Who is the 35th-best prospect on the farm?
Spring Training is in full swing, and it’s an exciting time to be a baseball fan. And while we wait for the first Cactus League games to arrive, we continue marching forward with our 2025 Willie McCovey Memorial Community Prospect List, which will see us rank the top 44 prospects in the San Francisco Giants organization. We only have 10 names left to add!
Our next name to discuss is someone who used to be a staple of Giants prospect lists, but you’ll find absent on most lists these days. Not on ours, though! It’s outfielder Hunter Bishop, who returns to the CPL as the No. 34 prospect in the system.
Most people are familiar with Bishop’s story. He was the first draft pick of the Farhan Zaidi regime, taken in the first round of the 2019 draft, and was spectacular in his brief post-draft showing. But then things almost immediately went haywire. What should have been his first full season of professional baseball was eliminated entirely by the pandemic. His second attempt at a full season was cut dramatically short by injuries, as he had just 86 plate appearances in 2021. His third attempt was a bit closer, though still injury-marred, with 360 plate appearances in 2022 … and, unfortunately, very poor performance.
And 2023? The entire year was lost to injury.
Finally, in 2024, the left-handed hitter stayed healthy, and nearly doubled his Minor League experience. After having just 562 plate appearances in his first five seasons, Bishop got 518 reps in the batter’s box in 2024 alone.
They didn’t go super well, though. He began the year with AA Richmond, where he hit .242/.315/.358 for a .672 OPS and a 96 wRC+. After just 26 games, he was moved up to AAA Sacramento to help fill a void in the outfield, and he stayed there for the rest of the year, hitting .248/.318/.388 for a .706 OPS and a 76 wRC+. Across the two levels, he had a pretty high strikeout rate of 28.2%.
It’s easy to find optimism for Bishop, though. He still flashes the tools that made him a first-round pick: he hit some baseballs very hard during the year, smacked 11 home runs, and stole 15 bases in 19 attempts. Even after his injuries, he remains one of the best athletes in the system, and is probably top-10 in the system in both power and speed. That’s a solid starting point! And while things haven’t clicked for him, he’s still sitting at just 1,080 plate appearances in the pros … to put that in perspective, Luis Matos has 1,860 plate appearances in the Minors, plus another 409 in the Majors. Heliot Ramos has about three times as many professional plate appearances as Bishop. There’s something to be said for thinking that his tools and athleticism might result in a darn good baseball player once he gets the needed reps.
Then again, he hasn’t had a good season since his draft year in 2019, he has a lengthy injury history, and he turns 27 this summer. And despite spending most of last year in AAA, he wasn’t even chosen as a non-roster invitee to Spring Training. So the reasons for optimism are met by an equal number of reasons for pessimism.
Which means Bishop will be a ton of fun to follow in the upcoming season!
Now let’s add to our list.
The list so far
- Bryce Eldridge — 1B
- Carson Whisenhunt — LHP
- James Tibbs III — OF
- Rayner Arias — OF
- Josuar de Jesus González — SS
- Jhonny Level — SS
- Mason Black — RHP
- Dakota Jordan — OF
- Joe Whitman — LHP
- Reggie Crawford — LHP
- Bo Davidson — OF
- Aeverson Arteaga — SS
- Wade Meckler — OF
- Walker Martin — SS
- Trevor McDonald — RHP
- Diego Velasquez — SS/2B
- Lisbel Diaz — OF
- Sabin Ceballos — 3B
- Carson Ragsdale — RHP
- Trent Harris — RHP
- Carson Seymour — RHP
- Jose Ortiz — CF
- Maui Ahuna — SS
- Victor Bericoto — OF/1B
- Robert Hipwell — 3B
- Jonah Cox — CF
- Josh Bostick — RHP
- Argenis Cayama — RHP
- Jack Choate — LHP
- Jakob Christian — OF
- Jacob Bresnahan — LHP
- Cole Waites — RHP
- Juan Sánchez — LHP
- Hunter Bishop — OF
Note: Clicking on the above names will link to the CPL where they were voted onto the list.
No. 35 prospect nominees
Gerelmi Maldonado — 21.1-year old RHP — did not play in 2024 (in 2023, 4.71 ERA/4.83 FIP in 65 Low-A IP)
Spencer Miles — 24.6-year old RHP — 4.91 ERA/2.79 FIP in ACL (7.1 IP)
Onil Perez — 22.5-year old C — .637 OPS/87 wRC+ in High-A (350 PA)
Ryan Reckley — 20.5-year old 2B — .651 OPS/76 wRC+ in Low-A (78 PA); .939 OPS/145 wRC+ in ACL (120 PA)
Adrián Sugastey — 22.3-year old C — .545 OPS/54 wRC+ in AA (191 PA)
Note: Each player’s first name links to their Baseball-Reference page, and their last name links to their Fangraphs page. All stats are from the 2024 season.