2026 Willie McCovey Memorial Community Prospect List No. 10

SB Nation

It took two attempts to get the voting sorted out, but we finally moved forward with the next chapter of the 2026 Willie McCovey Memorial Community Prospect List. By the time the next Minor League Baseball

season starts, we will have ranked the top 44 prospects in the San Francisco Giants organization … and within a few days, we’ll have a brand spanking new top 10!

After the initial voter fraud flap (we’re now voting in the comments), we actually ended up with a fairly one-sided election, as newcomer Blade Tidwell has been voted as the No. 9 prospect in the system in his CPL debut.

Tidwell came to the Giants midseason as one of the three players sent to SF in the Tyler Rogers trade. A right-handed pitcher who turned 24 over the summer, Tidwell was the New York Mets’ second-round pick in the 2022 draft out of … wait for it … Tony Vitello’s University of Tennessee.

He began 2025 with New York’s AAA affiliate, where he had ended 2024 with a rocky showing. It went much better this time, and earned him an MLB debut, though that didn’t go so well. Upon arriving in the Giants system he was sent to AAA Sacramento, where he was exceptional in three games, and looked poised to make his San Francisco debut. Unfortunately, he suffered an injury that sidelined him for a month, and while he returned to make one final start with the River Cats, his Giants debut will have to wait until 2026.

Across the two AAA affiliates, Tidwell ended 2025 with a 3.62 ERA, a 3.63 FIP, 10.3 strikeouts per nine innings, and 3.4 walks per nine innings. In his four-game, 15-inning sample in the Majors with the Mets, he posted a 9.00 ERA, a 7.47 FIP, and as many walks as strikeouts (10).

The Giants are quite high on Tidwell, and it’s not hard to see why. He has a five-pitch mix, and last year averaged 95.7 mph on his four-seam fastball. He relies more on having hard-to-hit pitches than pure deception, as he graded out as above-average in AAA last year by every Statcast metric except two: chase rate, and zone swing rate.

Tidwell joins a large contingency of Giants prospects who will head to Scottsdale in February hoping to earn a job in the Majors. He might start the year back in Sacramento, but it also wouldn’t be surprising if he occupied the same role this year that Hayden Birdsong did last year: opening the year in the Major League bullpen, while being the next man up when the rotation invariably needs an a hole patched.

Now let’s add to the list, and as a reminder, voting now takes place in the comment section.

The list so far

Note: Clicking on the above names will link to the CPL where they were voted onto the list.

No. 10 prospect nominees

Jacob Bresnahan — 20.4-year old LHP — 2.61 ERA/3.00 FIP in Low-A (93 IP)

Argenis Cayama — 19.1-year old RHP — 8.16 ERA/6.93 FIP in Low-A (14.1 IP); 2.25 ERA/3.58 FIP in ACL (48 IP)

Luis De La Torre — 22.2-year old LHP — 1.77 ERA/2.46 FIP in Low-A (35.2 IP); 3.72 ERA/3.36 FIP in ACL (38.2 IP)

Parks Harber — 24.1-year old 3B — .969 OPS/174 wRC+ in High-A (260 PA); .972 OPS/169 wRC+ in Low-A (83 PA)

Keyner Martinez — 21.2-year old RHP — 2.86 ERA/3.96 FIP in Low-A (22 IP); 1.90 ERA/2.70 FIP in ACL (47.1 IP)

Trevor McDonald — 24.8-year old RHP — 1.80 ERA/2.54 FIP in MLB (15 IP); 5.31 ERA/5.53 FIP in AAA (142.1 IP)

Note: Each player’s first name links to their Baseball-Reference page, and their last name links to their Fangraphs page. All stats are from the 2025 season.