Minor League round up, September 23-24

With just one of the San Francisco Giants Minor League Baseball affiliates still in action, it made sense to do one roundup for a few days. Here’s what happened on Friday and Saturday.

Link to the 2022 McCovey Chronicles Community Prospect List (CPL)

All listed positions are the positions played in that game.

AAA Sacramento (63-82)

Sacramento River Cats beat the Salt Lake Bees (Angels) 12-7 on Friday, and lost 3-1 on Saturday
Friday box score
Saturday box score

An awesome offensive performance on Friday, with the River Cats amassing 7 walks and 16 hits ... a whopping 10 of which went for extra bases.

A sensational day for center fielder Heliot Ramos (No. 4 CPL), who hit 2-5 with a home run and a double.

Ramos, who drew a walk on Saturday, has a .639 OPS and a 61 wRC+, so the season remains a huge disappointment for him. But he’s shown some flashes lately, and hopefully can translate that into full-time production in 2023. 452-foot homers certainly help you feel optimistic.

Also homering on Friday was recently-outrighted designated hitter Yermín Mercedes, who turned around and homered for the team’s only run on Saturday, too.

Mercedes now has 8 home runs in 158 plate appearances in Sacramento.

Plenty of other notable offensive days, including from first baseman Taylor Jones. A day after hitting a pair of doubles, Jones stepped into the batter’s box on Friday and ... did the same, hitting 3-5 with 2 doubles and a walk.

Jones is only 4 games into his Giants organization career, but is hitting 6-14 with 4 doubles, 3 walks, and just 2 strikeouts. Keep it up!

Left fielder Steele Walker also had a 3-hit day on Friday, and finished a home run shy of the cycle.

Walker’s bat has been struggling a bit since the Giants claimed him off of waivers (and later outrighted him) in August, so good to see him bopping some extra-base hits.

Right fielder Austin Dean had a nice pair of games in which he showed a ton of plate discipline, as he hit 3-6 with a double and 5 walks. That bumped his OPS to .823 and his wRC+ to 102.

Arguably the most exciting news of the weekend was the AAA debut of Casey Schmitt (No. 24 CPL). After the season ended for AA Richmond, Schmitt — who had arguably the best season of any prospect in the organization — got promoted to AAA to finish off the season. He made his debut on Saturday and hit 1-4 with 2 strikeouts.

Counting the playoffs, Schmitt — who began the year with High-A Eugene — only played 31 games in AA. I would still expect him to start 2023 in Richmond, especially with the presumed promotions for Will Wilson, Tyler Fitzgerald, and Sean Roby.

The starting pitching struggled in both games, with RHP Wei-Chieh Huang, who had been excellent since returning from injury, getting rocked on Friday, while LHP Enmanuel De Jesus had a rough go of it on Saturday.

RHP R.J. Dabovich (No. 16 CPL) had a nice outing on Friday, allowing just a walk in 1.1 innings, while striking out 2. He’s starting to find his footing in AAA after a tough start to his tenure there following a midseason promotion.

On Saturday, RHP Ryan Walker struck out 2 in 1.1 perfect innings, in just his 6th appearance with Sacramento.

Home runs

AAA Heliot Ramos (10)
AAA Yermín Mercedes, 2 (8)