Minor League roundup, Sept. 19: Hardware for Bryce Eldridge

Yesterday’s action on the farm.

It’s the penultimate San Francisco Giants Minor League Baseball roundup of the year! On Monday we’ll recap the weekend’s action, and then it’s onto the offseason for the prospects. Can’t believe that another Minor League season is nearly in the books.

But it’s not in the books yet! So let’s see what happened on Thursday for the organization’s lone team that’s still in action.

Link to the 2024 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 little hardware to hand out! The Northwest League announced that first baseman Bryce Eldridge (No. 3 CPL) has been named the “Top MLB Prospect” in the league, after he set fire to the league in his stint with High-A Eugene. And his teammate with the Emeralds, middle infielder Diego Velasquez (No. 21 CPL) has been named a Northwest League All-Star in his age-20 season. Congratulations to both, and very well deserved.

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AAA Sacramento (78-69)

Sacramento River Cats lost to the Sugar Land Space Cowboys (Astros) 5-4
Box score

Not the most intriguing game for the River Cats, if we’re being quite honest. The stars from the last few games — center fielder Wade Meckler (No. 11 CPL) and first baseman Bryce Eldridge (No. 3 CPL) — had quiet games on Thursday. Meckler hit 0-4, though he did draw a walk and steal a base. It was just his 3rd stolen base in 42 games with Sacramento this year, after just 1 stolen base in 27 games across Low-A, High-A, and AA, though he nabbed 5 bags in 16 games while rehabbing in the Arizona Complex League.

Meckler has the speed to be a good base-stealer, so one way that he could start to work himself back into the Major League plans is by figuring out how to turn that speed into successful thievery on the basepaths. Good to see him show that off on Thursday.

While I’ve explained my trepidation with putting much stock into Meckler’s decent AAA numbers this year (tl;dr: they’re propped up by home run power that we shouldn’t expect to sustain itself at the AAA level, let alone the MLB level), it’s great to see that he’s gotten back to his fantastic bat-control ways. In the last 4 games, Meckler hasn’t struck out a single time. That’s more like the Meck-man we know and love!

As for Eldridge, it was his 1st game since joining Sacramento on Saturday in which he didn’t record a hit, as he finished the game 0-3 with a walk. The walk was his 4th free pass drawn in his 5 AAA games, against just 5 strikeouts. And he picked up his first AAA RBI when he reached safely on an error that, frankly, could have been ruled a hit (and often is, especially in the Minors).

I should also note that Eldridge hit a foul ball that was only just a hair foul, and otherwise would have been an opposite-field home run that cleared the fences by a mile. Impressive swing. He looks so comfortable.

Statistically, the best day belonged to left fielder Luis Matos, who hit 2-4 with a double, the team’s only extra-base hit of the night. It was also a clutch hit, as it tied the game in the 8th inning before the River Cats would give up a 9th-inning run.

Thankfully for Matos, they don’t have pictures in the box score, because it wasn’t exactly the type of hit that they teach you at Doubles School.

On the pitching front, RHP Carson Seymour (No. 22 CPL) made his final appearance of the year and it wasn’t his cleanest, as he gave up 5 hits, 3 walks, and 3 runs in 4 innings of work.

It was a so-so season for Seymour, who made his AAA debut and spent the entire year with Sacramento, where he amassed a 4.82 ERA and a 5.34 FIP, with fairly poor strikeout and walk numbers, but an excellent groundball rate.

Strikeouts remain an interesting topic with Seymour. In 2022 he had 11.4 strikeouts per 9 innings with the Mets High-A affiliate, then 13.2 strikeouts per 9 with the Giants High-A affiliate after they acquired him in the Darin Ruf trade. That number dipped to 9.1 last year with AA Richmond, and finishes at 8.8 in his 1st pass through AAA.

But, like last year, Seymour has dialed up the Ks as the year has gone on. Through the end of July, he had 88 strikeouts in 95.1 innings. After K’ing 6 batters on Thursday, he ends his August and September with 44 punchouts in 39 innings. The Giants will have an interesting choice to make with Seymour ahead of the Rule 5 Draft. He’s definitely a player at risk of being selected, but they also have a roster with a whole lot of young and unproven back-end starter/long reliever types, and probably don’t want to clog it up any further. Admittedly some names might be dropped this offseason, but they’re carrying Mason Black, Landen Roupp, Trevor McDonald, Tristan Beck, Keaton Winn, Sean Hjelle, and Kai-Wei Teng into the offseason, and will almost surely protect Carson Ragsdale as well. That’s …. a lot.

RHP Clay Helvey had a really nice relief outing, giving up just 1 hit and 0 walks with 4 strikeouts in 2 innings, though he allowed an unearned run on his own error. Helvey started the year in AA but was promoted after just 2 games, and has a 4.86 ERA and 4.26 FIP in Sacramento …. numbers that stand out extra if you compare them to his awful numbers in a stint with the River Cats last year. Most excitingly, Helvey has struck out 96 batters in just 70.2 innings, giving him a 12.3 K/9 rate that ranks 6th out of 119 Pacific Coast League pitchers with at least 40 innings thrown this year. He’s someone who could find his way into the MLB bullpen next year, which is no small feat for a player drafted in a round that doesn’t even exist anymore (he was a 22nd-round pick for the Giants in 2018).

And RHP Tommy Romero tossed 2 perfect frames with 2 strikeouts. He has a 3.14 ERA this year, but just a 5.09 FIP, and he’ll be a Minor League free agent so who knows what the future holds for him.

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Friday schedule

Sacramento: vs. Sugar Land, 6:45 p.m. PT

Reminder that Minor League games can be watched on MLB TV.