San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Giants: Drew Ferguson bidding to stand out from outfield crowd.
TEMPE, Ariz. — As outfielder Drew Ferguson preaches the gospel of plate discipline and on-base percentage, and relates how even in high school he would scour the internet to read every word he could find about baseball analytics, it becomes easy to understand why Jeff Luhnow, the Astros’ metrics-crazy general manager, drafted him.
When Ferguson explains how he researches wind speed, park dimensions and surface temperatures to gauge where flyballs might go, you wonder why Luhnow didn’t try to adopt him.
At a time when information has become the currency of the realm in baseball, Ferguson considered himself “probably the most analytical guy in the minor leagues with Houston.”
When the Giants hired Farhan Zaidi as their “next-gen” president of baseball operations, one of Zaidi’s first moves was securing a next-gen player like Ferguson, grabbing him from Houston in the Rule 5 draft.
The Giants would love to see Ferguson force his way onto the Opening Day roster as a potential utility outfielder and righthanded complement to center fielder Steven Duggar.
Under Rule 5, if Ferguson does not make the club the Giants have to offer him back to the Astros. So they plan to give Ferguson a keen look. On Saturday, he went 0-for-2 but made a nice lunging catch in center in the Cactus League opener against the Angels. He is expected to start the home opener against the Cubs on Sunday.
In many ways, Ferguson is Zaidi’s archetype, a fleet outfielder who can play all three positions with a .393 OBP in four minor-league seasons. When Ferguson repeated Triple-A last year, he hit .305 with a Joey Votto-like .436 OBP. Power is Ferguson’s kryptonite. He does not hit home runs.
The Giants want to create a more analytical player-development process. In Ferguson, they already have a product of that environment.
“It’s no secret that Houston is a pretty aggressively technology-forward organization,” Ferguson said. “They’re all about the new-age stuff, the analytics. That was all implemented across the board pretty early on in my career. That was part of coming up in the minor leagues.”
Ferguson was not a blue-chip collegian. The Tennessee native played for four years at Belmont in Nashville while earning a finance degree before the Astros selected him in the 19th round in 2015. Also, he is 26, raising questions about why the Astros did not promote him to the majors and left him unprotected in the Rule 5 draft.
Part of the answer is how loaded the Astros were during and since their 2017 World Series title run.
“He had some guys in front of him that were, quote, higher prospects,” said Giants hitting coach Alonzo Powell, who came from the Astros. “But he’s played his way into the prospect role well enough for us to Rule 5 him with the opportunity to make our team.
“Now it’s just going to be on Drew to prove that the numbers he’s put up in the minor leagues are real and he can do that at the major-league level.”
The numbers that stand out, besides a .297 batting average over four seasons, are how many walks he has drawn (181) and how few strikeouts he has had (297) in 1,504 plate appearances.
Ferguson is a throwback — to 2003, when Michael Lewis’ “Moneyball” hit bookshelves and “on-base percentage” and “undervalued players” became baseball bywords.
“There’s a propensity to fall in love with the home runs, the flashy plays, instead of just the nuts and bolts of an offense, which is getting out less,” Ferguson said.
“In high school, I looked at the stat work people were doing online and found it really interesting, especially the disparity between how players were being evaluated and what the math seemed to say was actually valuable. I think that drove my development growing up, into college and in my professional career as well.”
Ferguson has to focus on getting on base because he is not likely to drive himself in with the long ball. He has 35 minor-league homers, hitting four in 233 at-bats at Fresno last year.
The Giants, who ranked 14th in the league in OBP last year, have room for a guy like Ferguson. But to be that player in the majors, he will have to reach base with his bat flying through the zone, not just on his shoulder.
“His walk rate is not going to be the same as it was in the minors,” Powell said. “Pitchers here are going to challenge him. They pick their poison. They’re going to attack Drew and make him hit the ball with guys like (Buster) Posey and (Brandon) Belt behind him.
“That’s going to be the telltale sign. When they challenge him, is he going to get some hits? I’m looking forward to seeing him this spring.”