Scouting Reports for the 2016 Giants: San Jose Giants Prospects

Hello everyone and first of all, Merry Christmas to all of my kind readers! It's been a good Christmas for me as my family went on a trip today. How's your Christmas going so far? By the way, I have added batting hand/throwing hand on the profiles as I have forgotten to put it in previous scouting reports. I'll get to it right away.

My gift to the readers reading right now is my scouting reports for the San Jose Giants. It is on par with Richmond in terms of the excitement to write about as there are plenty of good prospects to scout on and some of the players that we might see in AT&T Park might've had a taste of playing for the San Jose Giants this year. I will highlight here several of the top prospects in the system as well as some tidbits on selected players that are not top prospects but sure gets my attention. 

The Top Prospects of the San Francisco Giants in 2015: Tier 2

Welcome to the Tier 2 of the top prospects of the San Francisco Giants. Ranking tier 1 is kind of a no-brainer for me as I already have a clear view on who to include because they are just really impressive in my eyes like Beede, Arroyo and Bickford and their ceilings and their learning curves. After tier 1 though, it will going to be much, much harder to decide on who to place on the right tiers because of the seemingly even playing field on a lot of guys. I did my best to place them in the right tier and do justice on why I placed a prospect in the specific tier.

Out In Front: Wrap-up of Most Things Giants Farm System

It's another grace period from me (another string of holiday and weekend and the quizzes have just passed by) and I think it's time to run another round of Out In Front but this time, I will not talk about a specific thing or two (because Jordan Johnson thing was yesterday (not literally)) and instead, I'll do this new post like it's Something Extra, tidbits of information like you want to make a fruit salad with all of the fruits inside and out the refrigerator but expect that you'll read good thoughts from me in this one. 

Top 30 Prospects of the Giants in 2015

I decided to make the full Top 30 Prospect List for the Giants in lieu to the top 30 prospects made by MLB.com, Cove Chatter, and GiantsProspectTalk on Twitter. I thought that making a full list and not just a Top 10 would be the best way possible to really compare and dictate the prospects because even though the cream of the crop are all set, the rest of the crops are still important and there are possibilities that they are rising in terms of their stock or value. I remember when the farmers here are not wasting anything that they can still harvest even though the monsoon season reek havoc on their crops because they are still important. 

I'll do this Top 30 some sort of a Twitter style. Short, compact but solid thoughts about the prospects that I'll rank. There's a lot of prospects to choose from and I kind of hate ranking prospects because honestly, I would prefer a big board where I'll throw in the prospects that I like in here and you'll be the judge, just like the thought process in terms of the Draft. But I'll do this ranking to help you guys where I project the prospect's value for us. It is separated by tiers so that if you ever have problems with ranking prospects like I do, tiers can really help to differentiate the quality of the prospects and you can ignore the numberings altogether and just rely on the tiers.

I am writing this article actually just before the Trade Deadline and I am ranking Mella as the number 5 prospect and Duvall as the number 21 prospect before being traded. Now that it's now past the Deadline and they are just the prospects who got traded, it made me easier to just move up guys up the list.

I know there will be agreements and disagreements on my rankings but I made this Top 30 with all of the factors (age, floor versus ceiling, development curve, the feel to perform, performance this year) that I consider for ranking prospects. And just like what I always do, FanGraphs profiles will open for most of the prospects and MiLB.com for the select few prospects that I find their FG profiles really shady.

If you want to see who are the prospect risers and fallers this season, come check this really good post from Shankbone's blog and I will move some of the prospects that I listed in the top 10+10 before for the latest update. If you want to see a better introduction or overview of the Top 30, check out Mr. CoveChatter's introduction on his Top 30 before he takes his blog down and return to his original site. If you want day-to-day updates and the daily status of Giants prospects, DrB's everyday blog post is hands down the best in the business.

Finally, here's my ever expanding Scouting Reports series if you want to see my full thoughts on most of the prospects mentioned below and you could see my other previous posts of Something Extra for additional thoughts. 

Part 1 for Arroyo, Beede and Mejia
Part 2 for Mella (now traded), Okert and Santos
Part 3 for Blackburn, Garcia and Tomlinson
Part 4 for Blach, Marshall and Miller
Part 5 for Cole, Fargas and Williamson
Part 6 for Fox
Part 8 for Coonrod, Duvall (now traded), and Webb
Special Part for Crick

Out In Front: My Franchise Four of the San Francisco Giants + Something Extra

There's two days off after the All-Star Festivities and we need to take some rest off for the big league stuff and some of the Minor League levels are also having their All-Star Festivities but there's some minor league levels are playing and the teams are fighting it all out in their squads. Let's enjoy this break and in this portion of Out In Front, I'll talk about something that's not related to prospecting and the minor leagues.

There's this thing in the All-Star Game called Franchise Four where fans got a chance to vote the four best players for their respective teams, kind of like the Mount Rushmore of different teams and baseball overall. I was one of the fans who vote a bunch of times to vote for my Franchise Four for the San Francisco Giants. I also voted for the greatest Negro League Players where I voted Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, and Oscar Charleston and the Greatest Living Players where I voted Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, and Tom Seaver (I almost voted for Pedro in place of Seaver and maybe I'll vote for Pedro sooner than later). But I will talk about my view on the Franchise Four of the San Francisco Giants where I voted for Willie Mays, Christy Mathewson, Barry Bonds, and Buster Posey. 

Stats that you'll see here are courtesy of FanGraphs.

Scouting Reports For 2015 Giants Part 7-ish: Eddy Julio Martinez (Maybe) + Something Extra

Ahh, Cuba. Formerly the home of the Communism in Central America, filled with their aspirations to be equal and guns and Fidel Castro, not to mention the missiles (much, much dangerous than Aroldis Chapman) and the failed Bay Of Pigs mission. Now, Castro's dead and it is now the home of the ever-famous Cuban cigars and the Cubano sandwiches. But maybe the best thing that has ever come from Cuba nowadays is high-quality baseball talents. It is now probably as powerful in delivering baseball talent than an old enemy of the United States, Japan. I consider Japan is the best exporter of international pitchers while Cuba is the best exporter of international hitters (let's give some exception to Jose Fernandez, the pitcher). Thanks to Obama, relations of the United States and Cuba has eased and the hitters can now experience easier and better opportunities to get a chance to play in baseball's biggest stage. 

July 2 is the biggest stage in terms of signing guys away from the places not covered by the Rule 4 Draft. This year is no different, with guys that are projected in the top of the class are possible future franchise changers and pillars like Vladdy Junior, Jhalyn Ortiz, Wander Javier, etc. At the peak of the deep mountain is Eddy Julio Martinez, a Cuban outfielder who's ranked at #1 by MLB.com and #2 by Kiley McDaniel (there's no ranking from BA because they probably don't rank the Cuban prospects the same way). MLB.com's Jesse Sanchez wrote yesterday in this article that the Dodgers and the Giants are the favorites to sign the Cuban defector and he's going to have more workouts scheduled for both teams this week. Kiley McDaniel on FanGraphs wrote in his Sortable July 2 Board that Eddy Julio will be projected to sign in the ballpark of $11,000,000, which is almost double of what Lucius Fox and his pretty deep eyes that almost scared me. Below is my scouting report for him.

Scouting Reports for 2015 Giants Part 3: Blackburn, Garcia, Tomlinson

     Welcome to part 3 of my scouting reports! This will now feature Clayton Blackburn, Aramis Garcia and Kelby Tomlinson. More paragraphs thanks to Mr. ogc's suggestion of separating paragraphs! Without further ado, let's start the ball rolling!