Plenty of options to choose from.
Spring Training is officially and fully here. The San Francisco Giants had their first full squad workout yesterday, meaning everyone has descended upon Arizona to don their orange and black and play some baseball. Now we just wait for the Cactus League games (which start in five days) and then, eventually, the regular season ones (Opening Day is in 37 days!).
That “37” is significant to me, because it’s the jersey number of the player I’m most excited to watch in Spring Training this year: Marco Luciano.
It’s a huge year for Luciano. He’s entering his final season with Minor League options, and has just moved to a new position where there’s significantly more internal competition than he found at his old one. He has to prove he can stick as an outfielder and, more importantly, has to re-find the offensive prowess that made him one of the top hitting prospects in all of baseball for many years.
Luciano has arrived in camp saying all the right things, and looking the part. He openly admitted to being “lost” at the plate last year, and certainly there are plenty of fingers to point at the (mis)management of him. Can he erase that and get back to his elite bat-speed, ball-destroying ways? Perhaps it’s because I’ve been following him for nearly seven years now, perhaps it’s out of pity for how he was treated in 2024, or perhaps it’s because I truly believe he can still be an absolute stud offensively, but I find myself very invested in how Luciano will perform this spring.
But he has a lot of competition, not just in the outfield depth chart, but in the “answer to this question” chart. It’s Bryce Eldridge’s first big league camp, and it’s his chance to start forcing the issue. Luis Matos will try to use his Winter League momentum to prove he’s more the player who won NL Player of the Week last year, than the player who struggled mightily as the year went on.
How does Tyler Fitzgerald look, and what about the guys fighting to back him up? What about the players without options, like Sam Huff and David Villar? And if you happen to be in Scottsdale and see a man in his 20s, chances are he’s trying to earn starts in the Giants rotation.
There’s only so much we can learn in Spring Training. I’ve repeated the 2024 stats for Heliot Ramos (awful) and Ismael Munguia (elite) too many times now. But it’s certainly a time to watch players closely.