The Giants Arizona Fall League recap

The last of the 2022 baseball has been played. Not only did the Houston Astros best the Philadelphia Phillies to win the World Series (congrats to forever San Francisco Giants Dusty Baker, Mauricio Dubón, and Will Smith), but the Arizona Fall League season has ended.

Baseball is done. It’s time to move on to free agency, the Rule 5 Draft, Minor League deals, and so on and so forth.

But before we get there, let’s cap off the last of the Arizona Fall League, and see how the nine Giants prospects finished. Last we checked on them, they were all over the place.

Click here to check out our 2022 Community Prospect List (CPL)

Position Players

CF Luis Matos (20, High-A, No. 3 CPL)

20-86, 2 home runs, 1 triple, 3 doubles, 5 walks, 19 strikeouts

After an extremely hot start, Matos’ bat cooled down significantly in the final month or so of the AFL season. Still, there was a lot to like about the contact he made, and he opened eyes with his spectacular defense in center field.

That’s a strong reminder that Matos doesn’t need to turn into an offensive force to be a high quality MLB player. It’s also clear that the Giants really want to get him going ahead of the 2023 season, since they gave him so much playing time.

C Adrian Sugastey (19, Low-A, No. 27 CPL)

10-26, 1 double, 2 walks, 1 strikeout

Sugastey didn’t get much playing time in the second half of the season. He’s always been great at suppressing strikeouts, and seeing him do so in the AFL, against better competition, while sporting a great batting average, is awesome.

C Andy Thomas (24, High-A)

6-33, 1 double, 10 walks, 7 strikeouts

Funny AFL performance from Thomas, who was half of the incoming package that the Giants received when they traded Curt Casali and Matthew Boyd to the Seattle Mariners. That’s a whole lot of walks, and a whole lot of nothing else.

1B Logan Wyatt (24, Low-A)

15-49, 2 doubles, 17 walks, 7 strikeouts

There are two ways to look at Wyatt’s AFL outing. The positive is that he just had a .306 batting average and a .485 on-base percentage. Those numbers are spectacular!

The negative is that Wyatt is a first baseman who is absolutely built like a first baseman, and after having just 25 extra-base hits — and only five home runs — in his first 612 Minor League plate appearances, he turned around with no dingers and a pair of doubles in 66 plate appearances in Arizona.

Pitchers

RHP Will Bednar (22, Low-A, No. 8 CPL)

2 games, 3.1 innings, 5 hits, 2 walks, 3 strikeouts, 6 runs

Bednar only appeared in two games early in the season, and that was that. Kind of mirrors his 2022 MiLB season: short-lived, and not good.

RHP Spencer Bivens (28, AAA)

7 games, 10.1 innings, 5 hits, 5 walks, 11 strikeouts, 1 run

Bivens was a late entrant to the roster, after Carson Whisenhunt missed the start of the AFL season due to COVID. And Bivens showed some pretty nice things!

RHP Hunter Dula (23, High-A)

9 games, 9.1 innings, 10 hits, 6 walks, 10 strikeouts, 5 runs

Dula had a lot of really nice outings and a few very bad ones that did his numbers in.

RHP Tyler Myrick (24, High-A)

9 games, 11 innings, 4 hits, 3 walks, 9 strikeouts, 1 run

Hello, Tyler! What great performance from Myrick, the team’s 14th-round pick a season ago. Here’s hoping he can ride this momentum into 2023, and start to look like a future relief option.

LHP Carson Whisenhunt (22, Low-A)

3 games, 6.1 innings, 5 hits, 3 walks, 11 strikeouts, 2 runs

The Giants second-round pick this year — and most people’s top Giants prospect from the July draft — joined the AFL season late after having the coronavirus. And after striking out 14 batters in 7.2 innings in his debut pro season, he kept it up in the AFL. He’s now at 25 strikeouts in 14 innings between the Minors and the AFL.