With a 26-man roster for 2020 I expect the Giants to carry 13 pitchers and 13 position players. By my reckoning there are ten position players who are locks to make the team thus leaving three openings to be filled.
The old guard will man the infield: Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, Evan Longoria, and Buster Posey. FNG Wilmer Flores will surely be one of the infielders. In his seven-year ML-career he has logged at least 1,000 innings at all four non-catching spots (1B, 2B, 3B, SS). He's right-handed with a league-average bat (.742 OPS, 102 OPS+, 101 wRC+, .318 wOBA) but raked lefties (.337/.367.615) last season. Expect to see a lot of Flores and in multiple roles. Another infield spot will most likely go to Mauricio Dubon. He was primarily a SS in the minors and has played 2B as well but the word is he will see time in the outfield, too. Obviously Buster will need a backup and I've no idea (Rob Brantly? Tyler Heineman? a free agent like Russell Martin?) who that will be.
That's seven guys. In the outfield I expect to see Mike Yastrzemski, Alex Dickerson, and Hunter Pence. That's the ten spots. Steven Duggar has two options left and unfortunately has yet to hit well at the major league level, so I'm not assuming he makes the team. Pablo Sandoval would likely take one of the three remaining spots but I'm not sure if he will be healthy by Opening Day. That means Donovan Solano or Yolmer Sanchez could stick as a utility player with two OF spots (Chris Shaw? Austin Slater? Jaylin Davis? Billy Hamilton?) still up for grabs.
One relatively unknown youngster that has opened a few eyes is 3B Sean Roby. He turns 22 in July and has not yet advanced past A-ball but is 5-for-7 this spring with 2 walks, 2 doubles, 3 runs scored, and 6 RBI. The 2018 12th-round pick from Arizona Western College has never been highly regarded as a prospect but still has plenty of time to develop his game. He might crack AA this year.
I'll take a look at the 13 pitchers later.
--M.C.
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Keith Law came out with his annual rankings of the top farm systems in baseball. (It's on The Athletic, behind a paywall.) Here's what he said about the Giants which he put at #10 (behind TBR, ATL, LAD, AZ, SD, NYY, TOR, MIA, STL):
10. San Francisco Giants
I feel like the whole exceeds the sum of the parts here; each individual Giants prospect of note has some significant risk of low or no return, but if you add them all up, there’s more than enough upside to start to feel optimistic about the Giants’ long-term future. The short term might be bleak as very little help is on the immediate horizon from the farm, but their crop of hitting prospects aged 20 and below is extremely strong and brings a lot of ceiling on one or both sides of the ball.
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