San Francisco Giants top 10 prospects for 2019
The San Francisco Giants are in a flux position in their organization but are they seeing progress in their minor league system enough to possibly rebuild?
We are in our third offseason at Call to the Pen of putting together top 10 prospect lists for every organization in baseball. Today’s list is the San Francisco Giants.
The Process
Our team prospect lists are compiled by Benjamin Chase, who has spent time doing plenty of watching via MiLB.tv of every organization in baseball along with talking to a very wide array of scouts who have seen players in person to hone his own opinion on players. That allows for a wide coverage on players from the Dominican Summer League all the way to the major leagues.
These lists are the opinion of Ben, and his process is heavily weighted on his own view, but also on trusted views of others. Typically, each system’s list of 10 is peeled down from a consideration list of 50-75 players. There will be some weight given to a player who is closer to the major leagues, but often these opinions will be different than some of the “major” lists out there. Feel free to comment at the end of the list with any questions you may have!
With that out of the way, let’s dig into today’s list:
San Francisco Giants system review
Giants list for 2017
Giants list for 2018
Giants 2018 minor league top performers
The San Francisco Giants have had one of the worst systems in baseball over the last few seasons. Now, when you win three titles in a span of five years and utilize your minor league system to do that, some regression is understandable. However, the Giants have not made the playoffs in the last two seasons and still are considered among the worst systems in the game.
The 2018 draft did address this to some degree, as the Giants grabbed an excellent young prospect, though he will likely push the team’s popular star off of his position in order to make it to the major leagues, so something will need to wbe worked out there in the next couple of seasons. The Giants have also jumped hard into the July 2 market the last few seasons, though their return hasn’t exactly been strong yet on those players.
Those are very small steps, but the major league roster is extremely aged, and with multiple key pieces hitting free agency after 2019, this should have been the offseason to pounce on trade options for guys like Madison Bumgarner and Will Smith, but as the season inches closer, it looks as if the Giants will be hurting their own value in trade by holding onto those players until the season opens.
Let’s start with the countdown, starting with a player that fell outside of the top 10, but was picked up in 2018 via the draft or international signing and is worthy of extra attention going into 2019…