Down on the Farm (2020)

[LHG]

Yes, this may be a very short thread but the Giants released 20 minor leaguers recently and thought this would be the best place to post about it.

The only names that I wasn't expecting to be released were Brandon Lawson, Matt Winn, Dalton Combs, Olbis Parra, Cooper Casad and Jordan Scott. None of these guys (other than Winn) up great numbers but they were better than many guys who've been kept. Winn was awful but there isn't a whole lot of upper level catching depth (Posey, Brantly, Bart, Heineman and Tromp are the only names who've played in AA or higher prior to 2020). Then again, if there will be no 2020 minor league season, I guess depth isn't that important.

 

[calsnowskier]

Only a small handful of names that have even crossed my radar.

Meh

 

[Stokes1931]

Yes, this may be a very short thread but the Giants released 20 minor leaguers recently and thought this would be the best place to post about it.

The only names that I wasn't expecting to be released were Brandon Lawson, Matt Winn, Dalton Combs, Olbis Parra, Cooper Casad and Jordan Scott. None of these guys (other than Winn) up great numbers but they were better than many guys who've been kept. Winn was awful but there isn't a whole lot of upper level catching depth (Posey, Brantly, Bart, Heineman and Tromp are the only names who've played in AA or higher prior to 2020). Then again, if there will be no 2020 minor league season, I guess depth isn't that important.

Cave, Jebavy and Bond had some minor league "success."

Cave (23) is a big guy who throws gas. Trouble is he is Nuke Laloosh on the mound. In three minor league seasons, he pitched 176 innings, and struck out 194, and walked 127 (6.5/9 innings)

Jebavy (26) had a decent season in San Jose in 2016, but since then has not stayed healthy, nor productive.

Bond (23) is also a big guy with speed who hit for some power in the NWL in 2018 (.265/.320/.585), but has performed dismally since then.

None of those guys will be missed.

BTW, this is a TERRIBLE time to be a minor leaguer. There is talk of forty (40) minor league teams shutting down. I am sure that AAA, AA, and A+ are safe, but below that, it is going to be brutal. There may be more stadium sharing like in the Arizona Fall League I suppose. But with the draft only being five (5) rounds instead of the bazillion rounds it has been, this is really going to be hard for the minors.

 

[LHG]

Cave, Jebavy and Bond had some minor league "success."

Cave (23) is a big guy who throws gas. Trouble is he is Nuke Laloosh on the mound. In three minor league seasons, he pitched 176 innings, and struck out 194, and walked 127 (6.5/9 innings)

Jebavy (26) had a decent season in San Jose in 2016, but since then has not stayed healthy, nor productive.

Bond (23) is also a big guy with speed who hit for some power in the NWL in 2018 (.265/.320/.585), but has performed dismally since then.

None of those guys will be missed.

BTW, this is a TERRIBLE time to be a minor leaguer. There is talk of forty (40) minor league teams shutting down. I am sure that AAA, AA, and A+ are safe, but below that, it is going to be brutal. There may be more stadium sharing like in the Arizona Fall League I suppose. But with the draft only being five (5) rounds instead of the bazillion rounds it has been, this is really going to be hard for the minors.

Bond was my favorite of the three. I was excited to see what he would do after that short A season. But, as you mentioned, he just fizzled after that.
Cave, I was never that excited about him. I thought he was drafted too high and promoted too aggressively.
I'd say the only nominally successful season Jebavy had, offensively at least, was 2015 in Salem-Keizer, where he slashed .263/.303/.419.
A couple of the pitchers released - Cooper Casad and Jordan Scott - were fairly decent, especially for non drafted guys.
Casad pitched in 19 games across 4 different teams, from SK to Richmond (15 of them in SK), and posted a 3.00 ERA, 1.077 WHIP and 0 HRs allowed in 39 innings (walking only 8 batters). He was a 2018 NDFA from UOP and grew up in Petaluma.
Scott was another NDFA in 2018, coming from the east coast. Between SK & SJ, he posted a 2.61 ERA, 1.053 WHIP and 9.9 K/9 in a total of 38 innings pitched.
At the very least, these guys earned the opportunity to be continued depth, if not being able to pitched in Augusta or San Jose. They seem better than many of the mid to late round guys that are still around and who've performed much worse.

And yes, the state of the minor leagues is dire. If I was a conspiracy nut, I would say its almost like MLB started the virus to push their agenda of minor league contraction. This pandemic is certainly playing in favor of the commissioner's office's desire to eliminate many minor league teams. That makes these guys even less likely to land with another organization (that, and the fact that there is no minor league season in 2020). I wonder if many of the contracted cities will start new indy leagues, join existing ones or just cease to have professional baseball in their cities. Growing up, going to games in Modesto and Visalia, I saw what these games meant to smaller towns. Many of these endangered clubs are in cities even smaller than those two. It would be a big blow to many of them to lose that part of life.