Three Giants breakout candidates to watch entering 2025 season

Three Giants breakout candidates to watch entering 2025 season originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO — In the final season under Farhan Zaidi and Gabe Kapler, the Giants invited 37 non-roster invitees to camp, including six catchers and two-way player Ronald Guzman. It was a large group but fit right in with that regime’s method of constantly churning through players at the back end of the roster.

This spring, the first under the trio of Buster Posey, Zack Minasian and Bob Melvin, there are just 20 non-roster invitees. The number is a bit on the small side, but it really stands out because the Giants are coming off a winter that included just two notable free-agent additions and very little action on the 40-man roster.

Posey and Minasian seem to be sending a message. They believe the solutions are in-house, and they believe in their young players, most of whom got their feet wet last season.

If the Giants are to surprise and get into the MLB playoffs, they’ll need several young players to break through as left fielder Heliot Ramos and infielder Tyler Fitzgerald did last season, and there are plenty of options.

When pitchers and catchers hold their first workout on Wednesday, guys like pitchers Hayden Birdsong, Landen Roupp and Trevor McDonald will try to build off what they showed last season. When the position players report a few days later, Marco Luciano will attempt to show that he’s comfortable in the outfield and top prospect Bryce Eldridge will try to accelerate his timeline.

It’s going to be a young camp, and that’s what Posey — who was part of a homegrown dynasty — wants.

As everyone descends on Scottsdale, here are three potential breakouts to watch this spring:

Starting pitcher Kyle Harrison

The Giants had just one player — Eldridge — on Top 100 prospects lists that were released last month, which isn’t ideal. Their farm system generally is viewed as being ranked in the mid-to-low 20s. But they can make the argument that part of that is due to all of last year’s graduations, and there’s no better example than Harrison.

The lefty was born three months before Roki Sasaki, now viewed as the best pitching prospect in baseball. But Harrison isn’t eligible for those lists because he spent all of last season in the big leagues, making 24 starts.

Harrison will be pushed by Birdsong and Roupp this spring, but he should enter camp as the favorite for a back-end rotation spot, and when looking at the makeup of the entire group, the 23-year-old already might qualify as the most likely Giants starter other than Logan Webb to start 30-plus games.

Harrison had a 4.56 ERA and 4.33 FIP in his first full season, but both numbers were under four when he went on the IL in June with an ankle sprain. He rushed back and was never the same, and the belief within the clubhouse was that compensating for the ankle injury led to shoulder inflammation that impacted his velocity.

Seven of the nine games in which Harrison’s four-seamer averaged at least 93 mph came before the injury. By August, as he also approached an innings limit, he often sat around 91 mph.

Getting those extra ticks back in 2025 will be crucial for a pitcher who can lean heavily on his four-seamer, which he threw 58 percent of the time. The Giants haven’t forgotten how promising Harrison looked as he broke into the big leagues in 2023. If they can get that version back, the rotation will be their strength.

Outfielder Luis Matos

Like Harrison, Matos is a 23-year-old who was a top-100 prospect as he worked through the minors. He seemed poised for a breakout when he won NL Player of the Week honors last May, but he went into a deep slump and ended up back in the minors for most of the second half.

Matos has two things working in his favor as he reports to camp. First, he’s coming off a strong winter, having come up one vote shy of being a unanimous Rookie of the Year in the Venezuelan Winter League. He hit .300 with 10 homers in 55 games, leading the league in doubles (20) and finishing third in RBI (41).

The second factor is the current roster. The Giants didn’t add a single player to their outfield mix this offseason and had a goose egg in that column of their non-roster invitee list, so the path is wide open for one of their young outfielders to break through and earn a real role from the start of the season.

Of that group, Matos has shown the most at the big league level and will bring the most momentum to camp. With a strong spring, he could push Mike Yastrzemski for time in right or work his way into the DH conversation, which is murky at the moment.

Outfielder Wade Meckler

The 24-year-old is listed on the roster with Matos, Luciano, Grant McCray and the outfielders, but late last season he started doing drills at second base, and Giants coaches were immediately intrigued by how comfortable he looked. If an offseason of additional work made that a real option, Meckler could be a good fit for the roster.

The Giants currently have just two left-handed-hitting infielders on their 40-man roster. One, LaMonte Wade Jr., will start at first base. The other, Brett Wisely, enters camp with a good shot at winning a bench job.

Non-roster invitee Sergio Alcantara is a switch-hitter who can play middle infield, but in general, it’s an area where the Giants don’t have a lot of depth. And even if Meckler is purely a corner outfielder, he still could work his way into the bench mix.

Meckler played just 87 minor league games last year because of injuries, but he continued to produce. He had a .366 on-base percentage and was at .357 when he returned to Triple-A. In three minor league seasons, Meckler has a .420 OBP, and his ability to limit strikeouts should be attractive to a new front office that would like to see a different approach offensively at the big league level.

The organization rushed a lot of players under Zaidi, but Meckler’s promotion in 2023 might have been the most egregious. It did do something important for Meckler, though. He’s already on the 40-man roster, which will make it easier to outlast others this spring.

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