SF Giants prospects rundown 5/6: Heliot Ramos swinging for call-up

Minor league baseball is finally back. After MLB canceled last year’s slate of affiliate games due to the COVID-19 pandemic and began an unprecedented consolidation of minor-league ball, fans finally have official box scores to track and highlights to watch on MILB TV. The SF Giants had all four of their affiliates on the field for the first time since 2019.

If you do not feel well acclimated to the prospects throughout the farm system, you might want to revisit our prospect week articles that detailed the system from the top prospect to lower-level fringes. If you’re just interested in the biggest names, then the preseason SF Giants top 31 prospects list is the one-stop-shop for you.

SF Giants Prospects Rundown 5/6: Triple-A

Sacramento River Cats 8 at Las Vegas Aviators 1
Performance of the Game: Thairo Estrada (4-5, HR, 2 R, 4 RBI, E)

Tyler Beede and LaMonte Wade Jr were both assigned to Sacramento on rehab assignments on Thursday. Beede got the start and made his first in-game appearance since he underwent Tommy John surgery last year. It will be interesting to see if the Giants will be patient enough to let him work back to starting or if the front office hopes to get him back into game shape to join the bullpen. On Thursday, Beede struck out a pair and walked one before he was pulled and handed the ball off to Kervin Castro, who struck out a batter to end the first.

Anthony Banda took over from there and completed a peculiar 4.1 innings with one unearned run allowed, two strikeouts, two hits, and six walks. Following him, Dominic Leone, Yunior Marte, and Gregory Santos threw 3.2 shutout innings, with Leone easily being the most dominant, recording three punchouts in 1.2 perfect innings.

A’s prospect James Kaprielan kept the River Cats offense relatively quiet early, scratching a run across on a Thairo Estrada RBI-single in the third inning before Chadwick Tromp doubled in a pair in the fifth. Then, late in the game, top prospect Joey Bart blasted a two-run homer in the seventh, and Estrada added a three-run big fly in the eighth.

A few other minor-league veterans, Mitchell Tolman, Jason Krizan, and Joe McCarthy, each had multi-hit games. Also of note, one of the most powerful stories of the offseason, Drew Robinson, an outfielder who lost his eye in a suicide attempt last year, started in right field, going 0-4.