The most Giants way to screw up Bryce Eldridge's development

Not that this will happen! Simply that this would be the least surprising possible future

The Giants’ AAA season wrapped up yesterday, which also ended the season for top prospect Bruce Eldridge. Eldridge, the first round pick who the Giants took 16th overall in 2023, was announced as both a pitcher and first baseman on draft day, but the team quickly announced that he would be focusing solely on the position player side of things.

And it turned out to be a great decision. Eldridge hit .290/.378/.512 in the minors this year, firmly establishing himself as one of the top prospects in baseball. The team responded by fast tracking his ascent through the system, sending him from San Jose to Eugene midway through the season, then to Richmond for 9 games, and then finally to Sacramento for 8 more to end the season.

Eldridge’s aggressive promotions were not only a sign that the team wanted him to get as many at bats as possible — he will also be playing in the Arizona Fall League starting in a couple weeks — but that he could be in the majors next year. The stats love him. The scouts love him. The front office loves him. Bryce Eldridge has brought a level of excitement and anticipation like very few Giants hitting prospects in recent memory.

So what’s the most likely way for the Giants to screw this up?

The reason that so few Giants hitting prospects have brought Eldridge’s level of excitement and anticipation is that they haven’t deserved it like he has. For all the considerable talent that Joey Bart or Marco Luciano has, neither of them tore up high A ball at 19 years old like Eldridge did. For all the impressive work that David Villar and Casey Schmitt did in the high minors, neither had the pure hitting talent or draft pedigree that Eldridge does.

But every hitting prospect the Giants have had since Brandon Belt has had at least one extremely disappointing season in the minors. So I think it’ll be fun¹ to figure out how that could happen to Eldridge.

I don’t want to make it seem like Bryce Eldridge doesn’t deserve to be a hyped prospect. He absolutely does. But the Giants have a way of turning hyped, talented prospects into disappointments. We’ve already mentioned Luciano and Bart, but don’t forget that Heliot Ramos’s season at AA was nothing special, he got promoted to AAA, and was notably bad there in 2021 and 2022 before leveling up to Pretty Good in 2023. It seems to have worked out now, but there were a lot of sketchy moments before he got there.

Are we really supposed to believe that Eldridge won’t have those moments in the high minors? That a week’s worth of ABs in Richmond will prepare him for Sacramento? Haven’t we been seeing this for years? The Giants rush a guy through AA, then rush him through AAA, then call him up to the majors because of roster necessity, and then he isn’t very good? Just over the last couple years, we have Schmitt and Patrick Bailey and Luis Matos and Luciano and Grant McCray. All of them showed up to the majors with massive, glaring flaws in their offensive game, and it’s entirely possible the Giants will do the same thing with Eldridge.

In his 9 games in AA, Eldridge hit .270/.325/.459, which came out to a wRC+ of 116. Perfectly fine, if unspectacular. But can you guess which current Giant, while he was in Richmond, hit .228/.339/.450, for a wRC+ of 115? Why, that would be Marco Luciano in 2023, and if we’re being honest, he was absolutely not ready to get promoted to AAA that year, much less the majors. Eldridge has done some things better than Luciano — his strikeout rate, in particular, is much lower, which is a pretty big deal — but a 9 game sample just doesn’t mean a lot.

Also, Eldridge struck out 31% of the time in Sacramento and didn’t have an extra base hit. Good walk rate, though!

The most Giants way to screw up Bryce Eldridge’s development, then, is this: In 2025, he has a good Spring Training. The team, remembering how great he was in 2024 in the minors (really just Eugene — even in San Jose, he hit an adequate but unspectacular .263/.323/.478), either puts him on the Opening Day roster or puts him in Sacramento, with the thought being that if he has a hot start, he’s ready. He has that hot start, then either injury or poor performance clears a spot on the roster for him, and the team calls him up…and he’s mediocre.

The hit tool just isn’t quite there yet. His recognition of major league breaking balls is a work in progress. Pitchers with a good change-up are regularly able to outthink him. Opposing teams discover a hole in his swing, and just hammer it. The team sits him for a few games while they tinker with his swing, and whoever starts over him does a nice job. Without anyone declaring it, Eldridge becomes a major league platoon player while they try to work out the kinks in his game. Eventually, his slump gets severe enough that he gets sent down to Sacramento.

In Sacramento, his new swing is still a work in progress. The team has some ideas about his swing decisions, and he tries to implement them, and looks even worse. Everyone gets frustrated. It’s now early July and it looks like this is a lost year for Eldridge’s development. People grumble to each other that the Giants just can’t develop prospects, but some other hot prospect is having an unequivocally great year, so the front office’s defenders point to him and just say that player development is hard, and not linear. They’re not necessarily wrong, but it’s still annoying.

Eldridge plays every day in Sacramento for about a month before he catches fire one week in Reno. The team, desperate for some production in the majors, calls him up and starts him against, like, Zack Wheeler. Eldridge goes 1-for-3 (and will exit the game for a pinch hitter when the Phillies bring in a lefty reliever to face him), but one of the outs is a line drive at 108 MPH right at the first baseman. Giantsland gets very, very high on him again. In this stint, he’s a little better than in the first one, but still not exactly the second coming of Willie McCovey.

We’re in early September now, and the Giants are in a quasi-playoff push. They have an option who’s better than Eldridge right now, so they play him instead. Eldridge gets a few pinch hitting appearances down the stretch (they don’t go well), but mostly spends a lot of time on the bench. Eventually they send him down to Sacramento for the last week or two of the AAA season so he can play every day. He does fine there. The big league team misses the playoffs, and the organization goes into 2026 still not really sure what they can expect from their tall first base prospect.

This is how the team has been treating prospects for this entire decade. Yes, eventually an Heliot Ramos can break through and have a good year, but when you look at the Giants’ process for figuring out when to call someone up, there’s an awful lot of hoping and wishful thinking involved. There’s an awful lot of ignoring inconvenient facts, making the same mistakes over and over again, and then throwing up their hands and saying, “You can’t predict baseball!”

I don’t want to see this happen for Eldridge next year. I want the team to keep him in the minors until he’s definitely ready, and not just send him wherever the wind blows. I want the Matt Cain model of “We will call him up when we’re sure he never goes back,” and not, “We need a jolt, so let’s see what happens.” Long term, it’s what is best for both Eldridge and the Giants. But we’ve been seeing the short term win an awful lot lately.

1. Well, maybe not fun per se