Giants AFL Week 1 recap

Giants baseball!

The San Francisco Giants season may be well over, but there are still players representing the team while playing baseball. The Arizona Fall League is off and running, and will continue to do so for the next month. There’s not enough action for me to update the Giants contingency on a daily basis, but I’ll try to do it on a weekly basis.

There was a little bit of news in the first week. The Giants initially sent eight players to the Scottsdale Scorpions, the team they share with the Detroit Tigers, New York Mets, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Toronto Blue Jays. Eight is the maximum number a team can send initially, but some changes are often made throughout the season as roster needs pop up. And so, during the week, the Giants sent a ninth player, catcher Drew Cavanaugh, their 17th-round pick in 2023, who spent the year with the Low-A San Jose Giants. Welcome to the AFL, Drew! News out of the AFL is sparse, so it’s unclear if an injury prompted this move, but additional catcher depth is always nice. And he seems to be having a good time!

Now let’s see how everyone did this week for the Scorpions, who went 2-3 and sit in fourth place in the six-team league.

1B/DH Bryce Eldridge

Week 1: 3-16, 1 double, 1 walk, 1 hit by pitch, 1 RBI, 7 strikeouts, 2 errors

It wasn’t exactly the type of week that we’ve grown accustomed to from Eldridge after he was one of the best hitters in all of the Minor Leagues in 2024. But he only had 75 plate appearances combined between AA and AAA, so he’s still adjusting to playing higher-level competition, of which there’s plenty in the AFL. Hopefully he just needed a few games to get acclimated, and will start taking the league by storm!

OF Bo Davidson

Week 1: 4-11, 1 double, 2 walks, 3 strikeouts

Not quite good enough to earn the label “electric,” but certainly a continuation of a stellar season for Davidson, who was one of the very best stories on the farm this year (I’d argue a clear-cut second-best story, behind Eldridge). With every passing game, it becomes more and more clear that Davidson should be talked about not as one of the best undrafted prospects in baseball, but as one of the best prospects in baseball, full stop. Certainly not “best” as in a top-100 candidate just yet, but he’s a hell of a lot closer to being a top-100 guy than to being an organizational filler guy, which is what the bulk of undrafted players are.

3B Charlie Szykowny

Week 1: 2-8, 1 home run, 2 RBI, 1 strikeout

Szykowny isn’t the most heralded hitting prospect the Giants sent to Arizona, and that will be reflected in playing time — it’s not an accident that Davidson got more plate appearances than Szykowny, or that Eldridge got more plate appearances than Davidson. That’s how it works in the AFL. And yet Szykowny might have made the strongest impression, by bashing a home run. The 2023 ninth-round pick opened a lot of eyes this year when he hit .340/.405/.505 in Low-A San Jose, though he slowed down a bit after a midseason promotion to High-A Eugene. He’s a fun left-handed bat!

C Drew Cavanaugh

Week 1: 1-4, 1 double, 1 RBI, 1 strikeout

Cavanaugh was late to join the team and probably won’t get a ton of playing time as he’ll be low on the totem pole. But he has made the most of the game he got into, that’s for sure!

RHP William Kempner

Week 1: 1 game, 1 inning, 0 hits, 0 walks, 0 runs, 2 strikeouts

Facing three batters, retiring all three of them, and striking out two of them is a great way to start the AFL season. But it’s not performance that’s most noteworthy for Kempner; it’s merely the fact that he took the mound. The 2022 third-round pick missed the entirety of the 2024 Minor League season, so it was amazing to see him back on the field.

RHP Tyler Vogel

Week 1: 2 games, 1.2 innings, 0 hits, 0 walks, 0 runs, 2 strikeouts

Vogel was the only pitcher from the Giants to appear in multiple games in the first week, and that’s not because the Scorpions manager hates Giants prospects … which would certainly be a story, since that manager is Dennis Pelfrey, the manager of the Richmond Flying Squirrels, San Francisco’s AA affiliate. Instead, that’s just the way it goes in the AFL given the sheer number of players on the roster. The Scorpions have 24 pitchers on their roster, and Vogel was one of just five players to pitch more than once. But my goodness did he pitch well! Injuries limited him to just 29.1 innings this season, so good to see him back in the groove and dominating.

RHP Marques Johnson

Week 1: 1 game, 0.2 innings, 2 hits, 2 walks, 5 runs, 1 earned run, 1 strikeout

Johnson pitched poorly in his lone game last week, and the defense behind him made it look even worse. But like the bulk of the pitchers, it was just nice to see him on the field after a mostly-lost 2024. The 2022 11th-round pick, acquired from the Boston Red Sox in the Mauricio Llovera trade, only returned to action late in the season following an injury, and pitched just 7.1 innings on the year.

RHP Cale Lansville

Week 1: 2.1 innings, 5 hits, 0 walks, 3 runs, 2 earned runs, 4 strikeouts

Lansville, the Giants 14th-round pick in the 2023 draft, was the lone member of the Giants contingency who got to start a game (and it will probably stay that way, since he’s the only one who has been starting in the Minors). He’s a pitch to contact guy, having struck out just 8.35 batters per nine innings this year with Low-A San Jose, while sporting a 51.5% groundball rate. So sometimes that will lead to things like five hits in 2.1 innings, though the four strikeouts were a pleasant surprising! Speaking of pleasant…

RHP Elijah Pleasants

Week 1: 1 game, 2.1 innings, 1 hit, 2 walks, 1 hit by pitch, 3 runs, 2 earned runs, 2 strikeouts

Pleasants, as he did during his debut Minor League season (he started the year with the Oakland Ballers), worked as a multi-inning reliever. And, as he did during the season, he showed a lot of good stuff while struggling quite a bit with command.

We’ll be back next week with another round of stats … hopefully good ones! And if you want to watch the action, most of the games can be streamed on MLB’s website.