:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/13231349/gyi0060671467.0.jpg)
There's less than a month to go before the MLB First-Year Player Draft, and ...
Wait, come back! This might have big implications for the future success of the San Francisco Giants! This might be really, really important!
Remember when this site spent two weeks looking at potential draftees? There were link dumps, grainy YouTube videos, and hard-hitting pieces of hard-hitting analysis for every potential draftee. And by "hard-hitting analysis", I mean "hard-hitting regurgitations of articles based on other people's scouting." It was fun! The Giants had the #6 pick, so there were only about 15 or so players who made sense.
And then we all freaked out when they called some dude named "Gerald."
GERALD THERE'S NO GERALD WHO IS GERALD DAMMIT GIANTS THERE'S NO GERALD ON THE BASEBALL AMERICA LIST AHHHHHGRRR
We were much tenser back then!
The reason why you're right not to care, though, is that 25th picks rarely amount to anything. Of the 49 players selected 25th overall, 22 of them never made the majors. Thirteen of the players who did make the majors had less than one win over replacement for their entire careers. Bobby Crosby is one of the very best 25th picks in history.
Here's something relevant to your interests, though: Matt Cain was a #25 overall pick. In fact, he was the second #25 pick in Giants history, with the other one being Nate Bump, who was traded for Livan Hernandez. So, to recap, when the Giants pick #25, they win divisions and pennants and championships. Try not to think about Hernandez in the World Series, and everything is just ducky.
Chuck Knoblauch was a #26 pick. So was Mike Trout. There's a chance the Giants will get lucky, dang it, so I'm going to pay attention and pretend I'm qualified to have an opinion on who the Giants draft. And prospect guru (seriously, he wears robes and open-toed sandals everywhere, no joke) John Sickels has his latest mock draft up. Here's who he picks for the Giants:
25) San Francisco Giants: Aaron Judge, OF, Fresno State. The Giants love their high school pitching, but they've invested in college hitters too. Tooled-up outfielder Aaron Judge seems like someone who would fit their style, as would high school arms like Matt Krook, Kaminsky, or Hunter Harvey. While everyone seems to assume a prep arm, I'll go with Judge, raw for a college guy but with enormous upside.
I trust the Giants to find pitching, both with the early picks and in the later rounds. I trust the Giants when they get polished college hitters (Posey and Panik spring to mind, even though there's a wee difference between their perceived values as draft prospects).
I do not trust the Giants to spin tools into gold.
Maybe that's unfair. Brandon Crawford was a bucket of tools. Now he's something. He's probably the only example over the last decade or two. I'm not sure if you can credit them too much for Pablo Sandoval because I don't think they exactly taught him how to hit like ... that. But maybe you can give them Sandoval, too. Heck, they made him into a pretty decent third baseman, at least.
Still, when I see "raw for a college guy but with enormous upside," I clutch my pearls and faint, even if I'd be pretty excited to follow a prospect like Judge.