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Heliot Ramos promoted to AAA

The Giants hot prospect is now one step away from the Majors.

By Brady Klopfer
2021 SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

One of the San Francisco Giants top prospects is now one step away from the Majors, as center fielder Heliot Ramos had been promoted from the AA Richmond Flying Squirrels to the AAA Sacramento River Cats. Ramos’ agency broke the news on Tuesday morning, which was keenly spotted by the incomparable @giantsprospects.

Ramos is almost unanimously seen as the No. 3 prospect on the Giants farm, though the gap between he and the No. 2 prospect (Joey Bart) is rather slim. Fangraphs, for instance, sees Bart as the No. 38 prospect in baseball, with Ramos at No. 45.

It’s been a little bit of a funny season for Ramos, with a whole lot of good and a little bit of disaster. He was absolutely dynamic in Spring Training, with a 1.143 OPS that had a few fans wondering if there was any way he could make the Opening Day roster. He continued that hot streak into the first month of the Minor League season, with a .892 OPS in May.

And then June came and, in true Giants fashion, Ramos swooned. He had an OPS of just .529 in June, with only two home runs and no multi-hit games.

But he washed it away in July, where he already has five home runs, four multi-hit games, and an OPS of .951. It would seem that the Giants view June as an outlier, and if that’s the case, then it’s definitely promotion time.

During Spring Training it was a fairly common opinion that Ramos would make his MLB debut at some point this season. That now seems unlikely, not because of anything Ramos has done, but because the unspoken part of that prediction was the assumption that the Giants would be bad enough by August and September that they could start to shift their focus to prospects. Instead, we’re two-thirds of the way through July and the Giants have the best record in baseball.

So unless Ramos does so well in Sacramento that the Giants determine he’s a comfortably better option than Austin Slater, Steven Duggar, or Mike Tauchman, we’ll probably have to wait until 2022 for the debut.

But fear not: Ramos is just 21. There’s a whole lot of baseball ahead for him, and I can’t wait to watch it.

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