SF Giants may let next hometown hero fall through their fingers in 2026 MLB Draft

The 2026 MLB Draft is just a few weeks away and if the recent rumors are to be believed, the SF Giants are probably going to take a shortstop. In the unlikely event that Roch Cholowsky is still available at No. 4 overall the Giants will obviously take him but if he isn’t, many recent mock drafts have them taking shortstop Jacob Lombard.

That would be a shame because it would mean they’d pass on a pitcher who could turn into a hometown here for them in Jackson Flora.

The right-handed pitchers out of UC Santa Barbara was born in Walnut Creek and grew up in the East Bay. He made a recent appearance on the "Baseball Is Dead" podcast and was asked by the hosts whether he grew up cheering for the Giants or the A’s and he made it very clear to former A’s pitcher Dallas Braden that he pulled for the team that was winning championships during his childhood.

“I was a Giants fan growing up. My dad was a Giants fan…we watched them win three World Series…got to make fun of all my buddies that were A’s fans.”

Giants should take Flora with the No. 4 overall pick

That is perfection. He already knows how to troll A's fans. He’s like Logan Webb except he actually grew up cheering for the Giants instead of the A’s so he would be an incredibly easy hometown kid to cheer for.

He also just so happens to be the top pitching prospect in the draft this year. He’s coming off a season in which he had a perfect 12-0 record in 16 starts and had a 1.06 ERA in 102 innings pitched with 133 strikeouts.

Flora features a high-velocity fastball with effective off-speed and breaking pitches as well. He’s 21 years old and it’s not hard to imagine him making his way through the minors with relative ease and potentially being a rotation arm as soon as 2028.

For a franchise that has proven time and time again that it is unwilling to commit a lot of money to starting pitchers, the only way they are going to build a solid rotation is by drafting talented young arms who will be cheap, at least at first.

The Giants did that with Kyle Harrison but then they didn’t develop him properly and traded him away to the Boston Red Sox for Rafael Devers which is a move that now looks questionable at best given how well Harrison has performed for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Harrison was a Bay Area kid as well and he seemed like he was destined to be a co-ace atop the rotation with Webb. It didn’t work out that way but the Giants would be foolish to let Flora fall through their fingers. Their farm system is already brimming with young shortstop talent so there really isn’t any need to draft yet another shortstop, unless it’s Cholowsky since some consider him the best player in the draft, when they could really use another promising young arm in their farm system.

One can only hope the mock drafts are wrong and that the Giants are hoping Cholowsky, a Bay Area native in his own right, will be available but are willing to pivot to Flora if their top choice is off the board.

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