As we were saying ....

Our last missive took a quick glance at some of the position players you could figure into the Giants’ future … or not. The thread continues here, with a look at some (hopefully) up-and-coming arms.

The spoils of victory!

Since Brian Sabean came to San Francisco in 1997, his tenure as a General Manager and now Vice President has been tied to his reputation for finding pitchers. It drew criticism as the team went an ice age without developing a single position player of note, but the foundation for a winner was being built. While teams were winning rings with chemically-inflated offenses playing in smaller parks, the game underwent a shift. A second “Golden Age” of pitching was ushered in, and the Giants were ahead of the curve.

Three rings in five years were certainly attributable to the likes of Posey, Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford and other home-grown talent, but the bulk of the heavy lifting was done by pitchers. Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain carried them to the 2010 crown. In 2012 it was Cain, Madison Bumgarner and a killer bullpen. Two seasons ago MadBum put a good-but-not-great team on his back and willed it to a title.

A look at any prospect list has the Giants system as pitching-heavy. It’s a continuation of a very simple game plan: pitchers are valuable assets. There are never enough good ones to go around so you grab all you can, keep the ones you need, and deal the others for what you don’t have to teams found lacking. It’s like having a really good Ameritrade account with plenty of liquidity.

If so-called experts are to be believed, the Giants’ account is pretty deep. MLB Pipeline will tell you 12 of the team’s Top 20 prospects are pitchers. Baseball Prospectus as five hurlers in the organization’s overall Top 10. So what in the heck did they just shell out $230 million on starting pitchers?

The acquisition of Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija buys the team time. Those two fill an immediate need on a team ready to win now, and are young enough to pitch effectively for several years. One rotation spot is likely to open up next year as Jake Peavy’s deal expires, Cueto could opt out in two, but Cain and Bumgarner are under long-term deals.

Tyler Beede

San Francisco is set for the short term and positioned for the future. They’re hedged against someone who doesn’t pan out, and face an embarrassment of riches if all of them do.

The guy to keep an eye on is Tyler Beede. He’s positively electric but a bit raw, possessing what was called the stuff of an ace but the control of a number-five. He’s also a great story, having been drafted in the first round twice, by the Blue Jays out of high school and then by the Giants (14^th overall in 2014) after pitching Vanderbilt to the College World Series.

Plusses: a high-90s four-seamer augmented by a two-seam fastball that hitters consistently pound into the turf, and a change-up that befuddles hitters from both sides of the plate.  Minuses: his curveball has massive bite but is rarely a strike so it’s a weapon only when hitters are sitting on something else.

That breaker isn’t the only pitch that gets away. His walk rate at San Jose wasn’t awful, but after promotion to Richmond he had spells where he couldn’t find the plate with a map and a compass. He still posted a 3.97 ERA and his strikeout-to-walks ratio was almost 2-to-1, but he’ll need to find more control to break through.  He’s the guy who could end up anywhere in the rotation and would seem to be the eventual successor to Peavy.

Kyle Crick

Speaking of erratic arms, the Giants finally gave up – at least in part -- on the enigma that is AA righty Kyle Crick. He was supposed to be the next Madison Bumgarner but instead showed up dressed as Nuke Laloosh. He once tried to hit the bull and took out the press box instead.

Another high-90s fastball and a slider that devastates righties are his calling cards. So is the prevalence of lefties as his kryptonite – they hit .432 against him last year. All this made the team pull him from the ranks of would-be starters and send him to the bullpen.

Drafted out of high school he’s now 23 years old and still trying to find a way to stick in AAA. Chances are that his inability to develop a secondary pitch to lefties has him slotted to be a situational reliever – Javier Lopez pitching against a mirror. Maybe he should try breathing through his eyelids.

The guy who splits the difference is 20-year-old Phil Bickford. The Giants snagged the righty out of Southern Nevada College (he passed on Toronto out of high school, detect a trend here?) with the 18^th pick in last year’s draft and MLB has him in the upper third of its Top 125 prospects list based on his Arizona Fall League performance.

His secondary pitch is a slider he hasn’t learned to control so it ranges from outstanding to flat, kind of like Star Wars movies. The Giants are counting on a high-90s four-seamer that has a late jump and a 6-foot-4, 200-pound frame that should fill out and produce even more power.

What role Bickford ends up with is anyone’s guess. He’s better in short bursts but throws enough strikes to warrant a starting role. A full season should give Giants brass a better idea if he’s destined to be a lower-rotations starter or a reliever good for high-leverage situations.

Aldaberto Mejia is a product of international scouting, joining the Giants organization out of the Dominican Republic in 2011. He posted a 2.45 ERA in limited innings at Richmond last season and projects as a back-of-the rotation guy. He could also be another Yusmeiro Petit, the one you view as a luxury to eat long-relief innings until the starter trips on his shower shoes or suffers some unfortunate sandwich-making accident.

Mejia does have baggage, figuratively and literally.  He missed the first 50 games of 2015 after testing positive for a weight loss stimulant that apparently doesn’t work. He’s not exactly Bartolo Colon but he’s on his way, so the suits have questioned his work ethic and durability.

The numbers were solid when he returned but his pitches lacked the same life. A stint in the Arizona Fall league saw better results as he displayed a mid-90s fastball and a plus change-up. His breaking pitch is a slider than can get a bit lazy but can still be considered a work in progress.

Farther away may be Sam Coonrod, 2014’s fifth-rounder out of Southern Illinois, and Steve Okert, a lefty out of Oklahoma. Likely to contribute sooner is Okert, who last year appeared in 52 games with Sacramento but threw just 63 ½ innings – all in relief. He chalked up five wins but also surrendered three games. His WH/IP of 1.48 was 0.16 above his career average, so he’ll need to iron things out to get a serious look. Coonrod has yet to move above A ball but strikes out a batter an inning to offset a pedestrian .253 career opponent batting average.

Baseball America actually puts Coonrod in its Giants Top 10 and also is high on Clayton Blackburn. Ah, you thought we’d missed him, didn’t ya? Like any good starter, we kept a little something in our hip pocket.

Clayton Blackburn

Blackburn is easy to forget because the 16^th-rounder’s move through the minors has been traditional, moving up a step each year since 2011. While no one outside of Northern California paid attention last year, he went 10-4 with Sacramento with a sub-3.0 ERA and 1.11 WH/IP. 

He’s roller-coastered up and down the team prospect list but always seems to get a mention when the subject is pitching. This will be Blackburn’s age-23 season so it’s time to see if he’s ready for another step up. Over his career he’s made exactly 100 appearances, 91 as a starter. He strikes out almost a hitter an inning and walks less than two a game. If someone is going to give Beede a run for his money, it’s this guy.

Josh Osich also gets some mention, but it’s hard to call him a prospect. When called up last year he proved himself as the obvious choice to replace Jeremy Affeldt as the big club’s hard-throwing lefty reliever. Mike Broadway also got a cup of coffee but didn't throw enough strikes or miss enough bats. After a decade of pro ball (he was a Braves draftee in '05) his long-awaited debut was a nice story and it earned him a spot on the 40-man roster, but he hardly seems destinied to be a long-term fixture. 

There are more in the pipeline, and the Giants are never shy about accumulating. They also love to grab more-polished college pitchers, and Baseball America’s Top 100 College Draft Prospects  is filled with them. Don’t expect the pitching-first trend to stop any time soon.

It works. Why mess with it?