San Francisco Giants 2017 Draft Decisions Looking Risky

With back-to-back disappointing seasons, San Francisco Giants fans can only hope for a better future with promising prospects.

Unfortunately, the San Francisco Giants have one of the worst farm systems in all of baseball. In all honesty, when I compare their farm system to other teams it makes me want to vomit.

But, there are still some players in the system that could have a major impact at some point.

The 2017 MLB Draft could wind up being a turning point for the San Francisco Giants — either for good or bad.

In that draft they took a shot on a couple of high school bats — some of the most unpredictable prospects.

I’ll be the first to tell you that I absolutely hated that draft. If you are going to take a bat in the early rounds, I feel like you have to take a proven commodity — a college bat.

Predicting how a high school hitter will do in the majors is impossible.

Of the six high school hitters taken in the first round of the 2014 MLB Draft, only one is currently ranked MLB’s Top 100 Prospect List.

That includes the fifth and sixth overall picks of that draft, Nick Gordon and Alex Jackson, who are not in the top 100.

And none of those six have reached the major leagues yet.

So to say that the San Francisco Giants took a huge risk by selecting Heliot Ramos 19th overall is an understatement. And then they doubled-down by taking Jacob Gonzalez with the 58th pick.

Ramos didn’t exactly light the world on fire in at Single-A in 2018 hitting .245 in 485 at-bats with 11 home runs. Gonzalez was even worse hitting .227 in 459 at-bats with 8 home runs.

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The caveat here, obviously, is that they are 19 and 20-years-old respectively. There is still plenty of time for either to turn into solid — if not great — major league hitters.

And it’s not like the players they passed on are tearing it up at the minor league levels. Only three players taken after Ramos are listed in the current top 100, and only one of them is ranked higher than Ramos.

All three of those players were college players though — two are pitchers and one is an outfielder.

The Giants third pick in the 2017 MLB Draft was also a high schooler in Seth Corry. He’s currently ranked as their 14th best prospect after posting a 2.61 ERA in nine starts in rookie ball this year.

You have to take a shot every now and then on a talented high schooler. I’m not trying to say that taking high school players is a bad idea, it’s obviously worked out well in the past.

But, there is much more risk in taking a high school player early in the draft, much less taking three high school players with your first three picks of a draft.

There is a lot riding on the 2017 draft. If neither Ramos nor Gonzalez turns out to have an impact in the big leagues, that’s almost an entire draft wasted.

With a farm system starving for talent, the San Francisco Giants can’t afford to be as risky going forward.