San Francisco Giants Minor League Report: How are the top 10 prospects faring?

As we approach mid-may, it’s always a good time to see how the top San Francisco Giants prospects are doing down on the farm.

The San Francisco Giants prospects aren’t always ones that command a lot of hype. However, the farm has produced a core of solid, major league ball-players despite it’s traditional low-ranking. While they don’t have prospects at the caliber of the Gleyber Torres, and Yoan Moncada‘s of the world, they still have a crop of decent prospects.

Keith Law ranked the Giants farm system 20th in his annual rankings. While Keith law is a name to be respected, ranking prospects is relatively arbitrary. The Giants have been ranked in his top ten twice in the last ten years, yet they continue to churn out pros, all-stars, and even a couple gold-glovers. Joe Panik, Matt Duffy, and Adam Duvall can constitute as three of the Giants most un-heralded, yet extremely successful prospects in the recent years when their farm system was ranked in the dumps.

If you aren’t familiar with the Giants top prospects, hopefully this ranking will get you acquainted with them. The rankings will go in order of MLBPipeline.com’s rankings 1-10 for the Giants organization. Along with each prospect we will include their ETA from MLBPipeline, their Baseball America Ranking, their Baseball Prospectus ranking, Fangraphs ranking and where they were in our own ranking.

No. 10: Andrew Suarez, LHP

• Baseball Prospectus: 6
• Baseball America: 5
• Fangraphs: 5
• Around the Foghorn: 6
• ETA: 2017

Suarez has been quite good this season. He currently plays for the Richmond Flying Squirrels, the San Francisco Giants AA affiliate. So far in 2017, he’s started seven games, and thrown through 40.1 innings. That’s a little less than six innings a start, which isn’t too bad for the minor leagues. He currently holds a 3.12 ERA and a 1.31 WHIP. Usually when you see a number like that for WHIP, it’s a sign of walks. Suarez just gets hit a lot.

He’s only walked seven batters this year, but has surrendered 46 hits, and opponents are hitting .284 against him. Suarez does have 35 strikeouts to go along with it. The big thing is, he’s not giving up the long ball. He’s only given up 3 homers this season. The signs of being a good starter are there, but he’s got to get people to swing and miss a little bit more.

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No. 9: Jordan Johnson, RHP

• Outside of MLBPipeline’s rankings, his only Top 10 appearance is in ESPN’s Top 10 Giants Prospect rankings
• ETA: 2018

Johnson is an intriguing prospect. He was a 23rd round draft pick out of Cal State Northridge in 2014. Johnson was mighty impressive in his 2015 season when he posted a 12.3 K/9 while working over 120 innings, the most in his life. His fastball can get up to the mid 90’s. Here is what MLBPipeline had to say about his fastball mechanics over the last couple years:

Johnson’s fastball parked at 93-96 mph and touched 98 while he was averaging an eye-opening 12.3 strikeout per nine innings during his first extended pro action in 2015. Last season, he fell into the bad habit of overstriding and getting under his pitches, which dropped his heater to 90-94 mph and also cost him some sink. He spent the offseason working to correct that flaw.

Johnson is in Richmond this season and has posted a 2.62 ERA in his seven appearances. In five starts and two bullpen appearances he’s thrown 34.1 innings, and holds 1.14 WHIP. His K/BB ratio is sitting at a solid 2.4 and holds a 7.6 K/9. Johnson may not be an elite prospect, considering he shows up on only a few top 10 rankings, but Johnson is definitely one of those sleeper prospects to keep an eye on.

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No. 6: Sandro Fabian, OF

• Baseball Prospectus: 8
• Baseball America: 8
• Fangraphs: 8
• Around the Foghorn: N/A
• ETA: 2020

The 19 year old outfielder signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2014. He was highly rated coming out of the Arizona Rookie League. He hit .340 with a .522 slugging percentage. We didn’t have him ranked, because we frankly didn’t know much about him. To start 2017, he’s been playing in the SAL with Full-A affiliate, Augusta Green-Jackets. He’s slashing just .248/.267/.380/.647 and is striking out a ton. He’s still quite young, so the Giants can afford to have a little patience with him. Fabian is definitely a project, but has all the tools to be a good prospect. They’ll likely move him slowly so he can really build up over each level, and frankly that’s the smart thing to do with a prospect as raw as he is.

No. 5: Chris Shaw, LF/1B

• Baseball Prospectus: 4
• Baseball America: 3
• Fangraphs: 11
• Around the Foghorn: 5
• ETA: 2018

Shaw has become the intriguing prospect. While he crushed pitching in San Jose (Adv. A) last season, he got the move up to Richmond (AA). He really struggled there as he ran into better pitching, especially since the Eastern League is known as being a pitcher’s league. His last month was an encouraging sign, as he hit four homers and hit .276.

To start this season in Richmond he’s slashing .293/.394/.483/.877 and has four homers. 14 of his 34 hits have been extra base hits, and his K/BB ratio is nearly 1/1. These are quite good signs if he holds this patter into June. If his numbers still look like that come June 1st, he might end up in Sacramento. Another fun thing wish shaw is the fact that even though he’s rated as a top 10 1B prospect in baseball according to MLBPipeline.com, he’s been getting some decent time in Left Field this year. His play out in left has even drawn some recognition from Bruce Bochy, who doesn’t say a whole lot about prospects that often.

No. 4: Steven Duggar, OF

• Baseball Prospectus: 7
• Baseball America: 10
• Fangraphs: 14
• Around the Foghorn: 8
• ETA: 2018

The 23 year old outfielder out of Clemson has been a nice surprise for the Giants over the last few years. Last year was his first full season in the minor leagues, and he put together a fantastic slashline, hitting .302/.388/.488/.836 across all levels (High A and AA). He has yet to play this season thanks to an injury, and is currently on the 7-Day DL. He made only five errors in his 1000+ innings in the outfield last season, and had 13 outfield assists across both levels. Duggar’s fielding has never been a question. He’s incredibly fast and could probably be a good center fielder at AT&T park. Hopefully he gets healthy and Giants fans can see him on the diamond sometime soon. When he comes back, he’ll likely end up with Richmond to start the season, thanks to the plethora of outfielders in AAA.

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No. 3: Bryan Reynolds, OF

• Baseball Prospectus: 3
• Baseball America: 4
• Fangraphs: 3
• Around the Foghorn: 3
• ETA: 2019

Reynolds was the Giants first selection of the 2016 draft. He was a consistent bat at Vanderbilt, and had fantastic numbers in the Cape Cod League. Reynolds was incredible in Short Season A-Ball with Salem-Keizer last season, slashing .312/.368/.500/.868. He has the range to play center-field, but his arm strength would likely project better for a corner outfielder. The Giants started him off in San Jose this season, and he’s slumped off a little bit over the last few weeks, going from .283 to .244 in the span of five games. Reynolds has also struck out a whole lot this season, with a little less than a 3/1 K:BB ratio. He projects to be a better bat than that, so hopefully he gets it going sometime soon.

No. 2: Christian Arroyo, INF (#80 Overall)

• Baseball Prospectus: 2
• Baseball America: 2
• Fangraphs: 1
• Around the Foghorn: 1
• ETA: Now

Arroyo is on his way to taking on rookie status, only 14 official AB’s from doing so. That would likely mean he graduates his prospect status, moving a ton of people up the list. However, he’s still currently the number two prospect. Most would consider him and Beede to be 1-A and 1-B.

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Arroyo started out extremely hot in AAA, but hasn’t been able to carry over his consistent success to the major league level. He is currently hitting .209/.266/.337/.603 at the big league level. However, he’s been praised for his knowledge of situational hitting, and his ability to not let his at-bats carry over into the field.

He’s already made some stellar defensive plays at each of the infield positions he has played.

The Giants have been using him as a plug and play at 3B, 2B, SS to fill in for off-days. He likely will stick at third, but with Eduardo Nuñez starting to play a lot better, he’s going to need to get his bat going to keep his consistent spot on the field.

No. 1: Tyler Beede, RHP (#79 Overall)

• Baseball Prospectus: 1
• Baseball America: 1
• Fangraphs: 2
• Around the Foghorn: 2
• ETA: 2017

He and Ty Blach really made it interesting for a bit in spring training during their competition for the fifth starter spot. However, it’s become clear that Matt Cain was the right choice for that spot in the rotation. The Giants do like Beede, a lot. He may be ready to jump into the major league rotation at any point this year, but most definitely next season. Beede started off 2017 in Sacramento and has worked hard to touch up his game against a mix of good prospects, and “Four-A” players in the PCL.

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Beede currently owns a 3.30 ERA over his 8 starts, where he has worked a total of 43.2 innings. He has a WHIP of 1.33, and a 2:1 K/BB ratio. He is getting hit a lot, which makes his WHIP what it is. Beede has been a little off and on lately, but followed up with what was his worst start of the year, with his best. After getting tagged for 10 hits over 4.2 innings on 5/12, last night he put together seven innings where he allowed one run, walked one, and struck out four.