Your 2018 Giants: Gets #2 Pick Overall

Final Standing: Tigers lose and Giants win on a walk off by Sandoval, leading to the Tigers getting the #1 pick, and the Giants #2. In spite of Cueto pitching, he had a poor start (pretty much sealing his fate, he's staying with the Giants and not using his opt-out), but the bullpen held strong in this game, and the offense just did enough.  That's the formula of our Golden Era:  good enough pitching, good enough hitting.


ogc thoughts

With the #2 pick, this is the best draft position ever for the Giants, tied for best with #2 in 1985 when they selected Will Clark (we also had #3 in 1986 with Matt Williams, a pair that defined an era, much like Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey). Not that we will necessarily get someone as good as Will the Thrill. :)  There have been mistakes, like Jason Grilli (#4 in 1997), Zack Wheeler (#6 in 2008), and Sabean was around for Matt White (#7 in 1996).   Still, exponentially better than selecting #12 or #22.

As much as I wanted #1 pick, it will still all come down to how well your scouts figure out who are the best talent.  The difference in talent between the two picks are not that great.  And the Giants have been pretty good at identifying skills, hitting since Barr joined, pitching since Tidrow been running scouting, so I feel pretty good that the Giants have a great chance to find a good prospect. Of course, there are no guarantees for any prospect, their talents could be canceled by their body breaking down or by their mind/habits somehow blocking their potential, but that's true no matter where you pick.

So I feel very good about this position, as there is no pre-season consensus #1, like Bryce Harper, so the top player will depend greatly on how each team values prospects.  And the Giants have always been thinking differently when it comes to prospects. Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Arroyo, Panik, Belt, Crawford are examples of prospects selected before what others thought of their talents and/or potential. BA ranks had them lower in their ranks, for example Cain selected 25th, ranked in the 40's, Lincecum while ranked high, most teams had him as a reliever only because of his size, Bumgarner's cross-over throwing motion is a huge worry point for many teams, etc.

Every draft always have a number of good prospects and while it is hard to deliver (less than half of Top 5 picks turn out to be a good to great player), it is the highest percentage of discovery (over 40% do end up being a good player or better). With the good finds of this season's draft, plus hopefully whomever we pick in 2018 (and remember, we also get earlier picks for every round as well), and the nice prospects we already have in the upper minors, like Arroyo, Shaw, Beede, Reynolds, Slater, Duggar, Garcia, Fabian, Quinn, Andrew Suarez, Gregoria, Hinojosa, wow, we have a really deep farm system, not high in obvious quality, but a lot of interesting prospects who could develop for us, we should have the prospects to fuel another good run during the back half of Posey-Bumgarner duo.  One more trophy would be a nice capper to their great run.

I expect the scouting intelligence that brought us all these prospects when we had the odds strongly against us in the draft, which happens when you are winning a lot, to make a great pick with that #2 pick. Jumping up an extra 10-20 selections will give us a lot more higher quality prospects to chose from, and hopefully hit on more of our selections.

Also, the Tigers are going fully into rebuilding mode, with the trade of Verlander and Martinez, so I would say that the odds of them selecting a high school player is pretty high, as they will be looking longer term for when these prospects blossom, and the Giants have rarely selected high school players early, though they have hit well when they did with Cain, Bumgarner, and seemingly Arroyo and Ramos (and Gonzalez has been very nice so far).  Though the taste of Torcato, McDowell, Whitaker, Alderson, Fairley should remind us that it can go very wrong as well.  Most likely, the Giants will be drafting a college stud, whoever shines the best, which could be pitcher, could be hitter.  I remember Evan Longoria was the pre-season #10 rank, and we had the 10th pick, and I sadly watched him hit his way up to the 3rd pick by the Rays, but then was blow away excited when we ended up with Lincecum, who apparently had a pre-draft deal with the Rays had Longoria not fallen to them.

I'm hoping for a pitcher, but at that point of the draft, you have to go by best player and talent available, so whomever we get, that will boost our talent on the field however it works out, and then we can work around it.