San Francisco Giants Need Reyes Moronta to Step Up in 2018

The San Francisco Giants will need some young arms to step up and pick up the slack in 2018, and Reyes Moronta could be the answer to some questions.

The San Francisco Giants and their front office have done extremely well this offseason to improve their outfield and the offense, but the pitching staff still has some question marks. The bullpen still has a couple issues, and the team will need young players to step up and fill the gaps. Chief among them in the bullpen is 25-year-old right-hander Reyes Moronta.

Moronta became a really interesting name in the Giants’ farm system during the 2016 season. He pitched the entire year for the High-A San Jose Giants, mostly as the team’s closer, and put all of his tools together for his best professional season to that point. In 60 games, he pitched to a 2.59 ERA and 1.068 WHIP, but most impressively, struck out an eye-popping 93 batters in just 59 innings.

That grabbed plenty of attention within the organization and earned Moronta an invitation to big league Spring Training last year. He continued to pitch well in front of the big league coaches, and he was bumped up to Double-A to start the year. He went through some struggles and missed a bit of time because of injury, but still received a mid-season promotion to Triple-A and, ultimately, a promotion to the major leagues.

In the big leagues for the first time, Moronta continued to impress. He made his debut on September 5th, and proceeded to strike out his very first batter, Charlie Blackmon, with a perfectly-placed fastball at 98 miles per hour. He would go on to make seven appearances in the season’s final month, and was impressive the entire way. He struck out 11 batters in 6.2 innings while keeping hitters off balance with a good mixture of hard fastballs and a pair of breaking balls.

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Moronta’s favorite secondary pitch is the slider, which he threw about 32 percent of the time in his first cup of coffee and features a sharp, down-and-away break to right-handers. He also features a curveball with a straight downward break that comes in a couple ticks slower than the slider on the radar gun.

He’s going to throw a lot of fastballs, which is unsurprising when a pitcher has a fastball like that, but it’s made that much better with the addition of two different breaking balls with it. Moronta has the repertoire and swing-and-miss ability that earns young pitchers the “future closer” label. In the future, he could become that ninth-inning guy, but the Giant are going to need him in a much different, but still vitally important role this year.

The Giants need someone to help bridge the gape from starting pitcher to late-inning relievers, and Moronta is more than capable of doing just that. With a knack for missing bats, Moronta would fit in beautifully in the middle of the bullpen. He could be just the guy to hold court in the middle innings to get the ball to Mark Melancon, Will Smith, and Hunter Strickland late in the game.

And the Giants also need a guy who can strike hitters out in the bullpen. In 2017, George Kontos was the only Giant who made more than 20 appearances and struck out more than a batter per inning. Of course, he was shipped off for free to the Pittsburgh Pirates in August. Having pitchers who can strike out batters with great regularity is another trend the Giants haven’t kept up with in recent years. While Hunter Strickland and others have strikeout capabilities, no one has emerged as a guy that can truly blow hitters away.

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Moronta has great potential, and could be a real weapon out of the Giants’ bullpen. If he can come in and settle into a role, it would make life a lot easier on manager Bruce Bochy, as well as the other guys in the bullpen. There will be some growing pains, as there will be with any rookie, but the team could really use a guy like Moronta waiting in the bullpen. He could turn out to be the x-factor on the pitching staff in 2018.