Prospect Prologue: Giants Foursome Comes Up Short

where the Giants rank in the BA/BP farm system rankings after this year. Alderson turned out to not be the stud everyone thought, Villalona probably will never see PacBell, or whatever the stadium is called, and MadBum certainly hasn’t pitched as well in the 2nd half of the year.
It will be interesting to see how Posey does playing everyday in 2010. Will he perform better than Wieters?

I think he ended it well by saying Posey is a must grab in keeper leagues. He started by saying that 2 of the 4 Giants prospects are out of the picture now (Alderson and Villalona) and one is a bit of a disappointment-MadBum.

Im trying to stay optimistic (which is tough on Giants fans)

Villalona may end up being fine, its still a toss up there, and MadBum has no thrown as many innings as he did this year. I do believe he will still be a good pitcher at some point. And we have Buster Posey who, if our dumbass manager ever decides ton play, will hopefully be the offensive force the Giants need to complement Sandoval. Also, some lesser known prospects in the Giants system are coming along nicely such as Thomas Neal ( .337 BA, 431. OBP, 22 Hrs in A ball). Look for the Giants to stay in contention the next couple years.

Or better, engage some Giants fans who know more about the situation before you write on it, or at least read through some of the discussions on the Giants prospects on the SB Nation Giants site, McCovey Chronicles.

Bumgarner appeared to be at his normal velocity earlier in the season. He had no problem striking out Manny Ramirez in spring training and getting a nice comment from da Manny about how good he is. Somewhere in the middle of the season, he lost velocity. According to Mike Krukow, one of the Giants broadcasters, young pitchers sometimes go through such a dead arm period early in their pro career, as they adjust to pitching in the pros. The good news is that even without his fastball going at the velocity he is used to, he was able to adjust his pitching in order to be effective still, even in the majors.

So Giants fans will wait with bated breath for whether his velocity returns next season. If it does, basically we will have a crafty lefty pitcher who can blaze a fastball by the batter too when he feels like it. If it does not, he’ll still be a good pitcher, though not to the level of Lincecum or Cain, but certainly at least better than a middle of rotation pitcher, the question is how much better.

Villalona is too soon to say what’s going to happen to him legally. I suspect that there will be no creditable accounts of what happened, and unless they can find a gun with his fingerprints on it, he’s going to walk. Many don’t like him as a prospect, but I think they are reacting to his numbers like he’s another prospect and forget that not only was he an 18 year old playing in a league of 22-24 year olds, and was not only holding his own early on, he was doing well (800+ OPS) while he was also still adjusting to another culture and living on his own at age 18 in a land where most don’t speak his language (though being in San Jose had to help, many Spanish speakers here).

Still, despite the advantages the pitchers have on him age-wise, he had no problems hitting homers off of them, he was among the league leaders in Augusta and was among the leaders in San Jose until he apparently hurt himself but continued playing (look at his stats in June, it was not like he couldn’t hit the pitches anymore, his BABIP just went way down low, making me suspect that the leg problems that eventually shut him down started much earlier than then.

Alderson was a disappointment but only people not close to the Giants prospect watching would think that he was anything special. Even from the day he was drafted, the potential was middle of rotation pitcher, no more, no less. The only reason he was rated so highly was because he was only 20 and yet very close to making the majors and reaching his potential. That gave him high rankings but many Giants fans knew what was up with him and not too surprised, his K-rate was already low last season, so this season was foreseeable.

Of course, Posey has fulfilled our dreams for the most part. I have not heard one word that his defense is not coming along OK. He also talked confidently about that. He had a very high CS%, mid-40%, and hit the ball well in San Jose and continued to do it in AAA once he adjusted to the league, which took 2-3 weeks of poor hitting. I mean, if Mike Piazza could survive as a catcher all these years, and most scouts had Posey having the toolset to handle the position very well, I don’t see how he won’t become good enough there, and same for his offense. If he can be average at both for us next year, that would be OK with me, even Will Clark had an OK season to start his career before he figured things out.