Welcome to the third and final part of our series talking to members of the Sacramento River Cats on Media Day this year. In Part 1, we talked to Cole Waites and Heliot Ramos, and in Part 2, we talked to Will Wilson and Casey Schmitt.
Today, to wrap up the series, we’ll talk to Keaton Winn and Kyle Harrison, two pitchers who made enough noise last year for one to be added to the 40-man roster, and the other to be named the best prospect in the Giants system and one of the best prospects in all of baseball. Which one is which? You’ll have to read on to find out!
Keaton Winn
It’s hard to play baseball after sitting out two calendar years.
I mean, it’s always hard to play baseball, but I don’t think it’s controversial to say that not pitching competitively for all of 2020 (because of Covid) and 2021 (because of Tommy John surgery) didn’t do Keaton Winn any favors.
So it wasn’t a surprise that he had a tough time when he started the season in San Jose. As a 24-year-old starting the year in Low-A, Winn pitched 40.2 innings with a 4.87 ERA, not an ideal result. But in those 40.2 innings, he struck out 55, which proved there was something there. Sure, the 16 walks were a little high, but for someone in his first competitive game action since 2019, that was explainable.
So how was it to finally compete after more than two years of not competing? “It was definitely hard at first,” Winn told me. “Because it’s hard to replicate that game moment, that adrenaline. It took probably until halfway through the season [in Eugene] when I really started picking up and catching stride.”
Eugene is where the results really started to line up with the strikeout numbers. In 37 innings there, Winn struck out 46 and walked just 10, a significant improvement from San Jose, which led him to a 3.16 ERA. What made the difference? In San Jose, Winn “had so much adrenaline I didn’t know how to contain it.” But as the year went on, he was able to get that energy under control and channel it a little more effectively.
When Winn got promoted to Richmond, his strikeout numbers dipped, with 24 in his 30.1 innings there, and while his walk rate was excellent — just 1.8 walks per 9 innings — his ERA went up a little to 4.15. Like many other pitchers in their first year back from Tommy John (John Brebbia in 2021 is a good recent example for Giants fans), Winn had trouble maintaining his gains throughout the season.
“I definitely peaked last year, which is weird because I haven’t done that before. Usually I get to a point and flatten at that high point,” he said. “Last year, first year after TJ and Covid, so…”
The Giants, though, had seen enough to worry about losing Winn. Over the offseason, they selected him to the 40-man roster, which he called “surreal.” He wasn’t expecting it either. “Honestly, it wasn’t on my mind because it had just been my first year post-TJ and I hadn’t thrown in 2 years, but yeah, I’m really thankful,” Winn said, adding that, “It’s an awesome honor.”
This year, Winn is just one call away from San Francisco, so as long as he can maintain his strength and pitch effectively throughout the year, he has a great chance of being called up to bolster the major league bullpen during the season.
Kyle Harrison
You’ve heard about Kyle Harrison.
The hype has been almost deafening. Finally, a pitcher with the potential to be an ace. Finally, a top prospect who gets some respect from all of the Prospect People around baseball. Finally, someone to really dream on. Finally, finally, finally.
But he’s not quite there yet. As much as we all think and hope that it will happen, it hasn’t happened yet, and Harrison still has some learning to do.
A local product, Kyle Harrison was drafted out of De La Salle in the third round in 2020. Because of Covid, he didn’t make his pro debut until 2021 in San Jose. And while you would assume he had a lot of family support there, it turns out that wasn’t really the case.
“My family was actually in Southern California at the time, so they didn’t really come up, but I had relatives here,” Harrison told me on Media Day. “Lots of friends, but that was a great experience for them to come out and watch me, especially getting started as my first season.”
All he did in that first season was strike out 157 hitters in 98.2 innings, to go with a 3.19 ERA. It was an impressive debut, even before you take into account that it came during his age 19 season, and it put him on the map.
But it was last year that really established Harrison. In Eugene, he struck out 59 batters in just 21 innings and had a 1.55 ERA; he quickly got promoted to Richmond, where he pitched 84 innings and struck out 127 with a 3.11 ERA.
It would be easy to assume from those numbers that Kyle Harrison’s path to the majors is now a straight line, that the only development he has left is a coronation in the major leagues. And yet, in his two starts so far this year, he’s thrown a total of 2.2 innings with 8 walks. This followed a spring training where, on the major league side, he threw 3.2 innings and gave up 8 earned runs.
“It wasn’t how I wanted it to go,” Harrison told me about his spring. “But I learned a lot of good things from guys around me, spitting questions off guys. Just trying to learn how to get outs. That’s our job. I had a great experience seeing how the stuff plays and what I need to get better at.”
As a lefty with sling in his delivery, Harrison naturally gravitated towards Chris Sale as a kid. And like Sale, he relies on his slider as his primary out pitch. He dismissed any concerns that the Arizona air had affected him during the spring — “I was there the whole offseason, though, so I didn’t really think about that too much,” he said — but he did bring up the slider when I asked him what he was going to work on this season.
“Definitely honing my sights to the zone a little more,” he said. “Everything with me is just arm side miss, and then just trying to keep the slider and the changeup down.”
Maybe the stands were a little sparser than Kyle Harrison would have preferred back in 2021, but his family’s back in Northern California now. “They’re ready to come out, definitely, for sure, and probably bring a lot of people that I gotta entertain,” Harrison said.
If it all comes together, Harrison could be entertaining a whole lot of Giants fans all season long.