Your 2020 Giants: Rule 5 Draft Pick, RHP Dany Jimenez

The Giants selected RHP Dany Jimenez (again from the Blue Jays, who they took another pitcher last year) in the Rule 5 Draft, filling in their last 40-man roster spot.  As usual, they need to keep him on their 25-man roster the whole 2020 season, or they'll have to offer him back to the Blue Jays for half what they paid them (I think it's $100,000 to select him, but could be more now).

Here is what Baseball America had to say about him (got it from Hank Schulman tweet):

Fangraphs' Eric Longenhagen wrote: 

Dany Jimenez, RHP (from TOR)
Like Ramirez, Jimenez also signed late, agreeing to his first pro contract just before he turned 22. He also missed most of 2017 due to injury, and those sorts of factors combined to limit him to just 33 innings above A-ball even though he is about to turn 26. He sits 93-95, touches 97, the heater spins at about 2450 rpm, and Jimenez’s vertical arm slot makes it hard for hitters to discern the fastball and his power breaking ball from one another. I think he’s pretty likely to stick in a relief role.

Alex Pavlovic wrote about the pick:

Jimenez has a live arm and better command than you usually see from Rule 5 picks. The Giants will throw him in the bullpen mix but must return him to the Blue Jays if Jimenez is not on their big league roster. 

"We were happy he fell to us," general manager Scott Harris said. "As we talked about all week, we're trying to find talent. We're trying to find new creative ways. This isn't the most creative way but we got an arm we like." 

...

Jimenez has a strong shot at making the opening day roster and has a better shot than most Rule 5 picks of surviving. It's easier to hide a pitcher in your bullpen all year, particularly with the rosters expanding and the Giants able to carry 13 arms throughout the season. Jimenez also has more experience than Bergen did. He reached Double-A last season and dominated, posting a 1.87 ERA and striking out 46 in 33 2/3 innings.  

Harris said Jimenez has a fastball in the upper 90s. He has averaged 11.7 strikeouts per nine innings in the minors and has kept his walk rate on the high end of what's acceptable. That might play in the big leagues, giving the Giants a free reliever at a time when their bullpen is undergoing massive changes. 

The Giants did not lose anyone in the major league portion of the draft, but lost three prospects in the minor league phase:

• pitcher Adam Oller was selected by the Mets
• infielder Manuel Geraldo was selected by the Nationals
• pitcher Miguel Figueroa was selected by the Reds

These players are gone, they do not need to be returned.
ogc thoughts

Great pick, I think.  Just have to remember that most Rule 5 picks fail to stick in the majors, and he will likely return to his old team at some point.  Still, interesting stats make him a good prospect to take on and see how he does.  He'll be 26 YO next season, about the right age to make the transition to the majors, for players who are about to make the leap.  They tend to be more mature by that time.

Dany Jimenez was in Advanced A to start the season, then promoted to AA and continued to dominate there.  He has had great command and control during this pro career, but he's hard to analyze because it appears that he's an International Free Agent, but most of the better IFA's sign when they are 16 YO, and he didn't sign until he was basically 22YO, and he didn't reach the US pro leagues until the next season, which was his 22 YO season.  That means he didn't really show any interesting talent until he was in his 20's, then he lost a year in 2017 due to injury.

So while he dominated, he does not have the talent pedigree most IFA's have plus he was also very much on the older side for each league he was in, until in AA where he was only 0.7 years older, so roughly the same age.   This is probably why the Blue Jays were not sure about protecting him, and took the risk of letting him go.

Still, a 12.3 K/9 with 3.83 K/BB (and okay 3.2 BB/9) in AA, and 5.9 H/9, is pretty good in AA, albeit the usual caveats that he was a reliever (so extreme SSS, as he was in AA for portion of the season) and slightly older.  His H/9 and BB/9 has been on the low side throughout his pro career, again with the caveat that he was much older than the league until he reached AA, +1.4 to +3.0 years older.  Per the reports above, he has a high velocity fastball, mid-90's, coupled with a good breaking ball, and that's a good combo for a reliever. 

And as I covered in my prior post, the Giants need relievers after losing most of their experienced (experience before 2019 season) relievers through trade or injury or DFA.  So this is a cheap pickup, and with the expansion to 26 roster spots, and max of 13 pitchers, it'll be easier for the Giants to carry an extra pitcher who might not be so productive during the season. 

Yet, he's been pretty good in the minors, and based on what the Baseball America and Fangraphs descriptions provide, looks pretty promising as a reliever.  And Steamer projects him at 3.96 ERA for 2020 (NL relievers had very high 4.48 ERA in 2019, it was even higher than for starting pitchers), which is okay with me, that would definitely be a very good first season with him, which he can build on for 2021.  It will be especially easier to carry him since this season is more about player development than about being competitive (let alone playoff competitive), the Giants could send their other pitchers down to the minors to rotate guys in and out (like last season), while keep Jimenez on the 25-man.

Lack of Pitching Experience in Upper Minors Not Always Necessary

As we saw with Jonathan Sanchez, lack of upper minors experience is not always necessary.   It's different for pitchers vs. hitters, in terms of evaluation, because the best pitchers rise quickly to the majors, leaving, at best, AAAA pitchers for hitters to practice on in AAA, and worse below, so it's difficult to project how MLB-level stuff and command/deception will be handled by a hitter, hence why even #1 prospects like Sean Burroughs and other top hitting prospects, end up failing to do much of anything in the majors.  Meanwhile, for pitchers, either they have a dominating pitch, or they don't, and they are easier to identify, and can rise fast through a farm system (like Sanchez, Cain, Lincecum). 

Hence why the concept of TINSTAAPP (There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect) came about.  Either they have the pitches, which means that they are not a prospect (really), and should be (and will do well) in the majors, or they don't have the pitches, which means he's not really a prospect, because without development, he's never making the majors.  Of course, that is not exactly how it works out, many pitchers make the majors but fail to stick, because the supply of MLB caliber pitching is scarcer than the demand (or really, the need, with 13 roster spots on 30 teams, equating to a need for 390 MLB pitchers), plus, pitching feel is tenuous enough that a pitcher could have it one day, and lose his feel the next (see Gausman, who lost his feel for his splitter early in 2019). 

This is why when I look at minor league pitchers in the Giants system, I filter by K/9 and by K/BB.  Using the major league equivalent concept, each pitcher's stats degrade with each rise of a level, but if he's got a lot of K's or a very low walk rate (and both leads to high K/BB; I like K/BB more than BB/9 because a high K/9 leading to high K/BB gives a better feel for how good the pitcher is than BB/9 alone), that should translate to the majors.  So I look for guys over 10 K/9 and K/BB above 3.0.

Minor League Rule 5 Pick Up

The Giants also picked up a prospect via the minor league portion of the draft, using their Brewers' connection (Minasian) to pluck a LHH C Bryan Torres.  He's only gotten as high as Rookie League, so he's a project.  But he's also been playing the corner IF and OF positions, so he's a potential super-utility player, and while he has not hit for much (low 700 OPS), he has good bat control and eye, his BB/K ratio was 1.00, and good contact rate of 87%, so he has a promising bat.