Heliot Ramos and Shaun Anderson have been named to the 2018 Futures Game

Heliot Ramos’ inclusion on the Future’s Game roster was one of the great no-brainers in this year’s process, I would imagine. His name’s been down on the lists since this time last year. Ramos is exactly what the Future’s Game intends to spotlight: an exciting, elite level prospect with the kind of tools that can play at the major league level — the kind of prospect who is as exciting or more in the BP session, or on the stopwatch or radar gun, as he is in the box score.

The Giants’ second entry was more of a question mark. We now know that an invitation was extended to Ray Black, who would, I believe, have been the oldest Future’s Game rosteree in the game’s history had he taken part, but he’s now a big leaguer — his future is now! Still, the game would’ve been the perfect showcase for a guy who has worked an awfully long time to gain his share of the spotlight.

Instead, Shaun Anderson takes Black’s slot on the roster. And no offense to Anderson, but he’s exactly the kind of perfectly good potential future major leaguer who proves to be an awkward fit for the Future’s Game. A one-inning stint isn’t the best way to appreciate Anderson, whose finest attribute as a pitching prospect is that he does everything pretty well. But he’s not likely to make the assembled prospect mavens sit up and take notice at the glove-popping velo or the wicked shape of his breaking stuff. He’ll come in, take his inning, and hopefully leave without anything bad happening.

That would actually be an improvement over many past Giants’ prospect Future’s Games appearances — the game hasn’t been overly kind to the Giants’ franchise. Bumgarner was warming up just as a rain storm hit that cancelled the game. Neither Matt Cain nor Kyle Crick could find the strike zone. Phil Bickford and Tyler Beede showed up with shockingly reduced velocity and stuff. Buster Posey was left off the roster because the “World Roster” needed Angel Villalona and team’s were limited to two representatives.

Not a great history, but maybe this is the year a Giant takes center stage.