San Francisco Giants Giving Beede a Good Opportunity to Shine in Spring

The San Francisco Giants announced their early Spring Training rotation, and prospect Tyler Beede is being given a prime spot among his peers.

On Wednesday, just a couple days ahead of the beginning of Cactus League play on Friday, San Francisco Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy set the team’s rotation for the early Spring Training games. In doing so, he also telegraphed the regular season rotation.

On Friday when the Giants take on the Cincinnati Reds to officially start the spring schedule, Madison Bumgarner will start the game, piggybacked by Matt Cain. On Saturday, Ty Blach will start against the Chicago Cubs. Sunday will feature another piggyback tandem, with Matt Moore starting and Tyler Beede following him against the Reds. On Monday, it will be Jeff Samardzija, the man who threw the first pitch in 2016’s Spring Training, against the Oakland Athletics.

This makes it easy to see how the Giants will map out their rotation once the regular season begins as well. Bumgarner should again start on Opening Day, marking the fourth consecutive season in which he’s been the number one starter. Though Blach is scheduled to take the ball the day after Bumgarner in Cactus League action, it will be Johnny Cueto‘s job when the games begin to count towards the standings. Cueto, of course, has been absent from Giants’ camp as he’s caring for his ill father in the Domincan Republic. After those two, it will be Moore and Samardzija, while Cain is being given the first opportunity to keep the fifth starter job.

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Though he hasn’t been given a nod to start, Giants’ top prospect Tyler Beede is being given a good early opportunity to shine under the blazing Arizona sun. Beede will piggyback Moore in the third game, so the team wants to see him early in Spring and are giving him a great shot.

In the first turn through the Giants’ rotation in Spring, pitchers probably won’t throw more than an inning at a time, so as not to give them a heavy workload this early. There will obviously be a copious amount of changes throughout the game on defense, so putting Beede on the mound that early in the game will allow him to work with something close to a starting defense behind him. It will be rare for an entire starting defense to be on the field at that point in Spring, but he will likely throw to Buster Posey and pitch in front of Brandon Crawford, both of whom will get plenty of playing time early as they prepare for the World Baseball Classic.

It’s easy to see why the Giants want to get such a good look at Beede. He’s the team’s top prospect, and is ranked 88th on MLB.com’s top-100 prospects list, and 89th on Baseball America’s list.. After a down year in 2015, he bounced back with a tremendous year in 2016 for the Richmond Flying Squirrels. He won the Eastern League’s ERA title with a 2.81 ERA in 24 games started, and added a 1.283 WHIP. Beede’s strikeouts increased from 6.2 per nine innings in 2015, a season he tried to work more to contact, to 8.2 per nine in 2016. He allowed just nine home runs in 147.1 innings pitched.

Beede already has a fan in Giants’ Vice President of Baseball Operations Brian Sabean. The former general manager personally scouted Beede last season ahead of the trade deadline last season, and said “this guy is gonna be in the big leagues before we blink our eye”. He went on to state later that Beede is should be listed “much higher than” where he is in prospect rankings.

The 2014 first-round pick is not yet 24 years old, and he is getting ready for his second big league camp with the Giants. The team is putting him in prime position to get reps with their starting catcher, and is already being placed ahead of guys like Albert Suarez and Chris Stratton, two pitchers that have already been in the big leagues, with such excellent positioning among the team’s pitchers.

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Beede is likely heading to Triple-A with the Sacramento River Cats, but Sabean is right. Beede will be taking a major league mound before we know it.

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