Weekend Minor League roundup: See ya next year!

A season comes to a close.

There’s still a week left of games for the San Francisco Giants to play. But there are no more games for their Minor League Baseball affiliates, as the only team of theirs still in action — the AAA Sacramento River Cats — wrapped up their play this weekend.

Let’s dive into the action for the final Minor League roundup of the year!

Link to the 2024 McCovey Chronicles Community Prospect List (CPL)

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

---

AAA Sacramento (80-70)

Friday: Sacramento River Cats beat the Sugar Land Space Cowboys (Astros) 2-1 [box score]
Saturday: Sacramento River Cats beat the Sugar Land Space Cowboys 3-1 [box score]
Sunday: Sacramento River Cats lost to the Sugar Land Space Cowboys 8-3 [box score]

The Pacific Coast League might be all about hitting, but the River Cats wrapped up their season with absolutely phenomenal starting pitching, as all 3 starters showed up and showed out. Let’s go through them all.

On Friday it was RHP Trevor McDonald (No. 20 CPL) who wraps up his 1st season on the 40-man roster, even though he didn’t make a Major League debut. That very possibly would have changed with better health, which would have allowed McDonald to get to AAA and pitch like he did on Friday a lot sooner.

It wasn’t the cleanest outing for McDonald, but it certainly showed what he’s capable of, as he limited Sugar Land to just 3 hits and 1 run in 6 innings. The Giants will certainly need him to attack the strike zone more in the future — he threw just 48 of 78 pitches for strikes, walked 2 batters, hit 2 batters, and struck out just 3 — but allowing just 3 hits in 6 innings is a reminder as to just how nasty McDonald’s stuff is, and how hard it is to hit.

McDonald finishes his debut AAA stint with a 4.72 ERA, a 4.61 FIP, a 51.7% groundball rate, and 36 strikeouts to 14 walks in 47.2 innings. Hopefully he can be fully healthy next year … if so, expect to see him in the Majors at some point.

On Saturday, it was a delightfully dominant end to the year for LHP John Michael Bertrand, who barely had time to settle into Sacramento before the season ended. Bertrand, the team’s 10th-round pick in 2022, was rewarded for his work in AA Richmond with a late-late promotion, as this was just his 2nd appearance in AAA.

But my goodness did he make the most of it. Bertrand kept hitters off balance all night long, giving up just 2 hits and 2 walks in 6 shutout innings. Scoreless outings in the PCL are very hard to come by for staring pitchers, so what a sensational performance.

Bertrand, who, like McDonald, only struck out 3 batters, is a bit of an old school pitcher who reminds me a little bit of Ty Blach. He doesn’t have any elite skill (other than his defense), and he tops out in the very low 90s, which makes it hard to imagine him being able to shine too brightly at the MLB level. But he keeps hitters off balance and making soft contact, and the Giants have shown plenty of times that doing exactly that can be a wildly successful strategy. If nothing else, let’s raise a glass a toast a 10th-rounder making it to AAA in their 2nd full season. That’s awesome!

And wrapping it up on Sunday was LHP Carson Whisenhunt (No. 4 CPL) who did exactly what you want to do on the last day of the season: have your best performance.

It hasn’t really been the year that many people expected out of Whisenhunt, the team’s 2nd-round pick in 2022. After he flew through the lower levels of the Minors, there was a narrative floating around that his MLB debut was inevitable this year.

Those floating that narrative were, unfortunately, hit with the cold dose of reality that AAA is a hard level, and the majority of players need a bit of time to fail there before they can figure out how to excel. Whisenhunt’s performance with Sacramento this season — he finishes with a 5.42 ERA and a 4.66 FIP — should be as important development, not stalling out and failing. After all, he’s a 23-year old who has thrown far fewer innings in his professional career than Logan Webb has thrown this season alone.

But Sunday was a reminder as to how good Whisenhunt can potentially be. Like McDonald and Bertrand before him, the 6’3 southpaw went 6 strong innings, and he gave up just 5 hits, 1 walk, and 1 run. But most impressively? A gorgeous 10 strikeouts, while finding the strike zone on 64 of his 83 pitches.

Whisenhunt remains not just one of the organization’s best strikeout pitchers, but one of baseball’s. Among the 61 PCL pitchers with at least 10 starts this year, Whisenhunt’s 11.61 strikeouts per 9 innings ranked 5th. The 4 names ahead of him? Joe Boyle (who spent much of the year in the Majors), Jack Leiter (a No. 2 overall pick), Reid Detmers (a No. 10 overall pick), and teammate Spencer Howard (a 28-year old whose numbers were propped up by often working in relief or making abbreviated starts). And his swinging strike rate of 15.5% was just 0.1% behind Leiter for the league lead. Whisenhunt undoubtedly has the stuff to not just be an MLB pitcher, but to be a damn good one. It’s just a matter of if he can keep the command in check, if his fastball is good enough to set up his elite changeup, and if he can stay healthy. He’s high on the list of must-watch prospects in 2025.

Save for Sunday, it was a great performance from the bullpen over the weekend. A few highlights: RHP Tyler Myrick pitched a perfect inning with a strikeout, giving him a 3.18 ERA and 4.36 FIP in his debut AAA season, where he was promoted to halfway through the year. He’s likely under Rule 5 protection consideration. RHP Kai-Wei Teng (No. 23 CPL) walked 2 batters but tossed a no-hit, scoreless frame with a strikeout. The Giants have moved him to a relief role towards the end of the season, and I’m not sure if that’s a permanent move or just to put him in better situations for success until he gets back on track. RHPs Ryan Watson and Justin Garza both pitched perfect innings, the former with 2 strikeouts. Each finishes with an ERA in the 3s, which is no small feat in the PCL. But they’re both Minor League journeymen who have been around a while, so it’s no sure thing that they’ll be in the Giants organization next year. Same with RHP Drew Strotman, who struck out 2 batters in a perfect inning.

Now, onto the offense, which wasn’t quite as exciting as the pitching.

The 1st full professional season came to an end for first baseman Bryce Eldridge (No. 3 CPL), and what a season it was. It wasn’t exactly a great end to it, though, as Eldridge hit 2-12 with 6 strikeouts in these 3 games. He finishes his short AAA debut at 7-31 with 4 walks and 11 strikeouts, but let me tell you something: those numbers underscore how good he looked in the batter’s box.

Eldridge’s “struggles” in AAA should not be even remotely concerning considering that A) it’s an 8-game sample and B) he’s hilariously young for the league. Many people expected him to spend the full season with Low-A San Jose, and instead he ended it knocking on the door of the Majors!

He’ll now head south to play in the Arizona Fall League (he’s the only participant that has been revealed for the Giants), and then he’ll be back in Arizona in February when he’ll without a doubt be a non-roster invitee to Spring Training. And then we can start debut watch!

Center fielder Wade Meckler (No. 11 CPL) saw his disappointing season end in disappointing fashion. After flying all the way to the big leagues last year, and then earning high praises in Spring Training, Meckler had to assume that he would spend a lot of the year in the Majors. But an injury late in camp derailed his season. He was sidelined for quite a while, struggled in his rehab assignment, had an injury setback, and then struggled some more. He ended the year hitting pretty darn well in Sacramento, but after going 1-3 with a walk on Friday, Meckler was removed from Saturday’s game after going 0-2, and he didn’t play on Sunday. I haven’t seen any news about him, but that certainly points to a likely injury, though hopefully it’s a very small one!

Needless to say, 2025 will be a vital season for Meckler, who saw himself passed on the outfield depth chart by both Heliot Ramos and Grant McCray this year (as well as Jerar Encarnación, though it’s unclear if he’ll remain with the organization). Between that, Ramos locking down an everyday position, Marco Luciano getting moved to the outfield, and Mike Yastrzemski playing himself back into the team’s plans (to make no mention of potential offseason chases of Juan Soto, Teoscar Hernández, or Anthony Santander), Meckler faces quite an uphill battle to get back to meaningful Major League playing time. I’m unsure if he spent enough time on the Injured List this year to keep him from burning an option, but let’s hope he did … otherwise next year would be his last season with an option, which means the Giants will have put him — and themselves — in quite a pickle.

Blake Sabol might have continued to show that his future isn’t at catcher. That’s not a knock on his defense, though it seems clear that he has no future at catcher on the Giants as long as Bob Melvin is the manager. It’s just a funny anecdote: on Friday and Sunday he played backstop and hit 0-6 with 1 walk. On Saturday he entered the game as a Meckler replacement and played left field, where he hit 2-2 with a home run. Go figure!

It was a disappointing season for Sabol, after spending all of 2023 on the MLB roster. While he played well in a short MLB stint, the lefty hit for just a .728 OPS and an 85 wRC+ in Sacramento. Those are decent enough offensive numbers if he were a good defensive catcher, but it increasingly is looking like his position is at a corner, and those numbers aren’t nearly good enough for that. His roster spot would seem to be in question entering the offseason, though it’s worth noting that because he spent all of last year on the roster (a necessity, given his status as a Rule 5 draftee), he didn’t burn an option. So he still has two option years remaining.

Also homering was first baseman Andrew Knapp, who didn’t play Friday or Saturday but brought in the season-ending party on Sunday by hitting 2-4 with a solo blast. Knapp, a 32-year old with plenty of MLB experience, will enter free agency again this offseason, so we’ll see where he ends up. This wasn’t his 1st rendezvous with the Giants, and it just might not be his last, either.

Shortstop Christian Koss wrapped up a nice debut season in the organization as he hit 3-9 with a hit by pitch and a stolen base. His offense didn’t really translate to AAA (.747 OPS, 87 wRC+) after being dominant in AA, but given how good his shortstop defense is, he’s one to keep a close eye on next year, especially since the Giants have officially given up on Luciano as a shortstop. He could certainly play his way into the team’s utility infield plans, though Casey Schmitt and Brett Wisely remain on the roster in addition to Tyler Fitzgerald, and god knows Donovan Walton will somehow find his way back into the mix.

And so ends another River Cats season, and another Minor League season.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

---

Home run tracker

AAA Blake Sabol (12 total, 11 in AAA)
AAA Andrew Knapp (10)