The Giants won a franchise-record 107 games last year, then reloaded after being knocked out of the Division Series by the Dodgers. But since posting a 14-7 record through the end of April, things haven’t gone their way. Though they snapped a six-game losing streak with a late-inning comeback against the Diamondbacks on Wednesday night, they’ve dropped 12 of their last 16 games, largely against sub-.500 teams. As the season’s midway point approaches, they’re barely above .500 at 41-39, and what’s more, they just lost their hottest hitter, Evan Longoria, to an oblique strain.

It’s not clear at this writing how Longoria was injured, but losing him is a blow nonetheless. The 36-year-old third baseman is hitting .242/.331/.462 with eight home runs; his 123 wRC+ is fourth among Giants regulars. In the two weeks prior to his injury, as the team has struggled, he hit for a team-high 166 wRC+ (.316/.413/.553) with three of those eight homers.

Longoria already missed the first 30 games of the season due to surgery to repair a torn ligament in his right index finger, making this the fifth straight season in which he has landed on the injured list. Last year, he was limited to 81 games due to a dislocated sternoclavicular joint in his left shoulder as well as a right hand contusion. In 2020, he missed the first seven games of the season due to an oblique strain; reportedly, he tweaked the muscle on his right side while swinging on July 14 of that year and was back in the lineup on July 30. In terming his current strain mild, manager Gabe Kapler offered similar optimism that this won’t be a long-term absence, though Longoria is out through at least the All-Star break. Read the rest of this entry »

Things haven’t quite gone to plan in San Francisco this year. That’s not to say that the Giants have been bad, or even that they’ve been disappointing exactly. At 39–33, they’re squarely in the playoff hunt, and if you go by our odds, they’re more likely to make the postseason today than they were before the season. But after a 107-win 2021, “in the playoff hunt” doesn’t sound nearly as enticing. The same is true for their individual performers. It’s hard to be impressed by a nice season when seemingly everyone on the team had a career year last year.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Logan Webb has been pretty darn good so far this year. In 15 starts, he’s compiled a 3.04 ERA, which nearly matches his 3.03 FIP. That’s roughly a match for his breakout 2021 season, which sounds great, but the resounding roar around the Giants’ unstoppable player development engine over the past two years makes Webb’s success feel almost pedestrian.

It’s not, though. Pitchers with ERAs near 3 don’t grow on trees. Webb is one of the best 30 starters in baseball; that should speak for itself. Since the start of 2021, he’s 12th among pitchers in WAR, 18th in ERA, and fifth in FIP. He’s 32nd in K-BB%, which doesn’t sound quite as impressive until you consider the fact that he gets so many grounders. No starter has allowed fewer home runs per inning, and only human cheat code Framber Valdez has a higher groundball rate.
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You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

I’m touching up prospect lists using the same complex-based clustering as usual, incorporating notes from my in-person looks, sourced data, and the opinions of pro scouts. First up is the group of teams based in Scottsdale, with a focus on the Giants due to their status as contenders, making them the team most likely to be motivated to part with prospects between now and the trade deadline. Players whose Future Value grade changed have an “Up” or “Down” arrow in the “Trend” column on The Board.

Arizona Diamondbacks

I didn’t make many changes to Arizona’s list. Small-school righty Brandon Pfaadt leapfrogs former tiermates Blake Walston and Ryne Nelson, and moves into the Top 100. He’s throwing a tick harder than last year and working with three above-average (or better) pitches at Double-A Amarillo now that his changeup has taken a step forward. While he’s a below-average 2B/3B, recent debutant Buddy Kennedy has hit enough to be considered a righty-hitting 1-WAR role-player type, à la Mike Brosseau. Jose Curpa and Christian Montes De Oca have been added to the org list; their reports can be found on The Board. I also considered adding hard-throwing youngsters Rael Santos and Diomede Sierra (each 20-21 years old and sitting 94 mph), but they’ve been too walk-prone for that. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin will have periodic minor league roundup post that run during the week. You can read previous installments of our prospect notes here.

Before we get to this post’s analysis, some housekeeping. I’m continuing to trudge through the last few team lists, and hope readers will understand that part of why this has taken so long is because a) we lost multiple writers to teams during the process and b) it takes a lot for me to compromise my vision for the depth and quality of my work. I’m on pace to finish just before the draft while also updating and expanding the draft prospect list so that draftees can quickly be added to their club’s pro list right after they’re picked. I realize that continuing this way during future cycles would leave valuable and relevant info unpublished for too long, and that I need to make changes. For instance, I don’t have a Cardinals list out yet while guys like Andre Pallante, Brendan Donovan and Juan Yepez are all playing big league roles. I’ve had well-formed thoughts on that group of guys since they were part of last year’s Arizona Fall League, and need to find a way to shorten the lag between when I’m taking those notes and when they’re turned into actionable info on the site, especially when it comes to short-term big leaguers.

My approach for in-season updates (which have already underway — duh, you are reading this post) will again be to group teams based on the geographic location of their spring training facility (for example, teams with East Valley facilities in Arizona are already being updated) and drill down deepest on contending clubs (within that East Valley cluster, the Giants) as they’re more likely to part with prospects ahead of the trade deadline. There will still be à la carte updates where I see a player and add them, or where someone’s performance prompts me to source info from scouting and front office contacts and brings about a change in their evaluation or valuation. Read the rest of this entry »

Since the day he was selected with the second pick of the 2018 draft out of Georgia Tech, Joey Bart was considered the heir apparent to Buster Posey. His progress to the majors was closely tracked, and when Posey opted out of playing during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season for family reasons, Bart arrived in the majors ahead of schedule. When Posey retired suddenly last fall after a stellar age-34 season, all eyes turned to Bart as well. His major league career thus far hasn’t gone as hoped, however, and on Wednesday the Giants optioned the struggling backstop to Triple-A Sacramento.

With Posey putting together an All-Star season as he helped the Giants to a franchise record 107 wins, Bart was left with some oversized shoes to fill, but he began the season with great fanfare, homering on Opening Day off the Marlins’ Sandy Alcantara. Alas, the 25-year-old backstop has hit a meager .156/.296/.300 with four homers in 108 plate appearances overall. He started 21 of the team’s first 34 games, capped by a ninth-inning homer off Albert Pujols (!) on May 15, but after that, he started just eight of 20 games, going 2-for-25 with 15 strikeouts.

Particularly with the team going 9–11 in that span, and 3–5 in the games Bart started, the Giants felt some adjustments were in order, and that they would best be made in the minors. Via The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said, “Our sense was it was weighing a little more on Joey. It’s one thing to be struggling and still feel like the team is firing on all cylinders. That allows you to be in a better mindset. But when it starts weighing a little more, an intervention makes sense.”

Via the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser, Zaidi said, “We still think Joey is an everyday catcher… In the broader scheme of things, we thought it made sense to get him a little bit of a reset. We’re very open to the notion that at-bats at Triple-A out of the spotlight can help get a guy on track.”

Via MLB.com’s Maria Guardado, manager Gabe Kapler reiterated the team’s commitment to Bart but said, “The number one message is that he has some adjustments that he needs to make.” More:

Kapler said the Giants would like to see Bart even out his shoulders and hips, as well as have more of a gather on his front side to help him cut down on some of the swing-and-miss in his game and tap into more of his right-handed power. The first order of action, though, will be to give Bart a bit of a breather following one of the more challenging stretches of his young career.

As for that swing-and-miss, while Bart’s overall 81 wRC+ is nothing to write home about, it’s only three points below the major league average for all catchers. Of much greater concern is his 45.4% strikeout rate, the highest of any player with at least 100 PA:

In the 74 plate appearances in which he’s reached two strikes, Bart has hit just .060/.160/.104; that’s 4-for-67 with eight walks, a homer, and a 66.1% strikeout rate. That’s not much better than what major league pitchers hit with two strikes on them in 2019 (.076/.103/.093) while striking out 67.8% of the time. Read the rest of this entry »

Coming into 2022, Mike Yastrzemski was something of a cipher. Was he a late bloomer who suddenly learned how to hit? From 2019 through the 2021 All Star break, he was excellent, to the tune of a .266/.350/.514 slash line, a 128 wRC+, and 48 homers in 932 plate appearances. Or was he old news, a flash in the pan that pitchers developed a counter for? In the second half last year, he hit .212/.281/.483, struck out nearly 30% of the time, and generally looked like the career minor leaguer he’d been before 2019.

This year, he’s been back on track, and it’s largely been due to a better on-base percentage. Some of that is striking out less; he’s turned in a career-low swinging-strike rate and career low strikeout rate to go along with it. Just as importantly, though, he’s doing better on balls in play, and doing so partially by bunting — something of a San Francisco specialty this year.

In the first 300 games of his career, Yastrzemski bunted ten times. That generally tracks; he’s not particularly fast and hits for power. Why would he do anything other than clock balls over the fence — or, in spacious Oracle Park, into triples alley and off the wall? In fact, you might think that 10 bunts was 10 too many, if it weren’t for the fact that he turned six of them into hits.

This year, he’s put that plan into overdrive, with three bunt hits already after a third of a season. He’s been part of a concerted San Francisco bunting effort so far this year. The team has gone after shifts that don’t respect bunting ability by targeting them early and often, and its captain, Brandon Belt, is something of a bunting enthusiast himself. In fact, the Giants lead baseball in bunt hits, with 11, despite having exactly zero of the 75 fastest runners in baseball this year, per Statcast’s sprint speed leaderboard.
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As far as silly and offbeat sports stories go, it would be hard to top the fantasy football spat between Reds outfielder Tommy Pham and Giants outfielder Joc Pederson. Last week, Pham — who annually leads the league in umbrage taken and who has already made headlines this year by challenging Luke Voit to a fight — drew a fine and a three-game suspension for slapping Pederson in a pre-game confrontation. Not stopping there, earlier this week, he dragged league commissioner Mike Trout into the dispute. It’s all rather comical, but lost in all of this beyond his characteristically bemused response to the whole matter is that Pederson is off to a terrific start with the Giants, putting up some eye-opening numbers.

Before we go further — and then I promise you that we’ll move onto baseball — here’s Joc explaining his side of the football story for those of you whose attention was elsewhere:

Joc shares details of what happened in his fantasy football league that started his altercation with Tommy Pham today pic.twitter.com/d9NBTwPVoG

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) May 28, 2022

Moving along… After winning a World Series ring for a second year in a row (with the Dodgers in 2020 and then with the Braves last fall), Pederson joined the Giants via a one-year, $6 million deal in mid-March. It was the second year in a row that he had to take a slight pay cut, but then neither of his last two seasons had been up to par. He entered 2020 as a career 119 wRC+ hitter who beyond his cup-of-coffee 2014 season had only once slipped below 116 (100 in an injury-marred 2017), but he hit just .190/.285/.397 (86 wRC+) with -0.2 WAR in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and then .238/.310/.422 (93 wRC+) with 0.3 WAR last year for the Cubs (who signed him to a one-year, $7 million deal) and Braves (who acquired him in mid-July).

Pederson more than made up for his in-season struggles in both 2020 and ’21 by hitting a combined .282/.341/.474 with five homers in 85 PA in the two postseasons — Joctober is his month — and, improbably, introducing pearl necklaces as a fashion accessory for men. His three-run pinch-hit homer in Game 3 of the Division Series against the Brewers’ Adrian Houser provided all of the runs the Braves needed to close out that take a two-games-to-one lead in that series, and his two-run homer off the Dodgers’ Max Scherzer in Game 2 of the NLCS helped send his former team to defeat. The necklace he sported as a good luck charm became so famous that he donated it to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Braves’ gaudy World Series ring even featured a single pearl as a tribute to his iconic display.

In joining the Giants, Pederson figured to see action primarily as part of a left field platoon, with right field and designated hitter possibilities as well, and so far things have gone according to plan. He’s started 22 times in left, eight at DH, and six in right, with all but one of those starts coming against righties. The Giants have used four different players as his platoon-mates in left, a situation necessitated in part by Brandon Belt landing on the injured list twice (once for COVID-19, and currently for knee inflammation) and righty-swinging Darin Ruf getting a share of the work manning first base in Belt’s absence.

So far, few things have gone as right for the Giants this year as the Pederson signing. The 30-year-old slugger has hit .268/.340/.583 with 12 home runs, including three in a wild game against the Mets on May 24, a career first and a first for a Giant at AT&T Park. While his total of 144 plate appearances leaves him 11 short of qualifying for the batting title, his slugging percentage ranks fourth in the National League among players with at least 140 PA, and his 157 wRC+ ranks fifth. Those 12 homers are a team high and tied for sixth in the league; the 13 other players in the NL with at least 10 homers all have at least 189 PA, and 10 of them have at least 200. Read the rest of this entry »

Whether or not you’ve seen it, you likely know the premise of Freaky Friday. A mother and her daughter switch bodies in a great cosmic mixup, and hijinks ensue. Hello! Welcome to FanGraphs. I’m Ben Clemens, and today we’ll be covering classic teen cinema of the early 2000s (and mid-1970s), as personified by last night’s Giants-Mets game.

Tuesday night could have been just another day at the (beautiful, well-appointed) office for the Mets and Giants. After a comfortable win by New York in Monday’s series opener, the Giants returned the favor early in last night’s game. Chris Bassitt, the steadiest starter in a rotation buffeted by injuries, had his worst start of the year, surrendering eight earned runs in only 4.1 innings thanks to three homers, two by Joc Pederson. Logan Webb, meanwhile, cruised through five innings (six strikeouts, one walk, two runs), turning what was billed as a pitching duel into an 8-2 rout.

Teams don’t come back from six-run deficits. When Pederson launched his second homer, a two-run shot that pushed the score to 8-2, the Giants’ win expectancy climbed to 98.2%. Tune into 50 games, and you might see the trailing team pull one out. The Mets behaved accordingly; they brought in Stephen Nogosek, the last reliever in their bullpen, to eat some innings.

That’s the way the game could have ended – but let’s get back to Freaky Friday. In 2021, the Giants won these games, whichever side of the 8-2 score they were on. They were both excellent and a team of destiny, and you have to win plenty of tough ones to end the regular season with 107 wins.
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Sergio Romo moved past Walter Johnson on the all-time pitching appearances list a few days ago. Now in his fifteenth season, and his first with the Seattle Mariners, the 39-year-old right-hander has taken the mound 804 times, a number that only 49 others have reached. Also in front of Tyler Clippard following yesterday’s outing in Boston, Romo was at 798 games to begin the campaign.

I asked the bearded-and-tattooed reliever when he started becoming aware of his place in history.

“This season, really,” Romo told me on Friday. “Earlier in my career, it had been more of a blur. But coming into this year, it was kind of, ‘Hey, man…’ My wife, too. She was aware of it. She was, ‘You’re two away from 800,’ so I started paying attention.”

Asked for his thoughts on having just passed a legendary Hall of Famer, Romo responded with a smiling, “Take that, Walter!”

Romo knows his history. “The Big Train” pitched long before he was alive — from 1907 through 1927 — but his legacy is no mystery.

“He was an infamous flame-thrower, and a guy who commanded a lot of respect,” said Romo. “He pitched a lot of innings, and he did it throwing gas. I actually play with Walter Johnson every now and again in MLB: The Show, The’ve got a lot of greats in that game. Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey… a lot of those guys.”

Nolan Ryan pitched in 807 games on his way to immortality.R omo will soon pass “The Ryan Express” on the all-time appearances, as well. I asked the owner of 137 saves, and a career 3.09 ERA, what it feels like — obvious caveats aside — to be in such company. Read the rest of this entry »

As we accumulate enough scouting notes to fill an article, we’ll publish dispatches from our in-person looks. Below are some of those observations from our most recent excursions. Past In-Person Looks can be found here.

Eric’s Notes
I began my Saturday morning at a Giants/Rockies extended spring training game and ran into two of last year’s notable Rockies DSL pitchers, Alberto Pacheco and Angel Chivilli. Pacheco, who was an Honorable Mention prospect on this year’s Rockies list, was up to 95 mph, sitting 91-94, and had a better breaking ball than our reports from 2021 indicated, a two-plane slurve in the 82-85 mph range. He had better feel for landing it as an in-zone strike than he did for burying it as a finishing pitch. His changeup was in the 84-87 mph range, consistent with reports from last year. There are ways you could frame it (teenage lefty up to 95!) to justify a re-evaluation and a move up the Colorado pref list, and Pacheco is certainly a pitcher in their system to know, but let’s see how the velo trends this summer. Pacheco has three pitches in the 45/50-grade area and is still several years away from the big leagues, so he probably still belongs in the Others of Note area.

Chivilli came in in relief and worked a couple of innings sitting 95-98 mph. He is super loose and projectable and might still throw harder, but his secondary stuff (a mid-80s slider and changeup) is currently below average. There’s one obvious impact pitch here in the fastball, and Chivilli only needs to develop one other offering to project in relief. Because he signed in 2018, the 2022 season is technically his 40-man evaluation year. He’s a developmental prospect at this stage, likely too far from the big leagues to be added to the 40-man after the season, and also too raw to be taken (and stick) via the Rule 5 Draft. We’re looking at a two-to-three year timeline for Chivilli to work towards a 40-man spot, probably still in relief. Read the rest of this entry »