SB Nation • 17 min read

Giants Minor League Baseball Roundup, September 18: Luis Matos collects 4 hits in Sacramento return

We have arrived at the penultimate Minor League Baseball roundup of the season. Six of the San Francisco Giants affiliates have seen their season come to an end, and the seventh will conclude things over this weekend. I’ll wrap up that action on Monday with the final roundup of what can only be considered one of the most successful Giants Minor League seasons in recent memories.

Until then, we have just one baseball game to talk about. So let’s talk about it!

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Prospect List (CPL)

All listed positions in the roundup are the positions played in that particular game.

News

Just one small bit of news. After getting promoted to Sacramento and playing just one game, outfielder Turner Hill was placed on the Development List, which presumably ends his season.

AAA Sacramento (76-71)

Sacramento River Cats beat the Round Rock Express (Rangers) 17-9
Box score

It was an offensive explosion for the River Cats, who had 16 hits and 7 walks, with a trio of batters having at least 3 hits. The star of the day was shortstop Osleivis Basabe, who was absolutely brilliant, hitting 3-5 with a 3rd-inning grand slam that set the pace of the day.

Basabe also doubled and struck out, and finished with a spectacular 8 runs batted in. That’s one hell of a day for a glove-first middle infielder!

I’m curious to see what the future holds for Basabe, who was outrighted early in the season and just turned 25. He’s shown quite an increase in power this year, with 14 big flies, though some of that is due to the environment in his first season in the Pacific Coast League. The overall offensive line is still very mediocre, as he has a .729 OPS and an 88 wRC+. But the defense sure is impressive.

Center fielder Luis Matos made his Sacramento return after being optioned on Monday, and it went spectacularly, as he hit 4-5 and drew a walk, with one of his singles leaving the bat at 106 mph. I have no idea what to think of Matos at the moment, and even less of an idea of what the Giants are thinking of him, but needless to say, it will be a critical offseason for him as he’ll be out of options next year, so nice to see him ending the season on a high note. I still think he’ll factor heavily into the team’s plans in 2026 when all is said and done.

Speaking of players trying to fit into the team’s plans, second baseman Tyler Fitzgerald had a very nice day, hitting 3-5 with a walk and a strikeout. Fitzgerald, who turned 28 earlier this week, is much older than Matos, who is 23, so the Giants are probably less optimistic about a developmental pop. But unlike Matos, he’ll still have an option year remaining going into 2026, and has a lot of defensive versatility, so he’ll certainly be part of the team’s plans in some way, shape, or form. But, despite this good game, it’s certainly been a disappointing year for Fitzgerald after a breakout 2024: he had a .606 OPS and a 72 wRC+ in the Majors, and now has a .706 OPS and an 86 wRC+ in more than 200 AAA plate appearances.

As long as we’re talking about players entering critical offseasons, right fielder Wade Meckler (No. 13 CPL) hit 2-6 with a double, an outfield assist, and 2 strikeouts. I don’t imagine the Giants are considering letting Meckler go this offseason, since he has an option year remaining, but it also feels like he doesn’t factor into their plans at all. It’s been a distinctly mediocre offensive year for him — he has a .744 OPS and a 105 wRC+ — and he doesn’t play a notable outfield or have any power (he has 1 home run in 405 plate appearances this season). And despite having very good speed, he’s stolen just 11 bases.

But we know from the draft and trade deadline that the Giants covet players with strong bat-to-ball skills, so you can feel pretty confident that Meckler will still be in the system when Opening Day rolls around. But you can also feel pretty confident that he’ll be in Sacramento, not San Francisco.

A player that none of us have any confidence in where he’ll be is left fielder Marco Luciano. Will he be in Spring Training competing for a job? Will he be in Spring Training auditioning for other teams a la David Villar and Joey Bart? Will he be traded? Will be non-tendered? No one has any idea!

All we know is that he’s not doing anything to help his case late in the season. He went 0-4 on Thursday with a walk, a stolen base, and a strikeout, and it tells you how poorly he’s been playing that such a performance constituted his best game in recent memory. I’m not even joking! Over his last 8 games, Luciano is now 0-33 with 2 walks and 21 strikeouts. I just …. well, I have no idea how to explain what’s happening, but it’s not fun for anyone.

Let’s return to a dose of happiness before we move on to the pitchers: third baseman Dayson Croes had another great game, hitting 2-5 with a double. He’s really turned into one of the best stories on the farm, and has hit safely in 8 of 10 games with Sacramento, with 4 multi-hit games (he’s technically appeared in 11 games, but didn’t get a plate appearance in one of them). Croes, who was playing independent league ball when the season began, has a 1.035 OPS and a 175 wRC+. It’s hard to know what his Major League future could look like, but that’s a worry for another day for a player who’s been playing professional baseball for less than 5 months.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the story on the mound was a lack of control and command for RHP Hayden Birdsong. Pitching in what is likely his final game of the season, Birdsong needed 98 pitches to get through 4.2 innings, and only 56 of those pitches were strikes. He gave up 6 hits, which included a home run, and most concerningly walked 5 batters. That, along with a hit batter, tagged him for 5 earned runs, while he only struck out 2 batters. Big yikes.

When the Giants optioned Birdsong, they were hoping that he could get his command issues sorted out in a lower-pressure environment, and instead the opposite has happened. Even if you were willing to overlook the 6.23 ERA and 7.18 FIP with the River Cats, you can’t ignore the real issue: in 39 innings, he’s issued 30 walks, while also hitting 4 batters. It’s going to be a huge offseason for a lot of players in the Giants system, from the Majors all the way down to the Dominican Summer League, but I don’t think anyone is facing as critical of an offseason as Birdsong is. At this point, he feels like someone who could very feasibly never have Major League success, and just as feasibly make multiple All-Star appearances as a starter.

The exciting news on the mound was the AAA debut of RHP Will Bednar (No. 42 CPL). It was a long time coming for Bednar, who is 25. Had you told me when the Giants used a 1st-round pick on the righty in 2021 that he would make his AAA debut in late 2025, I would have assumed that he fell into serious injury issues. That wasn’t really the case, though he has had some injury problems. Instead, Bednar just never lived up to the fast-tracked college starter hype, as he struggled and struggled … and then completely reinvented himself this year as a reliever, racking up a jaw-dropping 84 strikeouts in 50.2 innings with AA Richmond, thanks in large part to a revamped heater.

His AAA debut, as tends to be the case for pitchers in the PCL, didn’t go well: he gave up 3 hits and hit a batter, ceding 3 runs in just 0.2 innings with neither a strikeout nor a walk. But the raw stuff certainly showed itself off, and gave plenty of reason for optimism going forward.

Bednar has turned himself into, in my opinion, a lock for Rule 5 protection, and while his career path may look disappointing when viewed through a July 2021 lens, it looks remarkable when you consider where he was when the season began.

If Bednar turns into the reliever that his brother is — which is starting to look like a distinct possibility — then he could help salvage what has been a fairly brutal 2021 draft for the Giants. 2nd-round pick Matt Mikulski has already been released, 3rd-round pick Mason Black is struggling in AAA, 4th-round pick Eric Silva was traded for a Mark Canha rental, and 5th-round pick Rohan Handa retired before ever throwing a pitch in the pros. On the bright side, they took RHP Landen Roupp in the 12th round that year!

RHP Sean Hjelle had a really nice game, throwing 23 of 32 pitches for strikes while tossing 2.1 shutout innings, allowing just 1 hit and striking out 3. He’s trying to pitch his way back into the Majors after being outrighted a few months ago.