As the season draws to a close, the Baseball America Prospect Report has been a fantastic read for Giants fans on a near daily basis. Gary Brown gets an opportunity to show why he was a first round pick, Joe Panik ends the season as a .300+ hitter, Andrew Susac continues to show that he belongs, the bullpen rookies, Hunter Strickland, Eric Cordier, even perhaps Brett Bochy are showing signs that they can be major contributors.
| SF | MAJ | Brown | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | .429 | |||||||||||||
| SF | MAJ | Panik | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | .305 | |||||||||||||
| SF | MAJ | Perez | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .170 | |||||||||||||
| SF | MAJ | Susac | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .273 | 2B (8) | ||||||||||||
| SF | MAJ | Cordier | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1.50 |
This sudden surge of talent should allay any fears that the Giants overpaid for Jake Peavy by sending Edwin Escobar and Heath Hembree to the Sawks. Now, it would help even more if they can re-sign Peavy at a reasonable price, but that is a post for another day. Hopefully, Peavy gets a chance to pay more dividends to the Giants in the playoffs. Madison Bumgarner will have a big say in that when the Giants touch down in Pittsburgh.
The (much maligned) Giants scouting and development staff can rightly stand proud and take a few bows for the showing of the young kids down the stretch, very impressive. The Giants would not still be playing baseball tomorrow if not for the contributions of the young talent and I can't remember the last time you could say that about the Giants. They generally have to overpay or gamble on veteran talent finding the fountain of youth. This season has shown promise of a pivot in the Giants way of constructing the roster and maybe we will see the average age of the team go down a bit.
FWIW: I'm not sure why Juan Perez is still listed as a prospect, it seems as if he has reached suspects status. It just seems like he's a RH hitting Gregor Blanco clone. And a less productive clone at that. He may get pushed out by Gary Brown next year and Brown gives you the possibility of a legit lead-off option behind Angel Pagan if his back doesn't hold up. With all the flexibility and the showing of Travis Ishakawa in LF it seems as if the days of Michael Morse in SF are coming to an end, and that is too bad. He is a great presence in the lineup when healthy. The problem for the Giants right now is that caveat "when healthy" is placed behind too many guys who inhabit the roster. This is a by-product of having nearly the oldest roster in Major League Baseball.
On to Pittsburgh.
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