Arizona Fall League Wrap Up: Week 4

Well, that was a bummer!

What felt like merely seconds after I excitedly posted how people could watch Joey in the AFL Rising Stars game his 2019 came to an end for good — well not “good” per se. But with finality.

There’s no need to over-dramatize things. No surgery (happily), no long term issues (presumably), and he was two weeks away from needing and getting a month or so’s rest anyhow. But, damn! Just damn! Let us please stop with the breaking of digits for the foreseeable future, shall we, please? Pretty please? My Christmas wish is for Joey and all his good friends to see a healthy and uninterrupted 2020.

Anyway, with the break for the Rising Stars game this was a particularly short week in the desert, so we’ll give it a short recap:

The Hitters

Joey Bart, 1 game, 0 for 1, 1 R, 2 HBP, Season Over, Season totals .333/.524/.767
Jacob Heyward, 2 games, 3 for 7, 2 2b, 2 K, Season totals .200/.333/.400
Jalen Miller, 1 game, 1 for 4, 0 BB, 0 K, Season totals .263/.263/.474
Heliot Ramos, 3 games, 2 for 9, 2 BB, 3 K, 1 CS Season totals .180/.250/.280

Jacob Heyward swung it a bit this week, inching his average up to the Mendoza Line. Both he and Jalen Miller present the Giants with interesting 40 man decisions this winter. One presumes that the AFL assignments were intended to help clarify their situations for the front office — whether either was able to do so or not is another matter. There is a LOT of work to be done on the 40 man between now and the Rule 5 deadline (a matter for another post down the line).

The Pitchers

Tristan Beck, 1 GS 5.0 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 1 HR A, 3 K, Season Totals 3.29 ERA
Frank Rubio, 1 G, 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 K, Season Totals 3.00 ERA
Tyler Schimpf, 1 G, 1.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, Season Totals 6.43 ERA
Bryce Tucker, 1 G, 1.1 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 1 K, Season Totals 1.69 ERA

Tristan Beck continues to post a strong and interesting AFL campaign. And he’s catching a few eyes with his performance.

It’ll be interesting to see what path Beck ends up taking in his development. You no doubt saw this piece on him this week from Alex Pavlovic:

The Giants are also seeing some very encouraging results this fall from Bryce Tucker. Tucker is interesting in a couple of ways — he’s one of the very few LH arms the team possesses in the lower minors and he’s also quite probably got the least amount of professional experience of anybody in this year’s AFL. I’m not going to fact check that, but he didn’t make his pro debut until June 15 of this year and has just 20 professional innings on his arm. Tucker was drafted in 2018 out of University of Central Florida, but never appeared in a game which probably suggests that he had an arm injury that delayed his debut and his Fall opportunity is making up for some lost time and innings. Interesting guy to put on the radar.

That’s all for this week. In addition to the AFL, the Dominican Winter League has now started up (Abiatal Avelino is 5 for 10 already) so I’ll give you another reminder that you can easily follow the progress of all the Giants’ organizational players in the offseason on this one-stop shop.

And, since I know my audience, I’ll go ahead and drop a little Heliot content before I head out as well. Enjoy the playoffs everybody! (PS, Go NATS!)