Prospect quick hits, volume 1

Feature Heliot Ramos and Cole Waites

As one of the most esteemed members of the baseball media, I attended River Cats Media Day on Wednesday of last week. Over my next three newsletters, I’ll share the short interviews I did with six Giants prospects (for those of you who didn’t major in math in college, that comes out to two prospects per newsletter). Ready? Okay! Let’s start.

(I didn’t actually wait for you to tell me if you’re ready. If you’re not, you can come back in a little while. The words won’t change.)

Heliot Ramos

Statistically, Heliot Ramos did not have a good 2022. Yes, he made his major league debut and collected his first two major league hits, but he hit .100/.182/.100 in 22 PAs in the majors and .227/.305/.349 in 475 PAs in AAA. So what does he take away from that year?

“Experience,” Ramos told me. “Experience, just learning. It was a good experience, honestly. Even though it wasn’t the best year, at least I got to take a lot away from it. My mindset, the way my body is, all that stuff.”

But 2022 is done, and it’s time for 2023. Now that we can put the past in the past, how does Ramos feel about the present?

(In this context, “the present” means Spring Training, which is now also the past, but a more recent past. Just go with it, please.)

“I felt really good. I think I had a good spring. I didn’t see my numbers. I don’t know what the numbers were, but I really feel like I did a great job in my spring,” he said, later adding, “I think I had more walks than strikeouts and I hit the ball pretty hard.”

His numbers from major league spring training don’t really bear that out, but Ramos did get sent to minor league camp fairly early on in March, and we don’t have access to any stats from those games.

The important thing is that Heliot Ramos has a good attitude about his struggles last year, has a good mindset this year, and is ready to go out there and show he belongs in the majors. To do that, he’s going to keep it simple and do what he does best:

“Just take it step by step. Give goot at bats. Play the game good, hard. Have fun out there. That’s about it.”

Cole Waites

Even Cole Waites didn’t really think Cole Waites would get to the majors last year. “You start out in A, you think maybe you do well, you’ll get promoted to AA. You can’t anticipate that,” he said about his rapid ascent through Eugene, Richmond, and Sacramento on his way to San Francisco in just one season.

Fans and experts had already penciled Waites in to the Giants bullpen this year, but a strained lat pushed back his timeline, forcing him to start in Sacramento. “It’s definitely frustrating,” he said, “But it’s good that it happened early enough that it didn’t really hold me back.”

Waites described himself as fully built up in terms of in-game stamina, with the only thing left for him to do is work on pitching in back to back games, which should take around 2-3 weeks of game action.

Like anyone in the minors, Waites is aiming to get back to the majors this year. Once he does, his main goal? “I want to be a key piece in the bullpen. Just contribute out there.”

And, just for fun, I asked him who in the Giants bullpen impresses him, and who’d he say? Tyler Rogers. “I don’t know how anyone hits him,” Waites told me. “I knew it was coming and it was still surprising.”

Hopefully one day soon, Waites and Rogers will both be back in the Giants bullpen, surprising hitters together.