Minor League roundup, 3/28-30: Luciano homers, pitchers dominate

The first weekend action on the farm.

Baseball has returned, but it’s not just the Major League season that’s underway: things are kicking off in Minor League Baseball, too. The San Francisco Giants have just one affiliate currently playing, but by this time next week, all four of their A-ball affiliates will be in action. The Arizona Complex League and Dominican Summer League seasons will follow later in the year.

Since there’s only one team playing, and since I was traveling this weekend, we’re covering the whole first weekend’s worth of games. Let’s get into the fun, and kick off another year of Minor League roundups.

Link to the 2025 McCovey Chronicles Community Prospect List (CPL)

All listed positions in the roundup are the positions played in that particular game.

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News

A few little pieces of news to get to. First off, if you’re looking for 1B Bryce Eldridge (No. 1 CPL), he’s still held back by a sore wrist that cost him a few weeks of Minor League Spring Training. It’s still unclear whether he’ll report to AAA Sacramento or AA Richmond when he’s ready to go, but he’ll likely be staying in Arizona for a little while longer.

In other injury news, OF Wade Meckler (No. 13 CPL) had another injury setback, leaving Saturday’s game after stealing a base. He was placed on the 7-Day IL, with OF/1B Victor Bericoto (No. 24 CPL) called up from AA Richmond to take his spot. Injuries have really started to pile up for Meckler, who missed a huge portion of the 2024 season while sidelined, and who missed part of camp this year with a neck strain and concussion. Hopefully’s he’s OK and can come back soon.

Speaking of coming back, AAA Sacramento is welcoming a warm and familiar face back to its roster: 3B/1B David Villar! After getting designated for assignment at the end of Spring Training, Villar cleared waivers and has been outrighted to Sacramento, where he’ll get a chance to work his way back into the Major League plans, or play his way into an opportunity elsewhere.

And finally, in sadder news, the Giants journey ended for a handful of prospects last week. It’s always the case this time of year that the team has to part ways with some players, and on Thursday they released RHPs Luis Bermudez, Christian Avendano, Brett Standlee, Hunter Dula, and Kanoa Pagan, LPHs Matt Mikulski, Michael Rodriguez, and Timmy Manning, INF Jimmy Glowenke, OF Nadir Lewis, and utility player Andrew Kachel. Mikulski, a second-round pick in 2021, and Glowenke, a compensation-round pick in 2020, are the most notable names. Best of luck to all of them!

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AAA Sacramento (2-1)

Friday: Sacramento River Cats beat the Albuquerque Isotopes (Rockies) 8-0 [box score]
Saturday: Sacramento River Cats beat the Albuquerque Isotopes 5-1 [box score]
Sunday: Sacramento River Cats lost to the Albuquerque Isotopes 2-1 [box score]

An excellent start to the season for a AAA roster that is as stacked as any Sacramento squad in recent years (save for maybe the MLB team currently playing there … maybe).

The Giants plan on winning with pitching this year, and part of that equation is their exceptional depth. And that depth is on full display in Sacramento. There’s been a running refrain that the River Cats might have a better rotation than a handful of Major League teams and, while I’d stop well short of making that proclamation, it is true that their rotation is comprised entirely of players who could quite feasibly be core members of the San Francisco rotation in the near future … with a few more such players in the bullpen.

And they certainly showed out.

Drawing the Opening Day assignment was RHP Carson Seymour (No. 21 CPL), who thoroughly impressed in Spring Training, and kept that momentum going in Sacramento. Back with the River Cats after spending the entirety of the 2024 season there, Seymour looked right at home with 4 dynamic scoreless innings, allowing just 3 hits and a walk, while striking out a stunning 8 batters, and throwing 40 of 59 pitches for strikes. Like the starters in San Francisco, the Sacramento rotation is still getting stretched out to start the year … if Seymour pitched like this in a few weeks, he might be going 6 or 7 innings.

On Saturday the mound was habited by the biggest name on the River Cats roster, at least until Eldridge gets there: LHP Kyle Harrison. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s becoming clear that the Giants always planned on having Harrison start the year in AAA, after he missed all of ramp-up time while rehabbing a shoulder injury, missed the start of Spring Training due to illness, and spent the bulk of spring trying to recover from said illness, which cost him a huge amount of weight. He simply was never going to be up to speed.

So to Sacramento he goes to get up to speed, and Saturday was a big step in the right direction. Harrison gave up a 1st-inning home run to Ryan Ritter but then immediately settled down with delightful results. His final line was 4 innings, 4 hits, 1 walk, 1 run, and 5 strikeouts. More importantly, he was frequently in the 94-95 range with his fastball, which will be critical to his success.

Harrison remains one of the top pitching prospects in the organization, and it’s going to be fascinating to see what happens once he’s fully up to speed and able to pitch deeper into games. It seems certain that he’ll get plenty of starts in San Francisco this year, it’s just not entirely clear when or how.

Rounding out the star-studded trio of weekend starters was LHP Carson Whisenhunt (No. 2 CPL), who took the mound on Sunday and showed off his strikeout stuff, whiffing 9 batters in just 4.2 innings without walking a single batter. Now that’s exciting!

It wasn’t all perfect for Whisenhunt though, as all 4 of the hits he allowed went for extra bases, which tagged 2 runs to his ledger, and he hit a batter. But he lived in the strike zone (49 of 65 pitches for strikes) and reliably got swing-and-misses all game long. Whisenhunt has an exceptionally high ceiling, but he’ll have to really impress this year to get opportunities, given how many other Sacramento pitchers are already on the 40-man roster.

Remember when I said, a few paragraphs earlier, that the Giants not only have starting pitcher depth in the Sacramento rotation, but also the Sacramento bullpen? That was also on display, and the results were just as phenomenal.

On Friday it was RHP Tristan Beck, who seems to primarily be a reliever but could be a long man for the Giants. He pitched 2 strong shutout innings, giving up a hit and a walk while striking out a batter. On Saturday it was RHP Sean Hjelle, one of the most surprising omissions from the Opening Day roster, and another player who is now just a reliever, but could be a long man. He was perfect in his 2 innings of work, throwing 20 of 28 pitches for strikes, K’ing a pair of batters, and retiring all 6 hitters he faced. And on Sunday it was RHP Trevor McDonald (No. 15 CPL), who served as a piggybacking starter with Whisenhunt, pitching the final 4 innings of the game, and allowing just 4 baserunners (1 hit, 2 walks, and 1 hit batter), keeping runs off the board, and striking out 3. It seems the Giants are still viewing McDonald, who made his MLB debut in the final game of the 2024 season, as a starter, which is exciting.

RHP Kai-Wei Teng is probably no longer viewed as a starter but, after being DFA’d and clearing waivers in the offseason, he’s back in Sacramento as a reliever. Teng’s issue in the Minors had always been a struggle to throw strikes … prior to last year (when his Ks mysteriously disappeared), he always had gaudy strikeout totals, but just had too many walks and lived on the edges of the zone too much. He had a sensational spring, though, living in the zone and walking no batters in 4 innings. That continued in his season debut on Saturday, when he retired all 3 batters he faced, 2 by way of strikeout, while throwing 8 of 9 pitches for strikes. Perhaps a new career is being formed as a quality reliever!

LHP Joey Lucchesi, a veteran signed to a Minor League deal, pitched 2 scoreless innings on Saturday, while RHP Joel Peguero, the 2025 Barney Nugent Award winner, gave up 1 hit while recording 1 strikeout in a scoreless inning on Friday.

As for the offense, there were plenty of good performances to highlight. LF/DH Marco Luciano didn’t have the best performance of the weekend, but he perhaps had the most encouraging one. He was spectacular in Friday’s season opener, hitting 1-2 with 2 walks and an absolutely gorgeous, opposite-field 3-run home run. He went just 0-7 the rest of the weekend though, with 2 strikeouts and 1 sacrifice fly.

It was still encouraging, though, because Luciano continued to do what he showed in his brief Spring Training: hit the ball hard. Apologies for beating a dead horse, but Luciano became one of baseball’s top prospects because of how sensationally hard he hit the baseball, and that was entirely absent in his struggles in 2024, both in the Majors and the Minors. It returned during the spring, and it seems to be here to start the Minor League season, as well. His home run was hit at a very respectable 107.1 mph, and he had multiple outs that traveled in excess of 300 feet. Most impressive and encouraging, was a lineout on Saturday that left the bat at 113.5 mph. To put that in perspective, only 3 players on the Giants roster last year hit a ball that hard all season: Michael Conforto (113.6), Matt Chapman (114.5), and Jerar Encarnación (115.0). Luciano’s hardest-hit ball in the Majors last year was just 108.1 mph.

The best offensive performance, however, belonged to 3B/RF Brett Auerbach, who had a spectacular weekend. The 2020 undrafted utility player had extra-base hits in all 3 games, finishing the weekend 5-11 with 2 home runs, 2 doubles, 1 walk, 1 strikeout, and 1 stolen base. Sensational!

Auerbach’s defensive versatility is his calling card more than his bat — last year he hit right at league average (101 wRC+) with 4 home runs in 223 plate appearances for Sacramento — but he definitely has some power to tap into. At-bats may be harder for him to find with Villar returning (and especially if and when Eldridge gets worked into the fold), but right now he’s definitely staying on the team’s radar.

After a tough season opener in which he hit 1-5 with 2 strikeouts, CF Grant McCray started playing the way that made him look like a serious option for the Opening Day roster. On Saturday and Sunday he went 3-6 with 2 walks, 1 strikeout, 1 stolen base, and 1 outfield assist. If he keeps hitting well and suppressing strikeouts in AAA, he’ll be back in the Majors soon.

RF/DH Wade Meckler also made the most of his time before Saturday’s injury, hitting 3-5 with a double, 2 walks, and 2 stolen bases. Hopefully he’s back on the field soon.

An exciting start to the Minor League season!

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Tuesday schedule

Sacramento: @ Las Vegas, 6:35 p.m. PT
Richmond: Season begins Friday
Eugene: Season begins Friday
San Jose: Season begins Friday