San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Giants prospects are ready to take over.
Giants prospects learn and bond together as they move up ladder
Early in spring training 2020, Giants catcher Joey Bart made a statement that resonated well beyond his Scottsdale Stadium locker.
It was about a fellow prospect, Heliot Ramos.
“I hate that he’s not here with us. I’ll be the first one to tell you. I think he deserved to be here this year,” said Bart, suggesting Ramos was good enough to join bigleague camp as a 20yearold.
A year later, Ramos showed he certainly belongs at age 21, enjoying one of the most productive springs of anyone in camp. He’s destined to make his majorleague debut this year, though it’ll likely come after a good number of atbats in the minors.
The point is, Bart rallied for Ramos. Despite the rookie backstop having no bigleague experience at the time, he had the younger prospect’s back, which tells you what you need to know about the Giants’ newgeneration players who are working their way up as the proprietors of the next era.
They’re expected to emerge in the next year or two. For now, they’re not just honing their skills, they’re trying to create a winning chemistry.
This year, a great majority of the top prospects were present at bigleague camp starting with the top three (in no particular order): Bart, Ramos and Marco Luciano.
Plus outfielder Hunter Bishop and catcher Patrick Bailey, the Giants’ top draft picks the past two years, along with another firstrounder, infielder Will Wilson, drafted by the Angels in 2019 and acquired by the Giants.
“It’s great to see some of the younger guys coming up, getting their feet wet, getting a bigleague spring training,” Bart said. “It’s a big deal. I’m excited for those guys, excited to see them get treated like bigleaguers and get acclimated.”
Bart, 24, is the oldest and most experienced of the group, enjoying some nice moments in 33 bigleague games last season but overall showing he needs more grooming. He’ll open the season at TripleA Sacramento.
Luciano, 19, is the youngest, rated as high as seventh among all baseball prospects (on ESPN’s top 100 list), and a potential fivetool infielder. He received valuable experience hanging with bigleaguers in spring training — as well as the alternate site in Sacramento last summer — but has gobs of development to go. Likely next step: Class A San Jose.
Among them all, there’s enough highceiling talent to round out the best group of prospects since Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt worked their way up and became eventual World Series champs.
“Alternate site, instructional league and now spring training, being around guys like Will, Joey, Heliot, Marco, Patrick and a couple more, we’re really becoming close,” Bishop said.
“Spending all this time together, it’s pretty awesome. Just seeing how all these guys are developing and turning into really good players, not just prospects, is pretty awesome to see.”
Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ president of baseball operations, is betting it all on these guys. In his third season on the job, Zaidi has yet to sign an elite free agent.
Contracts beyond one year are rare — only Wilmer Flores and Tommy La Stella received them, and La Stella and Evan Longoria are the only players with contracts past this season. The contracts for Posey, Crawford, Belt and Johnny Cueto expire after this season.
It’s clear Zaidi is waiting for the next generation to take over the team so he can build around that nucleus by acquiring accomplished players and turning the group into a perennial playoff contender. Zaidi already brought in Mike Yastrzemski, Alex Dickerson and Mauricio Dubón, fourfifths of the rotation and a slew of relievers.
Will it work? It has to be better than the alternative. The Giants, who won three World Series titles in five years under the Brian SabeanBobby Evans administration, have slipped to alsoran status the past four years, the first time since 20052008 they posted losing records four straight seasons.
Of course, what came next was the most successful run in franchise history since 19211924, when the Giants appeared in four straight World Series, winning the first two.
While it’s unfair to compare this latest wave of prospects to the PoseyBumgarner ensemble, it at least provides hope and optimism after a painful dry run in the system.
Take Ramos. His athleticism and speedpower combination set him apart in spring training, and he’s expected to join the Giants during the season. Determined to stick in center field, Ramos eventually could move to a corner, perhaps right, where he can show off his fantastic arm.
Bishop also is a legit center field prospect who’s solidly built like Ramos, prompting Dickerson to say, “Both of them are freakish athletic. Both of them would be tough to deal with on a football field. You can see that raw, explosive ability.”
Ramos and Bishop are the latest candidates to end the Giants’ long drought of homegrown outfielders. They haven’t drafted, signed and developed an AllStar outfielder since Chili Davis, who came out of the 1977 draft and is 61 years old.
(No, we can’t count Adam Duvall, who made the 2016 AllStar team as a Reds outfielder after coming up in the Giants’ system as an infielder.)
Just one Giants homegrown outfielder since Marvin Benard in 2000 had more than 500 plate appearances in a season (Fred Lewis, 2008), and this front office certainly is dedicated to giving Ramos and Bishop plenty of opportunities.
Perhaps along with Alexander Canario and Luis Matos, both international signees. The pride of the international pool is Luciano, who will learn from a rough spring training and said through interpreter Erwin Higueros, “I like the fact I’m competing with older players, majorleaguers. It shows I can play to that level.”
Luciano is learning more than baseball.
“Marco’s really standing out to me for how hard he’s working. His English is 10 times better than last year,” Bishop said. “It’s just really cool to see.”
Wilson added, “Luci’s been awesome. He’s really settling in and getting more talkative. ... Marco’s a stellar player. He can do whatever he wants to do when he puts his mind to it.”
What’s missing in this whole equation? Pitchers. The championship era was ignited by the homegrown pitching of Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Bumgarner, Sergio Romo and others, while the current crop of prospects clearly is hitterheavy.
That doesn’t mean the Giants lack quality young arms. Sean Hjelle and Tristan Beck had impressive moments in bigleague camp, as did hardthrowing relievers Camilo Doval, Gregory Santos and Kervin Castro.
Seth Corry, a thirdround pick in 2017, might be the Giants’ best pitching prospect and highlights a promising corps of lefties including Nick Swiney and Kyle Harrison, second and thirdround picks in 2020, respectively.
The Giants paid Harrison (De La SalleConcord) firstround money ($2.5 million) to keep him from attending UCLA. Swiney is part of a North Carolina State connection involving Wilson and Bailey.
“It’d be great to play with those guys again,” Wilson said. “Hopefully we all get the chance to do it at any level and hopefully the bigleague level, too.”
Hjelle, a secondrounder in 2018 who could reach the majors this season, stood out in training camp to Bart, and not just because of his 6foot11 frame.
“When he has the ball in his hand, he’s almost mad. I kind of like that . ... There aren’t a lot of guys that tall who can throw the ball like that,” Bart said.
Mutual respect appears widespread among the Giants’ top prospects, and that’s a good sign for Zaidi, who figures to keep adding young players, including at the July 31 trade deadline.
Meantime, the kids continue to gain experience with the intention of one day thriving in the big leagues, and it can’t hurt in the interim that they seem to get along.
“Of course. I mean, everybody’s my friend,” Ramos said. “They’re my teammates. I have fun with them. I try to be the best teammate ever. I love them all.”
“Alternate site, instructional league and now spring training, being around guys like Will (Wilson), Joey (Bart), Heliot (Ramos), Marco (Luciano), Patrick (Bailey) and a couple more, we’re really becoming close.” Hunter Bishop