You know the stories of Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford and Joe Panik.
The histories of Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner and Brandon Belt.
All were part of a core group that carried the San Francisco Giants through the first half of the decade, one of the most successful stretches for any franchise at any point in baseball history.
While Crawford and Belt didn’t arrive until 2011, and Panik until 2014, all of the aforementioned players were homegrown products who were drafted by the Giants and later earned a World Series ring, or two, or three, in San Francisco.
Though roles have shifted and individual successes have varied, the early 2010s dynasty the Giants built revolved around the players they drafted, and the legacy those players built.
Now, as the hopes of a longer-lasting dynasty fade and the goal of returning to the mountain top appears further away, San Francisco is replenishing a different area of its team with recently-drafted talent.
In the midst of what could become the worst season in franchise history, the Giants are exploring what building a bullpen from the inside out looks like.
During the organization’s three World Series runs, San Francisco relied on manufacturing a lineup and a rotation through the draft, while piecing together a bullpen by sifting through the island of misfit toys. Javier Lopez, Jeremy Affeldt and Santiago Casilla were never the sexiest names on a scouting report, but the trio of relievers San Francisco acquired helped shut the door on three World Series titles.
Sure, Brian Wilson and Sergio Romo played pivotal roles along the way, but if a Giants’ scout told you the franchise had Major League hopes for Wilson, a 24th round draft pick, and Romo, a 28th round selection, they’d be stretching the truth to Triples Alley.
That’s why the current makeup of San Francisco’s bullpen is a story in and of itself, and why it could be a key to a future Giants’ playoff push.
Of the eight relievers on the Giants’ active roster, four are homegrown products. A pair of former first round picks, Kyle Crick (2011) and Chris Stratton (2012) are converted starters with live fastballs, while left-handers Josh Osich (6th round, 2011) and Steven Okert (4th round, 2012) have progressed through the Giants’ farm system with their sights set on earning late-inning roles with the Major League club.
“It’s nice actually, I played with most of these guys in the minor leagues so it just kind of goes to show you, the Giants how they go about their drafting process and signing guys to minor league deals and working their way up,” Osich said. “Obviously there’s quite a few of us here that played in the minor leagues together so they’re doing something right.”
The Journey
Since taking over in 2008, Giants’ scouting director John Barr has enjoyed a tremendous success rate in the draft, capitalizing not only on first round picks like Posey and Panik, but other top-10 round selections like Crawford and Belt who were passed up multiple times by all 30 franchises.
Under Barr, the Giants have compiled a stronger track record drafting position players, in part because the organization has adopted a philosophy of choosing pitchers with projectable “stuff,” but flawed mechanics. As an organization, the Giants clearly have confidence in their player development processes, and they aren’t afraid to take risks, which is how stronger franchises are built.
However, many of the organization’s young relievers have struggled with mechanical flaws throughout their Minor League careers, and many of the Giants’ top pitching prospects are still a long ways from truly harnessing their command. All four of the homegrown relievers on the team’s Major League staff struggled with high walk totals and command issues at various points in their development, and fight a constant battle to ensure they’re making necessary adjustments.
Osich was a college starter at Oregon State who transitioned into a relief role early in his professional career. Osich described his Minor League days as “undistinguished,” but said he started projecting as a Major League arm once he worked with former Giants’ lefty and 11-year MLB veteran Steve Klein.
“(Klein) was my pitching coach right when I got drafted and then I had him in AA, 2015, and then he taught me a cutter slash slider and that was a big help,” Osich said. “So that helped get righties and lefties out and that was probably my biggest improvement in my minor league career.”
Okert, on the other hand, breezed through his first three seasons in the Giants’ system after being drafted in 2012, before hitting a wall in 2015. A product of Grayson Community College and then Oklahoma University, Okert said a 2015 season in which he posted a 1.48 WHIPz forced him to become more consistent.
“But ’14 I had a pretty good season, still had walks which was kind of my problem coming up,” Okert said. “15 same thing. But got hit around a little more that year so that was kind of a down year for me. But then, ’16 it seemed to click a little bit, I had the walks down, more consistent pitching and then I finally, I shouldn’t say finally, but I got to get up here and got to experience this so last year was a big year for me.”
Of all the relievers on the Giants’ roster, perhaps Crick’s road to the big leagues was fraught with the most obstacles. After showing tremendous promise in his first two minor league seasons, the only homegrown reliever the Giants drafted out of high school encountered adversity in AA Richmond. A former top-100 Major League prospect and the Giants’ top overall prospect entering 2013, Crick repeated at the AA level in three straight seasons, including in 2016, when he recorded an ERA above 5.00.
San Francisco could have given up on Crick, and allowed him to pursue a change of scenery elsewhere, but this offseason, general manager Bobby Evans approached Crick about switching to the bullpen, and the change of scenery within the Giants’ own system did wonders.
“Having a routine and not knowing when I was going to pitch helped quite a bit,” Crick said. “Because you have to just stay with the same thing every day as a reliever. As a starter you know exactly what’s going on, when exactly you’re going to pitch, but I enjoy just the relieving aspect. The question mark of if you’re going to pitch today and just getting ready to play every day.”
After starting the season with AAA Sacramento, Crick dropped his ERA to 2.76 over 24 appearances, and made his long-awaited Major League debut in Atlanta two weeks ago. A live-armed right-hander who drew comparisons to Cain for the better part of his Minor League career finally made it to the show, and by asking him to switch to a bullpen role, the Giants finally found a way to get him there.
The Audition
With the Giants sitting 18 games under .500 and 22 outside of first-place, the opportunities for the quartet of Crick, Stratton, Osich and Okert aren’t exactly similar to the one that former first round draft choices, Bumgarner and Posey, encountered in their first full season in the big leagues.
As rookies, Posey and Bumgarner played starring roles while helping lead the Giants to their first World Series title in the San Francisco era. In 2017, the Giants’ homegrown relievers have often found themselves pitching in mop-up duty.
Osich was the first member of the quartet to make his Major League debut, and that came in 2015, the year after the Giants won their third title in five years. Since then, the Oregon State product has shuttled back and forth between AAA Sacramento and San Francisco, not unlike his fellow relievers.
All four of the Giants’ homegrown relievers have pitched in AAA this season, with Crick and Stratton spending the better part of three months with the River Cats. At this point in the season, though, San Francisco is short on pitching depth, light on Major League-ready arms, and prepared for the prospects who are capable of getting Major League outs to audition against the game’s best hitters.
“We’re going to take a look at these guys (prospects) and you know there’s going to be growing pains with them,” Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy said after a recent loss. “But we haven’t been playing great baseball, so it’s time for them to get a look and show what they can do.”
Over the past several weeks, the Giants’ clubhouse has become significantly younger and more raw. San Francisco’s unexpected first half collapse pushed management to jettison veterans like infielder Aaron Hill and reliever Bryan Morris, while injuries to Eduardo Nunez and Conor Gillaspie have provided opportunities for some of the team’s position players.
After Derek Law suffered a late-game meltdown in Atlanta that resulted in his demotion to AAA and Mark Melancon needed a second stint on the disabled list, spots for Crick and Stratton opened up on a Giants’ roster that’s looking more and more like a 2015 River Cats reunion party.
“It makes me comfortable to be in here,” Crick said. “I’ve got (Austin) Slater over here and now I have Jae (Hwang) and Ryder (Jones) and all of those guys and I don’t know, it’s just a comforting feeling. Everyone is pretty good about it. Now we’re playing against people that we’ve been playing against for the last five years in the minor leagues and you already know how to get them out, you know you can get them out so it’s just about going out and executing.”
The End Game
Three different Giants players, Ryder Jones, Jae-gyun Hwang and Crick made their Major League debuts within the last month, while more than half of the team’s current 25-man roster made debuted in a San Francisco uniform after the team capped off its last World Series title.
A handful of those players like starters Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija were high-profile free agents additions the franchise pursued to add to the core of drafted players it has built around, but that’s a reflection of the organizational strategy San Francisco has adopted in the post Barry-Bonds era.
Since Bonds’ retirement following the 2007 season, the Giants have worked to build through the draft and add high-impact contributors via trades or through free agency to give Bochy the necessary pieces to contend through the end. In the past, the Giants often worked to acquire bullpen arms as complementary assets, and while San Francisco won’t abandon that strategy, the organization is strongly positioned to build a majority-homegrown bullpen for the first time in years.
Though the Giants are further removed from the playoff race than they’ve ever been in Bochy’s tenure, the rest of 2017 will serve as an audition for its young arms, whether those players are cognizant of the reality or not.
“We try not to think that way,” Okert said. “We take it day to day. Only thing we do is try to do our job and go in and get outs. We don’t look at the future too much, try to think about those kinds of things.”
While San Francisco spent big — to the tune of $62 million — to acquire Melancon, in 2018, the Giants could have a stable of improving young arms at their disposal that the franchise has worked closely to develop ready to bridge the gap from its starting rotation to its closer.
The quartet currently at the Major League level, coupled with a reliever like Law, left-handed prospect Andrew Suarez, and other improving relief arms in the Minor Leagues have given San Francisco a chance to craft a bullpen of prospects the team identified, developed and can now showcase.
It’s a reality San Francisco never enjoyed during the best stretch in franchise history, but if things pan out the way the franchise hopes for its promising young arms, the Giants’ current downturn will be stopped in its tracks by drafted players who will quite literally offer the franchise some “relief.”
