Guessing the Giants 2011 Minor League Pitching Rosters

You could be right. The only one that I would argue with you on is Roibal. He’s turning 22 on Jan. 19th, he comes out of the regional Cuban baseball school that produced many of the best Cuban pitchers, and he’s a much more mature and complete pitcher than most realize. He throws his FB up to 95 mph, and has a nice sinker and slider, and a developing changeup. The Giants paid him a signing bonus of around $1M back in March 2010, so the only prospect that they paid more to in 2010 was Gary Brown. I think the Giants are going to want to challenge him, and they don’t want him slumming it in low-A ball.

Here’s an old scouting report on him:
http://cubanballplayers.blogspot.com/2009/10/ex-wasps-reinier-roibal-is-my-second.html

Here’s his current bio page from BR:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Reinier_Roibal

If Tanner makes it, it will be because he keeps his walks down and gets a ton of GBs. Neither has been true to the extent they need to be, but you can see signs of hope there. Man, that K-rate last year scares me, though.

I think that the Giants still see Graham as a future starter. However, I think they’ll keep him in the pen for a while longer while he works out his mechs. As soon as he shows any kind of aptitude for controlling where his pitches are going on a consistent basis then I think they’ll start working him into the starting rotation. He should be a real challenging project for Steve Kline if he ends up in Augusta.

Thanks, I hadn’t seen that before. I’ll change my OP.

How are the Giants going to draw the asian fans now?!?

I don’t have any links to back it up, but I believe strongly that the Giants have always seen Rosin as a starter. The reliever comment was just something that some on the net put on him as a way to say that he could get to the pros quicker if the Giants made him a reliever. That never made sense because the Giants already have a ton of high-upside relievers in the system, but not many starting pitching candidates with Rosin’s advanced abilities. Rosin isn’t a Chris Sale that could have been pitching out of a pro pen within a few months of sgining a contract. The Giants had Rosin pitching out of the pen (for the most part) and severely limited his innings while in Salem last season because he had pitched a lot of high-stress innings in his 2010 college season.

I’ve never been a Concepcion believer. Sure he’s a physical specimen and he can bring the heat. However, he’s never shown that he has the stamina to be a starter or much of a clue on how to be a pitcher instead of just a thrower. It seems to me that every other inning he pitches blows up in his face. I think his future is as a reliever, and that the Giants don’t have the space to keep him as a starter in 2011 – unless they want to keep him in Salem and out of full-season ball.

Feel free, but it appears to me to be an exercise in futility due to the fact that we have no idea who the Giants will draft and sign in the upcoming draft. The pitching staff (and entire roster for that matter) at S-K will usually consist of up to 25-30% recently-signed draftees.

I just had no clue where he’ll end up pitching.

I don’t buy it for several reasons:

1. The Giants love to stack the SJ club with as many of their top prospects as possible. Given any doubt on where to slot prospects, SJ usually wins out. This is especially true when it comes to high school pitchers. I couldn’t find a single case in the past 8 years where the Giants had a pitcher that they drafted out of high school that skipped spending time in SJ. It’s also very rare in the case of college pitching draftees. The only one that I came up with who skipped SJ in the last 8 years was Kevin Correia – he pitched his first half season in Salem (the year he was drafted) then skipped directly to the AA Eastern League the following season.

2. Even if the Giants wanted to fast track a young pitcher, they often will have him start the season in SJ before promoting him to the EL. I think that they do this because the weather in the EL can be cold and unstable in April, while the California weather at that time is much more mild and predictable; and becuase they like the easy access that SJ provides for the west coast execs, scouts and evaluators. Even after MadBum and T2 had their monster 2008 seasons the Giants had both of them pitch in SJ for the first 5 weeks of the 2009 season.

3. Wheeler didn’t really do a lot in Augusta to show that he’s ready for such a big jump. BTW, Wheeler is a Georgia boy, born and raised, not from Florida.

Jose Casilla’s from the Dominican Republic. How is Richmond a familiar lifestyle for someone raised in the DR?

Wheeler missed a heck of a lot of time of development. No way they jump him to Richmond from the get-go. If they would rather put him closer to home, they would just send him to Augusta, which actually is close to home, as Richmond, while East Coast, is all the way up in Virginia.

As noted, San Jose is going to be a regular stop for most top prospects because then the top execs and baseball scouts can go down and check them out, up close.