© Rick Scuteri | 2020 Feb 26
Optimism might not be at an all-time high regarding the Giants’ chances in 2020, but the future is looking brighter by the day.
Enter former MLB executive and prospect guru for The Athletic Keith Law, who has the Giants farm system ranked 10th in MLB, their highest ranking yet. Baseball America had San Francisco at No. 14 last month. MLB Pipeline last had the Giants rated outside the top 15, and ranked them 29th at this time last year.
That’s quite a leap and one that’s aligned with Farhan Zaidi’s plans to rebuild the team from the bottom up. Law writes that while the Giants don’t have any top 10 prospects, (although FanGraphs recently ranked Joey Bart as the No. 10 prospect in baseball) their retooled system is greater than the sum of its parts.
“Each individual Giants prospect of note has some significant risk of low or no return, but if you add them all up, there’s more than enough upside to start to feel optimistic about the Giants’ long-term future,” Law writes. “The short term might be bleak as very little help is on the immediate horizon from the farm, but their crop of hitting prospects aged 20 and below is extremely strong and brings a lot of ceiling on one or both sides of the ball.”
According to Law, the Giants have four top 100 prospects heading into 2020 in Bart (No. 44), Heliot Ramos (No. 52), Marco Luciano (No. 58) and Hunter Bishop (No. 87).
Bart is turning the most heads so far in big league camp, going 6-for-10 with a home run and four RBIs in just five games. Chatter has already started about Bart making the big league club to start the season, but manager Gabe Kapler pretty much squashed that after the Giants’ spring training game on Sunday.
“Joey’s done a really good job in camp so far. It’s also important to remember he’s got 100 plate appearances or so above A-ball,” Kapler said of Bart, who had 87 plate appearances with Double-A Richmond last season, after the Giants’ 7-5 loss to the Padres at Peoria Sports Complex. “Very little Double-A, Triple-A experience. Players in general, not just Joey Bart, tend to benefit from experience at the upper levels.”