SF Giants: 2022 Major League Baseball draft order determined
It is a minor note at the moment given that the SF Giants are gearing up for the playoffs, but the 2022 draft order has been set now that the regular season is over. With a 107-55 record, the Giants finished the year as the best team in baseball meaning that they will pick last in each round.
SF Giants: 2022 MLB draft order determined
The weird nuance to this is that San Francisco will have the 31st pick in the first round. This is due to the fact that the New York Mets will receive a compensatory pick for failing to sign Vanderbilt University pitcher Kumer Rocker, who was the 10th overall pick in 2021.
The compensatory pick for the Mets will be the 11th overall pick, so every team after that is pushed back one draft slot for the first round.
Since the new front office took over starting with the hire of Farhan Zaidi as team president of baseball operations in November of 2018, the Giants have shown some extreme trends. In 2019, they selected nine positions players with the first 10 picks. The lone exception was in the eighth round when Caleb Kilian was selected out of Texas Tech University.
The 2020 draft was more balanced as they selected three position players and four pitchers. North Carolina State catcher Patrick Bailey headlined the position player side of the draft, whereas prep arm Kyle Harrison was the gem on the pitching side.
In 2021, followed a similar approach as the 2019 draft, but this time it was heavily in favor of pitching. The Giants used their first nine picks to select a pitcher and then picked outfield prospect Vaun Brown in the 10th round of out of Florida Southern College.
Over the past three years, the Giants have selected two position players (Hunter Bishop and Patrick Bailey) and one pitcher (Wil Bednar) in the first round. Of the three prospects, Bishop was the highest pick at No. 10 in 2019. Nevertheless, next year’s pick will be the lowest since the new front office took over.
It is tougher to find major league players in the back-end of each round, but that is a challenge that the scouts will be tasked with next year. Lower draft slots are a product of a winning franchise and the front office will need to continue adding talent to the organization to sustain a competitive window that, surprisingly, reopened this season.