Well, I lied to you. I hope you’ll forgive me. In yesterday’s roundup, I said that Thursday would finally bring the return of multiple-game days days for the San Francisco Giants Minor League Baseball affiliates. Turns out I was wrong, as AAA Sacramento had their game rained out and postponed. Actually, it apparently stopped raining, because the official postponement is for “wet grounds.” It will be made up on Saturday, when they play a doubleheader against the Salt Lake Bees, presuming Utah soil
has dried by then.
So just one game it was, but it was a good one. Lets jump into it.
Link to the 2026 McCovey Chronicles Community Prospect List (CPL)
All listed positions in the roundup are the position played in that particular game.
News
Just two small transactions for the affiliates on Thursday. AAA Sacramento lost one of their pitchers, as RHP Blade Tidwell (No. 9 CPL) was called up to San Francisco to replace the injured José Buttó. Tidwell got into Thursday’s game against his former team, the New York Mets, and made his Giants debut by recording a 3-inning save. Gotta love it!
Replacing Tidwell on Sacramento’s roster is RHP Will Bednar (No. 24 CPL). Bednar was an NRI at Spring Training this year, but curiously opened the year on the Development List. Now he’s off it, and will prepare to make his season debut.
Low-A San Jose (1-0)
San Jose Giants beat the Stockton Ports (A’s) 12-8
Box score
The Baby Giants kicked off their title defense on Thursday night by heading up the road to Stockton. And what a glorious start to the season it was, as San Jose found all the offense they were looking for (and then some), while also featuring a stellar pitching performance from an exciting arm.
One of the fun things about Low-A in this era of Minor League Baseball is that when the season starts, so do the debuts. So many young players get drafted (or sign as undrafted free agents) and don’t debut until the next year, and so this game featured a whopping 5 San Jose players who were playing in a professional baseball game for the first time in their life. A day to remember!
It’s quite fitting, then, that the 2 position players who were making their debuts were the ones who carried the offense. First baseman Hayden Jatczak and catcher Junior Barajas would have remembered Thursday for their debuts alone, but now they’ll really remember the game, because they had star showings.
Jatczak positively carried the offense, with a nearly perfect day: he hit 3-4 with a 3-run home run in the 8th inning, plus a triple, a walk, 4 RBIs, and a strikeout. It’s hard to do much better than that, especially since the home run was positively majestic and towering.
The Giants have had some remarkable success with undrafted free agents in recent years, both in the form of their own signings (Bo Davidson and Trent Harris) and players they traded for (Parks Harber). Jatczak, a 24-year old out of Kent State, will try to be the next in that line of overlooked talent.
As for Barajas, he wasn’t far behind. He also homered, as part of a 2-5 day that also included a double, 3 RBIs, and a strikeout. The son of Rod Barajas (the younger Barajas is technically Rod Barajas Jr., but goes by the eternally-cool “Junior” moniker), the lefty catcher was an 11th-round pick in July’s draft, but it’s been clear from the buzz around him that the team has been highly impressed with his bat. While not undrafted like Davidson, he may have been overlooked for one of the same reasons: a collegiate career spent at a junior college, rather than an NCAA school.
The Giants don’t have a lot of intriguing backstop bats in the system, so it will be very exciting if Barajas can hit as well as they hope — and perhaps think — he will.
While Jatczak and Barajas were the stars of the day on offense, the star of the team is shortstop Jhonny Level (No. 3 CPL), and he followed up his breakout 2025 with a solid day at the top of San Jose’s lineup, as he hit 3-5 and stole a base, while striking out twice. It will be interesting to see how San Jose handles infield reps for Level and Lorenzo Meola (No. 23 CPL), last year’s 4th-round pick, who is a dynamic defensive player. In this game, Level played short while Meola (who hit 1-4 with a double and a sacrifice fly) handled second base, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they switch off assignments.
Level, who dominated the Complex League last year before holding his own for a month in San Jose, will be hoping to rid himself of that tandem by playing his way up to High-A Eugene by the summer, though a similar predicament will await him there, as last year’s 1st-round pick, shortstop Gavin Kilen (No. 7 CPL) will be handling shortstop for the Emeralds. Good problems to have, especially since Level just turned 19 earlier this week.
Center fielder Andy Polanco, who was an 11th-round pick in 2024, also had an intriguing day, hitting 1-4 with a hit by pitch and stealing 2 bases, though he also had 2 strikeouts.
On the whole, the pitching wasn’t good, but only because the Giants used the bullpen. The game started brilliantly thanks to another debuting player who has been building a lot of buzz: RHP Cody Delvecchio, the organization’s 12th-round pick in July’s draft.
Delvecchio, a recently-turned 22-year old who played at UCLA, earned quite a bit of hype in his first pro camp, and even got into a Spring Training game, where he impressed with 2 strikeouts in a scoreless inning. Opening Day assignments are symbolic, even in the Minor Leagues, so it’s telling that Delvecchio got the nod on Day 1 in a rotation that also features RHPs Keyner Martinez (No. 10 CPL) and Argenis Cayama (No. 13 CPL). Don’t take that to mean that the Giants think Delvecchio is a better prospect than Martinez and Cayama, but it might mean that they think he’s their best pitcher right now (he’s a bit older than those two fast-rising prospects).
And Delvecchio certainly rewarded that decision with a dynamic game against the Ports, pitching 4 scoreless innings while allowing just 1 hit (a single), 1 walk, and 1 hit batter. The righty lived in the strike zone, with 42 of 64 pitches going for strikes, and he struck out 6 Stockton hitters. That’s a pretty phenomenal debut, and one that will have us excited to see what he does with his next start.
Unfortunately, the bullpen was awful through and through. LHP Ricardo Estrada and RHP Cooper McGrath (last year’s 18th-round pick, who was debuting) each walked 4 batters, with Estrada only recording 4 outs and McGrath only recording 1. RHPs Dylan Carter and Garrett Langrell (the final debuting player, and last year’s 16th-round pick) each gave up a trio of hits and a free pass (a walk for Carter; a hit batter for Langrell), with the former ceding 3 runs in 1.1 innings, and the latter 2 runs in as many innings. Better days ahead for all of them!
Home run tracker
1 — Junior Barajas — [Low-A]
1 — Hayden Jatczak — [Low-A]
Friday schedule
Sacramento: 5:35 p.m. PT at Salt Lake (SP: Carson Seymour)
Richmond: 3:05 p.m. PT at Erie (SP: Greg Farone)
Eugene: 6:35 p.m. PT vs. Hillsboro (SP: Niko Mazza)
San Jose: 7:05 p.m. PT at Stockton (SP: Jordan Gottesman)
Reminder that almost all MiLB games can be watched on MLB TV
