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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the San Francisco Giants. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the sixth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.

Other Prospects of Note

Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.

Bench Bats
Victor Bericoto, OF
Zander Darby, INF
Lisbel Diaz, OF
Dayson Croes, 2B
Adrián Sugastey, C
Turner Hill, OF

Bericoto was called up to the big club earlier this year and recently hit his first homer. He’s a corner outfielder with plus raw power, but he’s a fairly low-launch guy, and he has a history of swing and miss issues. He could be a platoon bat. Darby can’t play short but has featured at the other three infield positions. He has power and could play his way into a Jack-of-all-trades reserve role. A right-right corner bat with a long swing and fringy power, Diaz has carried a tweener projection for a few years now. High contact rates have helped keep his profile alive and so it’s a little concerning that he’s now swinging and missing 30% of the time, with a big drop in his zone contact alongside. Croes is a fun one. He mashed at a Division II school and then tore up the American Association for two seasons before he got his first shot in affiliated ball. He hit over .300 at Richmond last year and again in a two-week call-up at Sacramento. Back in Double-A, he’s sporting a .316 average. Still, he has no power, isn’t especially fast, and doesn’t play short, which makes him a tricky roster fit. Sugastey makes contact, but his conservative swing renders him a singles hitter. His glove could get him to the big leagues in a reserve capacity. Hill gets the bat on everything (89% contact rate this year) and can play center, but he has 20 game power.

Good Gloves
Rod Barajas Jr., C
Lorenzo Meola, SS
Zane Zielinski, SS
Anthony Marquez, INF

Barajas’ dad caught 14 years in the big leagues. Barajas the younger is a little light on tools but strong on intangibles and skills, things like arm strength, receiving quality, and approach at the plate. He could be an up-down catcher. Meola was the 2025 ASUN Defensive Player of the Year at Stetson, which keyed his fourth-round selection last summer. His preparation, instincts, and actions are excellent, and he has a big league utility chance if he can just hit .200 with a little juice. Zielinski is among the best shortstop defenders in the minor leagues. Marquez is a slick fielder with 20 power. He makes contact and has a utility ceiling, but the lack of thump is worrisome for a complex leaguer who is already nearly 20.

Low-Level Hitters
Dario Reynoso, 3B
Cam Maldonado, OF
Jeremiah Jenkins, 1B
Hayden Jatczak, IF
Yohendry Sanchez, C
Yulian Barreto, 2B
Djean Macares, CF
Angel Guzman, 1B
Rayner Arias, OF

Reynoso has plus power, above-average wheels, and probably some of the highest upside on this section of the list. I thought long and hard about ranking him, particularly given his strong start in the Cal League, but he has an immature approach and might have a 20 bat, and I didn’t like his glove. Maldonado was the club’s seventh-rounder last year and is off to a fast start in the Cal League. Sources have described him as a player with crude actions, but they like how hard he plays. He could be an extra outfielder. Jenkins has a scary bat path, but some scouts see a way to game power. Jatczak has one of the highest hard-hit rates in the system. He’s nearly 25 and still in A-ball, though his two-way and small school backgrounds are both late-blooming indicators on his resume. Sanchez is raking (.412 average) and walking (11 free passes vs. three strikeouts in 46 plate appearances) in the ACL. He’s maxed out and old for the level, though, so he’s more in the “keep the profile alive” bucket than anything else at this point.

Barreto signed for $1.1 million in the 2025 international class. He can hit a little bit, but isn’t especially athletic or projectable and is trending towards second base. Macares is a native of Aruba, a contact specialist who walked more than he struck out in the DSL last year. He needs to get stronger and is repeating the level. Guzman has plus power but hasn’t brought it into games on the complex yet. I was supposed to submit a report on Arias last summer for my last gig but couldn’t because he was serving a suspension for his part in a brawl. He’s toolsy and has been on the main section in prior years, but he’s running a strikeout rate near 40% on the complex, which gives the remainder of his season a last chance saloon sort of feel.

Spot Starters
Cesar Perdomo, LHP
Tyler Switalski, LHP
Charlie McDaniel, LHP
Braydon Risley, LHP

Perdomo is a smoke-and-mirrors lefty with above-average control and a nice changeup, a spot starter’s skill set. Switalski and McDaniel are High-A flavors of the type, Risley the Low-A version.

Reliever Bay
Jack Choate, LHP
Esmerlin Vinicio, LHP
Elkyns Villarreal, RHP
Ryan Vanderhei, RHP
Carlos De La Rosa, LHP
Iverson Paulino, RHP
Leandro Rodriguez, LHP
Jose T. Perez, RHP

Choate has a plus change and a decent slider, but also 20 arm strength right now, and his control has backed up at Double-A. It’s not impossible to get to the big leagues as a reliever throwing 88 mph, but even accounting for deception — seven feet of extension, low release — you can count the guys doing it on one hand. Vinicio is one of the thinnest players in pro ball. More relevant, he can really spin a curve and flashes a 55 changeup. He gets less than five feet of extension, and counter intuitively, I sort of wonder if that helps him. It gives the ball more time to break, and lefties especially can’t hit it. He’s an interesting relief flier with a few outlier traits. Villarreal is a lean Panamanian with an easy operation and shapely secondaries. More velocity is the path to the main section of this list.

Vanderhei has a bowling ball sinker and a slider that has missed a bunch of bats at the A-ball levels. They don’t tunnel well, though, in part because he doesn’t command either all that well. De La Rosa is a young and at least somewhat projectable lefty on the Arizona complex. He’s up to 96 with decent feel to spin it. He’s a little underdeveloped physically and has an extremely long and deep arm stroke. Paulino touches the mid-90s and has a starter’s frame. He isn’t especially loose, and his secondaries need a fair bit of refining. I’m a little surprised he wasn’t promoted to the ACL this year. Rodriguez is a lefty with a good arm and not a whole lot of projection. At times last year, Perez looked like an intriguing relief prospect. He has a plus fastball and has flashed an above-average slider and a usable change. He was all over the place at Low-A this year, though, and was sent back to the complex to try to get right again.

The Shelf
Reid Worley, RHP
Hayden Wynja, LHP

Worley signed for just shy of $750,000 as an overslot ninth-rounder last year. He hasn’t pitched in games yet and is out for the year after having Tommy John surgery in April. Wynja has a good slider and a chance to be a team’s second or third lefty reliever. His career has been beset by injuries — including a torn patellar tendon and most recently a torn UCL — and he hasn’t thrown in a game since 2024. He’s back throwing bullpens and could return to the main section if he’s able to get right.

System Overview

It gives me no pleasure to say, but Buster Posey’s San Francisco Giants are not playing well. He’s made a fair number of big-dollar signings and major trades in his tenure, and while I admire his aggressive approach and even liked some of the moves at the time, the objective reality is that his biggest acquisitions have mostly struggled. Alongside, two of the players he’s dealt away, Kyle Harrison and James Tibbs III, have each seen their stock rise significantly since leaving the org. The Giants now have an aging roster and the second-worst record in the National League, an unenviable combination to say the least.

Inevitably, Posey’s style and performance will be compared and contrasted with that of his predecessor, Farhan Zaidi, and that extends to the farm. The early returns are mixed — the 2025 draft class doesn’t stand out, for instance — but broadly speaking, this system is in pretty good shape. There are five Top 100 guys here, and the big (literally) guy at the top seems to be blossoming at the plate before our eyes. A few guys who have been here for a while, like Jonah Cox and Drew Cavanaugh, have broken out in recent seasons. Posey also deserves credit for quickly rebuilding the team’s pro scouting department — a number of longtime scouts were let go over the course of Zaidi’s tenure, including right at the end — and it’s a group that helped pull off a pretty good trade deadline last year: Parks Harber, Jesus Rodriguez, and Yunior Marte are all arrow-up prospects.

Internationally, the Giants are firing on all cylinders and have fielded some of the most interesting rosters on the complexes over the last two summers. Spending big on premier talent is a risky business, but the Giants have struck gold in three consecutive seasons with Jhonny Level, Josuar Gonzalez, and Luis Hernández. It seems almost unfair that the international group also appears to have a knack for finding talent in the small-dollar pool. Keyner Martinez, Luis De La Torre, and Brayan Narvaez were all $10,000 signings, and there are a few other minor signings on the main section as well.

Somewhat oddly, this trend extends to the domestic space. I referenced it in the blurbs, but it’s worth highlighting again that Harber and Bo Davidson are two of the best undrafted prospects we’ve ranked this cycle, and San Francisco somehow landed both of them. The amateur group does a great job identifying talent below the Division I level. Davidson and Josh Bostick were JUCO signings, and Hunter Dryden, Drake George, Trent Harris, and Drew Cavanaugh all hail from smaller colleges; among that group, only George landed a six-figure bonus. There’s a weird disparity at play in how the club’s top farmhands were viewed as amateurs: Of the top 11 players in this system, seven were seven-figure (or high six-figure) signings and the other four got $60,000 combined. I don’t know if that means anything, but it’s too bizarre not to mention.

If there’s a concern here, it’s that a lot of this system’s value is tied up in three smaller players with limited physical projection, all of whom are multiple levels from San Francisco. Gonzalez, Level, and Hernández are all great prospects who we like a lot, but teenagers in A-ball and on the complex are a high-risk demographic, and these aren’t guys with jaw-dropping upside. Every system has its risks. Here, the Giants and their fans will have to hope that the physically mature young guys with hit tools and good gloves don’t stall as they encounter bigger and stronger peers.