The Giants have signed Jorge Guzman, a former top prospect, to a two-year minor league deal, Guzman’s agency announced earlier this month.
The signing comes with as much upside as any. Guzman was the headliner prospect in the 2017 trade that sent Giancarlo Stanton from the Miami Marlins to New York, but elbow issues and the canceled 2020 minor league season have limited him to 18 innings since 2019.
Multi-year minor league contracts are typically rare, but Guzman will likely miss part of the 2022 season due to elbow surgery in September — of which he’s still rehabbing, per MLB Trade Rumors.
At the time of the 2017 Stanton trade, Guzman was viewed as one of the top pitching prospects in baseball. The 6-foot-2 right-handed pitcher from Dominican Republic, hit 103 on the radar gun at 21 years old.
Back then, MLB Pipeline rated Guzman’s fastball an 80 on the 20-to-80 scale. Across 13 starts, he led the Class-A New York-Penn League with 88 strikeouts over 66 and 2/3 innings. He walked just 18 batters in those 66 innings.
With Miami, Guzman put together two strong seasons, first in high-A then at the Double-A level. In his last full season before elbow injuries sidelined him, Guzman recorded a 3.50 ERA in 24 starts for AA Jacksonville.
Guzman just turned 26, and it’s easy to see why the Giants would like to take a flier on him. While rehabbing, Guzman can work with the team’s training and medical staff at the spring complex even during the lockout because he’s not on San Francisco’s 40-man roster, MLBTR reported.
