SF Giants
PHOENIX — It’s no longer impossible. There are examples Marco Luciano can look to and has looked to — Juan Soto was 19. Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna Jr. were 20.
Hell, one of his baseball idols was 20 when he debuted, too. Luciano listed Fernando Tatis Jr. as one player he tries to model his game after, with Mike Trout as another. Not bad.
“That actually motivates me,” Luciano said Tuesday, asked about the phenoms who reached Major League Baseball before they could reach for a drink at a bar. “And shows me if I work really hard and give the best of myself, I can make it.”
There is enough to dream on here that a sleeping pill is required.
The Giants’ No. 1 prospect and the No. 16 prospect in baseball, according to MLB Pipeline, carries a lightning bat, moves well at shortstop and has gained seven pounds, he said, in the offseason. He is listed at 178 pounds, which he probably was once a long time ago, and now is up to 208, which is one tangible way the numbers indicate he’s getting closer to being a major leaguer.
He said he thought he worked out this offseason more than any other, virtually disappearing into the Sacramento alternate site last year and reappearing this spring as a bigger and stronger specimen. Perhaps he’s been eating better, too, as he said he is no longer eating daily Chipotle; he hasn’t wanted to risk his health by going to the establishment, and ordering it delivery is just not the same.
“It is very different,” Luciano, through translator Erwin Higueros, said in his first Zoom with media of the season before the Giants faced the Brewers at American Family Fields of Phoenix. “You can use Uber Eats to order, but it’s not the same thing as if you go in and order in person.”
Marco Luciano, just like us. And Marco Luciano, very much not like us, smoking a viral home run this fall in instructional league play that registered a 119-mph exit velocity.
Every tool is there, with the biggest concern being whether he grows too big to hold down a major league shortstop. But the Giants have signaled they think he’ll be able to stay at the premium position, and he’s looked smooth in the Cactus League thus far.
While the bat speed and strength are apparent, his age and inexperience have been, too. He has struck out six times in eight at-bats, recently working a 3-0 count before cutting hard three times for a strikeout. He, along with every minor leaguer, missed an entire season of reps last year, but that’s not how Luciano sees it.
“I don’t think it was a lost year for me,” said Luciano, who echoed what so many Giants have said is a focus at the plate: swinging at good pitches and ignoring the rest.
The Giants are dreaming on the upside, too.
“I would remind everybody that six, seven, 10, 20 plate appearances and a handful of innings on defense really doesn’t say much relative to his larger body of work,” Gabe Kapler said this weekend. “And I would suggest that we’re very confident that we’re going to get improvements. And the last thing I would say is I don’t think he’s looked overmatched at all.”
If his defensive position is the long-term concern, the short-term one is when Giants fans can see him in person. When can the Giants’ Tatis — whom Luciano said he emulates because “he’s aggressive, leaves everything on the field, and he’s doing everything in his power to help his team win” — be brought up to Oracle Park?
He topped out at short-season Salem-Keizer in 2019, and just for a cup of coffee. Where he is now is a bit of a mystery, the amount he got out of Sacramento unknown.
It’s known to him, though. If he gets a full season of reps, he has a rough date in mind.
“I think a year would be would be my timetable,” said Luciano, who would debut at 20 years old if he breaks camp with the Giants next year.
Spring training is a time for dreaming, but the Dominican Republic native’s eyes were wide open.