The Giants have selected outfielder Heliot Ramos and right-handers Sean Hjelle and Randy Rodriguez to the 40-man roster. The moves keep them from being eligible for the Rule 5 draft. To create roster space, San Francisco designated reliever Jay Jackson for assignment and returned Rule 5 pick Dedniel Nuñez to the Mets.
Ramos is among the better prospects in baseball, entering the 2021 campaign as Baseball America’s #83 overall farmhand. A first-round pick out of Puerto Rico in 2017, the right-handed hitting Ramos has compensated for a lot of swing-and-miss by hitting for a lot of power. He’s regarded as a potential above-average everyday right fielder and hit .254/.323/.416 with 14 homers in 495 plate appearances between Double-A Richmond and Triple-A Sacramento.
Hjelle was a second-rounder out of the University of Kentucky in 2018. The big righty draws praise for his deception and control, but his minor league track record has been mixed. The 24-year-old dominated in the low minors but has run into some trouble at the higher levels, particularly in Triple-A. BA ranks him eleventh in system and calls him a potential back-end starter.
Rodriguez, 22, is a former amateur signee out of the Dominican Republic. Working exclusively as a reliever, he pitched to a sterling 1.74 ERA with a huge 39.1% strikeout rate and a fine 8.9% walk percentage over 62 innings with Low-A Augusta. Rodriguez has never appeared on an organizational ranking at FanGraphs or BA.
San Francisco’s decision to DFA Jackson comes as a bit of a surprise, considering the club just exercised a 2022 option on his services a few weeks back. Signed to a minors pact in January, the 34-year-old Jackson made the big league club in July and worked 21 2/3 frames down the stretch. He struck out a strong 31.1% of opposing hitters in that time, although he also handed out free passes at an alarming 13.3% clip.
Nuñez never appeared in a regular season game with the Giants. Selected out of the New York organization in last year’s Rule 5 draft, he suffered an elbow injury in Spring Training and eventually underwent Tommy John surgery. He’ll return to the Mets but won’t occupy a 40-man roster spot.
SF still had to return Dedniel Nunez to the Mets even though he was taken in the Rule 5 draft last offseason?
He never appeared on the MLB roster for 90 days, so yes. You can’t just stash Rule 5 picks on the injured list.
Got it, didn’t realize he was hurt.
Correct. The Pirates had to do the same thing last week, they returned Jose Soriano to the Angels.
Sounds about right, the other eligible players I don’t feel are at risk of being taken. Corry has good stuff but can’t throw strikes. The rest are still young
I am very worried that they lose Corry, he has much better stuff than Hjelle, Hjelle to me doesn’t appear to have the stuff to be a solid Major League pitcher, Corry when he is going right (not walking batters) is dominant.
Package him in a trade if you’re worried about losing him anyways…
The Giants have tons of relief pitchers throughout their system with MLB level stuff and numbers, but my concern is that while they may have 30 guys in the system(including the MLB bullpen) that have real chances to be legitimate relievers for a long time, they seem to send guys to the bullpen the first season things start getting rough.
I understand most relievers start of as starting pitchers, but it’s kind of a crazy amount of guys that have posted sub-2.50 ERA’s as RP’s, but there’s very few(if any) starters with sub-4.00 ERA’s.
Aside from a small handful of guys, most get sent to the pen by the time they get to Double-A.
Even in the past, they were trying to make Luis Castillo a reliever/closer and his time with the Reds have showed he’s capable of being an above average starter in the bigs.
Our Triple-A pitching staff has guys with 5.00+ ERA’s or guys that are at least 27/28 years old.
I just think some of these guys should be given one and a half poor seasons as minor league starters before they’re sent off to the bullpen for the rest of their baseball careers.
I get you can never have too many relievers, but we’re literally in a situation where we have ONE MLB ready starter from our farm system and ZERO guys that look like they’re cracking the rotation anytime soon. Of course a hot spring can always change things, but as of now the guys like Hjelle, Corry, and Beede have flashed and struggled, and we literally have zero starters in the big league club outside of Logan Webb, who quietly became one of the better starters, but I don’t remember Webb on anyone’s Top Prospect lists or even Top 10 organizational prospects.
I have a whole lotta faith in Farhan, however one look at the numbers of the starts in A-AAA is cause for alarm.
And of the relievers that have sub-2.00 ERA’s OR 13+ K/9, OR sub-3 BB/9, they were all guys that seemed like they weren’t even given a chance to fail as starters before they were turned into relievers.
Like, I’m juiced for the future of our RP pipeline, and I’d even go as far as saying it’s an organizational strength and probably one of the best of all clubs, but as far as trade value, I think it’d take at least 2-3 STUD MiLB relievers to get the same player that one, average, MiLB-starter could yield in a trade.
Of course there’s always a guy that comes out of nowhere or surprises everyone, and I’m not giving up on the guys like Santos or Hjelle or Bednar quite yet(especially Bednar) but if I start seeing in July that the giants want to see Bednar as a closer, I think I’m going to lose my mind.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. However, SF does have some legitimate starters in the minors. Ryan Murphy had a tremendous year in minors & has some real potential to be a starter. But the real gem is Kyle Harrison. He will move through AA & AAA rather quick & be a bonafide front end starter in 2-3 years. Carson Ragsdale is another guy to keep an eye on. Caleb Killian was legit too but we lost him in the Kris Bryant trade
Jackson might be bound for Japan again, but I think he could stick in the Majors.
Jay Jackson is a real joy to watch. I hope he gets another chance and succeeds at the MLB level.
I believe he will.
They just exercised his contract option two weeks ago. For all the things the Giants’ front office does well, there are moves like these that make me scratch my head.
He got hit hard after a great start. Exercising his option was probably done for his benefit. I dont know enough to stop ur head scratching but I do know that Jackson was not very good in the end.
@claude
So your theory is the Giants chose to pay him additional salary because he wasn’t very good?
yes if they made promises they didn’t keep. it happens. we don’t know what was said or offered to him, you don’t and I dont. so maybe in good faith they did what they. again, what do we know. I’m sure they don’t give a crap if you or I scratched our heads.
Interesting to add Rodriguez and leave Genoves, Villar, Corry, and Berroa unprotected. Also interesting to continue to protect Dean, Palumbo and Harvey. Sad to see Jackson go. Seems like the Giants paid a lot just to ultimately return Nunez to the Mets.
Also surprised to see Dickerson survive the churn. He seemed like an obvious dfa after his 2021 season.
Dickerson may not survive beyond the non-tender deadline.
Rodriquez could make the jump like Doval did. The others very unlikely going to stick on a 26 all year.
Actually, I think Heliot Ramos might be able to stick for a good amount of time.
@Andy none of the players you mention as a surprise are major league ready. I don’t think a team would claim them and waste a spot on their 26 man roster for a year.
I believe that’s the nature of rule v. Guys who aren’t ready that are brought up by low level teams in hopes of catching lighting in a bottle.
Corry and Genoves are the two that I’m worried about, teams like Baltimore/Colorado/Pittsburgh can take a flyer on them to see if they can do well enough to stay around and get better until those teams are ready to compete. I’d hate to lose either of those two guys.
Berroa had electric stuff when I saw him pitch last year in August
Yes I agree. Correy and Genoves are close enough, in my opinion, to be selected in the Rule 5 by someone. Especially, like you said, to a team like the Rockies or Pirates because they don’t really have a reason not to select them
It’s pretty rare for catchers to get taken in the Rule 5 Draft, so protecting catchers isn’t usually a top priority for teams.
I hope Jackson signs back with the giants, that dude is awesome.
This DFA makes zero sense to me.. Giants fans, please enlighten me.
It allows Jackson to catch on with another team. We all need to remember that 40 man roster spots are required to add any free agents. We do want some of those don’t we?
Ramos could be the real deal.
Hopefully, would love to see him develop into a .280+ hitter with 30 Hr potential and 15 SBs, but only time will tell and he’ll have to do much better than he did at AAA last season.
I believe he has the potential to hit even closer to 40 homers and hopefully/possibly 20+ SBs. He really is an all around player
Why did the Giants need to protect Rodriguez this offseason? I thought that guys signed during the 2017-2018 international signing period didn’t need protection (if signed under the age of 19) until next offseason.
It’s fun to speculate but baseball is unlike any other of the major sports. In football & basketball by the time a guy is 22 years old, you pretty much know what you have. With baseball, some guys bounce around the minors for years playing okay. Then for whatever reason, they start tearing it up in their late 20s. Yaz is a perfect example. I would love someone (with real baseball experience & knowledge) to inform me on how this happens?