Northgate High (Walnut Creek) and Cal product Ian Villers, a righthander who spent the 2021 season pitching out of the Bears’ bullpen. Another right-hander, Central Arizona College and Arizona State commit Mat Olsen, became the team’s ninth round selection.

The run of pitchers finally ended when the Giants made Brown the 296th player taken in this year’s draft. Brown hit .387 with a team-high 13 home runs for Florida Southern as a fifth-year senior.