Giants trade Billy Hamilton for RHP Jordan Humphreys

The Billy Hamilton era is over before it started. On Sunday morning, the San Francisco Giants announced that they had traded the speedy center fielder to the New York Mets in exchange for right-handed pitching prospect Jordan Humphreys.

Hamilton was late to Summer Camp for undisclosed reasons, and never joined the active roster. He figured to play a role as an elite defender and baserunner, but with Mike Yastrzemski and Mauricio Dubón playing better defense in center than many anticipated, there simply wasn’t a place for him.

So the Giants are moving on, and they’re getting a prospect in return.

Humphreys is a 24-year old righty whom the Mets selected in the 18th round of the 2015 MLB Draft. He missed 2018 and all but a few innings in 2019 due to injuries, but was quite promising before that. In 69.2 innings of A-ball in 2017, Humphreys had 80 strikeouts to just 9 walks, while sporting a 1.42 ERA and 2.16 FIP. The numbers didn’t transfer in his brief high-A stint that year, but he only made two starts there.

Fangraphs gives him a future value of 40, and ranks his slider as his best pitch, giving it 55/55 grades. His fastball, changeup, and command are all graded at 45/50. He was ranked at 24 on the Mets prospect list by the publication.

Some who cover the Mets are not convinced New York made the right move by moving on from the prospect, whom they had designated for assignment.

While many were looking forward to watching the Giants use Hamilton as a pinch-runner with the new extra innings rule, it’s pretty nice work by Farhan Zaidi and Scott Harris to get what feels like a high-ceiling prospect in exchange for a non-roster invitee who didn’t have a place on the team.

Welcome to the Giants, Jordan.