by Richard Douglas
The Giants entered last season with one real question: How healthy will Buster Posey be? Because with the excellent pitching staff his offensive prowess could carry this team in a weakened NL West. The answer came in the form of a second World Series Title in three years. The Giants depleted the farm a bit to help Posey with several solid role playing hitters, sending out a pair of last years top 10 prospects. The depth is also hurt by a lot of players not maturing as they should, with 12 players dropping out of Baseball America's top 30. This year's top prospect though might have shown the most growth, as Kyle Crick has become the club's top prospect, after being drafted out of high school where he played first base primarily. His fastball is an extremely dangerous offering, getting a 70 rating from BA and clocking in at 93-95 mph. He has a curveball that he is developing as well, and a changeup that is just average. Crick dominated Low A ball last year, striking out 10.3 batters per 9 innings, and allowing just a .193 average. His only real red flags at this point is his control , after he issued 67 walks in just 111 innings of work, and the fact that he averaged just about 5 innings per start.
The Giants do have a few prospects that could see an extended look with the parent club if they perform well through the rest of spring training, or possibly for the first couple months at the AAA level. Heath Hembree is a 24 year old righty jumped quickly to AAA last season after keeping opponents to an under .200 batting average and a sub 2.20 ERA in his stops at the Rookie, High A and AA levels. However, he suffered a tendon sprain in his time at AAA, and missed 5 weeks because of it. That sprain had cost him some velocity initially but the closer in training was able to get that back into the high 90s during the Arizona Fall League. His off speed offering is a slider that works 82-85, and a changeup that needs development to be anything more than just a meh pitch. His control needs some work, after surrendering a walk rate of roughly 14%, but he has the possibility of being something special. So far this spring Heath has posted a 7.5 ERA, which is slightly inflated since 4 of the 6 runs surrendered came in one outing. He's throwing strikes at a 66% rate, and has generated a pretty outstanding 3.33 ground out to fly out rate.
Outfielder Fransisco Peguero already made his debut with the big league club last season, but slugged just .188. The Dominican is entering his 7th year in the system, and has been able to post a .763 OPS during his time in the minors with 32 home runs. Peguero possesses excellent speed, stealing 128 bases and getting caught just 38 times. His arm strength is good enough for him to play in right, and his speed allows him to play center if that's where the Giants need him. His strike out rate is too high though, in large part because of his aggressive nature at the plate. His spring this far has been pretty stellar, OPSing .913 with 20 total bases. His strike out rate has been good as well, coming in at just 12.8%, but he still needs to get better at drawing walks, with just 1 in his 39 at bats. Fransisco is likely destined for AAA ball to start the season, but if he continues this spring he'll find his way back up pretty quickly.
A surprise that could make an appearance with the club, especially if Tim Lincecum continues to struggle so much, is Mike Kickham. The lefty struck out 137 batters at the AA level last year, and offers 3 solid off speed pitches: a slider and a change up along with a curveball that can turn into a solid pitch. His fastball is a 2-seamer that lives in the low 90s. His control needs to get better, walking about 16% of batters he faced last year. His spring has been solid though, with just 3 innings pitched though. He's allowed just 2 hits with a walk and a strike out.
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