Baseball America showers top SF Giants prospect with 2024 accolades

Watching SF Giants baseball both in the majors and the minors has taken a downswing, especially towards the second half of the 2024 season. However, there was one beacon that is shining brightly throughout the final moments of the season, and that's Bryce Eldridge.

Baseball America showers top SF Giants prospect with 2024 accolades

Eldridge received a couple of accolades from the much-respected publication Baseball America, winning SF Giants Minor League Player of the Year and earning MiLB First-Team All-Star honors after a big first full pro season.

The 6-foot-7 first baseman leads all SF Giants prospects with at least 200 at-bats in home runs with 23, RBIs with 91, hits with 129, OPS with .885, and wRC+ with 137. He's played in all four Minor League affiliates, starting the season with San Jose before spending most of his 2024 season in the Northwest League with Eugene before spending the end of the 2024 season with Richmond and Sacramento to feed Eldridge more at-bats. That is unprecedented, even in the recent aggression shown by the Kyle Haines-led Minor League staff.

Eldridge joins some esteemed company in both awards. With respect to the Minor League Players of the Year, the Giants' undisputed top prospect joins the Rockies' Chase Dollander, Cubs' Matt Shaw, Nationals' Dylan Crews, Rays' Carson Williams, among others.

In terms of the First-Team All-Stars, he joins the Orioles third baseman prospect Coby Mayo, number one overall prospect Roman Anthony of the Red Sox, and Pirates' pitching prospect Bubba Chandler among others.

Teenagers with Eldridge's home run numbers do not grow on trees. Former top prospects such as Jackson Chourio and Junior Caminero joined Eldridge in hitting over 20 homers before turning 20 years old.

Perhaps, the most impressive feat with Eldridge is the fact that he is much more than a masher. From his time in Eugene toward the end of the season in Sacramento, Eldridge has hit another gear as a well-rounded hitter. The lefty bat hit .311 with a .954 OPS, 13 doubles, 13 homers, a 14.5 percent walk rate, and a 24.5 percent strikeout rate. His month of August was particularly special where he posted a 1.232 OPS as he really got comfortable at the plate.

There's a reason why Eldridge entered the 2024 season as my number three prospect in the organization and has since inherited the top spot after the graduations of Kyle Harrison and Jung Hoo Lee. Eldridge's full-time focus on hitting has paid off big time and it resulted in him belonging in at least the top 50 prospects in all of baseball.

The fact that Eldridge can still gain more raw power into his game while keeping an all-around hitting approach makes him a very scary prospect for the opposition.