Two San Francisco Giants Farmhands Among MLB’s Top-100 Prospects
Saturday night saw the MLB Network air a special revealing MLB.com’s top-100 prospects, and two San Francisco Giants’ farmhands were named near the backend of the list.
Third baseman Christian Arroyo and right-hander Tyler Beede were ranked back-to-back at number 89 and number 88, respectively, representing the San Francisco Giants among baseball’s best prospects. For Arroyo, this is his second consecutive year on the list, after being ranked 82nd prior to the 2016 season. Arroyo was also rated as the fourth-best third base prospect earlier in the offseason. This is Beede’s first appearance on MLB’s preseason list, although he did hit number 99 during the season last year.
Both prospects were featured on Baseball America’s mid-season top-100 in 2016, with Arroyo at 56 and Beede at 81. Baseball American has not yet released their top-100 for the 2017 season.
Arroyo’s path to the major leagues looked to be fairly well-blocked as late as July last season, with years of team control left for shortstop Brandon Crawford, second baseman Joe Panik, and third baseman Matt Duffy. That changed at the trade deadline last season, when the team dealt Duffy (among others) to Tampa Bay for starting pitcher Matt Moore. That cleared a path for Arroyo in the very near future.
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Eduardo Nunez figures to be the everyday third baseman in 2017, while the 2013 first-round draft pick will likely take his first foray into Triple-A. Arroyo wasn’t exactly spectacular in 2016, his debut season at Double-A, hitting .274 with a .689 OPS and only three home runs. He did show promise with an approach to all fields, leading to 36 doubles, and a very respectable 13.9 percent strikeout rate.
Beede, a two-time first-round draft pick (selected 21st overall by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2011 before being picked 14th overall by San Francisco in 2014), bounced back from a down 2015 season to have a stellar 2016 year. He received his first taste of Double-A action in 2015 and was hit around pretty hard, with a 5.23 ERA in 13 starts. Last year was a return to form, as Beede dominated with 2.81 ERA and 1.283 WHIP. His strikeouts also took a huge jump, going from 6.2 per nine innings in 2015 to 8.2 per nine in 2016.
The team had Beede focus more on getting groundballs in 2015, and he threw a slower variation of his fastball during that year. His velocity took a tick back up in 2016, but he still maintained a respectable groundball rate.
Like Arroyo, Beede will probably get his first taste of life in Triple-A next season. Both guys are on the cusp of a big league call-up, but probably won’t be regulars until the 2018 season. That could change, of course, depending on injuries and the performance of others, but it seems their contributions in 2017 might be limited to getting a taste of the big leagues late in the season as roster-expansion players.
Also of note, former San Francisco farmhand Phil Bickford was not listed among the MLB’s top-100 prospects. Bickford was dealt to the Milwaukee Brewers at the trade deadline last season, along with Andrew Susac, in the deal that brought over reliever Will Smith. Bickford suffered through a sizable dip in velocity in 2016, and has been suspended for 50 games next season because of a drug violation.
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Bickford was ranked as high as 54th last season on MLB.com, and he finished the season as Milwaukee’s number five prospect. For this season, Baseball America has Bickford as the Brewers’ eighth-best prospect