Giants Pitching Riches

At Project Prospect, in a recent Top 50 pitchers under 25 list, the Giants had 4 of the top 46 pitchers: Tim Lincecum (#1), Matt Cain (#9), Madison Bumgarner (#23) and Tim Alderson (#46). Bumgarner was also 2nd among the Top 30 Pitching Prospects and Alderson was 12th.

Unfortunately, this dominance of the list will end in 8 months or so, when Lincecum will turn 25, and further drop when Matt Cain joins him in a year. Still, with 30 teams, on average each team has 1.67 top pitchers under 25 years of age, so two is right in there.

Position Players

There were also prospects top among position players:

C: Buster Posey was 4th behind Brian McCann, Matt Weiters, and Dioner Navarro, and McCann and Navarro will turn 25 soon. Pablo Sandoval was 8th. Posey was 2nd overall among catching prospects.

1B: Nobody ranked in the Top 10 under 25 category. Angel Villalona was ranked 14th among Top 15 Firstbase prospects, but was put down for his overall seasonal stats by the site's analysts. Travis Ishikawa was listed among honorable mentions.

2B: Nick Noonan got honorable mention and was 7th among top 2B prospects for 2009.

3B: Conor Gillaspie got honorable mention for both Top under 25 and Top 15 Third Base Prospects. Not sure how he pulled off both of them, but he did.

SS: Nobody ranked in the Top 10 under 25 category or Top 15 SS Prospects.

CF: Dustin Ackley got honorable mention and he's one of the names popping up as a possible pick for the Giants #6 pick for the 2009 amateur draft. Nobody currently in the Giants farm got a ranking in the Top 10 under 25 category or Top 15 CF Prospects.

OF: Nobody ranked in the Top 10 under 25 category or Top 15 OF Prospects.

Giants Thoughts

Giants have a great crop of starting pitchers and look to have at least two for the next four to eight years. That will lead to a dominating rotation that will make it that much easier for the lineup to score just enough runs to win the division and get into the playoffs.

The most shocking ranking was Angel Villalona, who have made a number of top 50-100 rankings (McKamey 61st out of 100; Baseball Prospectus 47th out of 100; Baseball America has also been high on him before, he was in all of their writers' Top 50 list for 2008) but was only 14th among 1B prospects here. This shows the dichotomy between saber-driven sources, like Project Prospect, and sources that incorporate scouting reports and projections, like McKamey and BP.

I am not sure where Villalona ranks for Baseball America for 2009 (don't have their book yet) but in a chat during the year, one of their writers noted during mid-2008: "Villalona has shown he's not overmatched as a 17-year-old in a full-season league, which is impressive on its own. He just struggles with righthanded pitching right now (whereas he's slugging .594 against lefties). He may wear down as the season goes on, but he'll probably end up with around 15 home runs and I wouldn't fret too much about wherever his final numbers end up." As I've noted, he had his best month of the season in his last month.

They also noted in the Sally League Top 20: "Yes, some people question Villalona's maturity, but he was 17 for most of the year, so he gets a pass. He looked much better, both physically and at the plate, during the second half of the season, which should bode well for the future. He's still learning how to be a professional."

This list also shows the weak areas of the Giants farm system, SS and OF. Brandon Crawford may still do something at SS, plus Ehire Adrianza might push his way on the list there too, and Roger Kieschnick, Wendell Fairley, and Rafael Rodriguez could make their way onto OF lists next season, but for now the talent is not that obvious nor is it high in the system. Those would be areas that we should look to pick up in the next draft, as we got the #6 pick overall and #52 pick overall (for now, depends if any more supplemental picks are awarded), and as noted in just recent posts, there is three currently high ranked amateurs who play those positions: Grant Green SS, Dustin Ackley CF/1B, Donovan Tate CF.

Of course, we still have Emmanuel Burriss at SS (possibly) and Nate Schierholtz in RF, so we are not totally barren of young talent at SS and OF, but Burriss is not a sure thing to be a shortstop, either short-term or long-term, and Schierholtz's value comes from HR power that he has not shown thus far in the majors, but has given some hints with the doubles he's been getting. Plus, he actually hit very well at home, it was all his games in Dodger Stadium and PetCo Park that hurt his road and overall numbers immensely (he slugged in Coors Field, naturally).

The Giants have turned around their moribund farm system in terms of position players in just three seasons, making good progress first in 2006, drafting Emmanuel Burriss, Michael McBryde, Ryan Rohlinger, Brian Bocock, and Matthew Downs, all of whom has some prospect status in our farm system, just not overall relative to all MLB prospects. Prospects like that are long-shots, though Burriss, Downs, and Rohlinger has shown some good offensive abilities that could translate to the majors. Plus, they made a significant signing, signing Angel Villalona, who has a lot of baseball talent.

Then in 2007, the Giants picked up Wendell Fairley, Nick Noonan, and Charlie Culberson. And they picked up their abundance of riches in 2008, with Posey, Gillaspie, Kieschnick, and Crawford, plus signing Rafael Rodriguez. In addition, somewhere in 2006-2007, they signed Ehire Adrianza. Hopefully the Giants can pick up another two good position players with their first two picks overall, plus pick up another position prospect or two from the Carribean again, and they should set us up very well for the early to mid-2010's.