San Francisco Giants: Three New Years Resolutions for 2018
Management Resolution: Play Your Kids
The San Francisco Giants were the second worst team in plate appearances under the age of 25, with 516 plate appearances. That’s pretty awful. The next closest opponent in the division was the Arizona Diamondbacks, at 1,270. The Giants were also in the top half of teams in the league to give plate appearances to players over the age of 30. That’s not entirely the greatest recipe for building for the future.
The Giants, due to taxes and other such factors, have a pretty low rate of attraction despite having the financial clout of teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers. The Giants have gone old and expensive, while the others are doing their best at being cost-effectively good. Here is the thing, their best prospects are all at advanced levels and are entering their 24 and 25-year-old seasons. It’s time to get them some playing time.
Chris Shaw, Andrew Suarez, Steven Duggar, and Austin Slater have all been advanced pretty quickly. It’s time to get them some big league experience. But if they keep plugging holes with guys like Gorkys instead of giving Duggar a shot, they’ll never get a chance to develop. Then they’ll be kicking themselves for trading away someone who turns into Duvall again because they never gave them a real shot.
It’s time to give them a shot, and find out what they’ve got. None of their real prospects were big league ready until last season, so I get why they didn’t start out that way. But this organization has a bad track record of playing their kids to see what they have unless it’s a sure fire thing like Posey, Bumgarner, Belt, and Crawford.
The Giants have outfield issues, and maybe Duggar and Shaw are ready to step in. Chris Stratton looked good, and there are two really good pitching prospects at the AAA level. If the Giants don’t give them starts this year, it’s hard to see how this franchise will ever be able to turn the page and help build a new core. They need experience, and giving experience to young and talented players sitting on the edge of their prime years is what needs to happen.