Drew Cavanaugh is a 24-year-old catcher and a child of the digital information era who uses a very analog way to organize his thoughts.
Over the past three minor-league seasons, not long after the San Francisco Giants drafted him in the 17th round in 2023, he’s kept a notebook to jot down reminders and inspirational refrains.
Following a disappointing 2024 season, his first full year as a professional baseball player, he starts each entry with the same phrase.
Don’t forget what it’s like not to play.
“I live by that quote,” Cavanaugh said.
Cavanaugh’s first full year contained plenty of emptiness. How do you shed an “organizational player” label when you seldom see the field? How do you convince minor-league coaches and coordinators that you’re worthy of an opportunity when it’s a struggle to crack the lineup at Low-A San Jose?
Cavanaugh spent most of that 2024 season with San Jose. He played in just 38 games. He played nine games for Triple-A Sacramento, too, but it hardly counts as a promotion when the prerequisite is a pulse. Those were the times when the River Cats needed a catcher because of injury or promotion, and Cavanaugh was not terribly far away and could be trusted to strap on his shinguards.
“I go up and play four or five games in a row and think, ‘Wow, this is great,’ ” Cavanaugh said. “Then I’d go back down (to San Jose), and it’d be once a week, twice a week. So going into that offseason, I just wanted to attack it because I was so mad that I wasn’t playing every day. That was my driving force. It’s been my driving force ever since.”
That driving force carried him to the crest of the mountain pass Friday night. Cavanaugh made his major-league debut, batted eighth, capably caught nine innings, drew a walk that started a rally and even poked his first big league hit in the Giants’ 3-1 loss to the Atlanta Braves on the shores of McCovey Cove.
“It felt great,” Cavanaugh said of his single that scooted past Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies in the fifth inning. “I hit it, and then I saw it was gonna go through, and everything after that was pretty much a blur. But what a moment. All those years practicing and playing for that … it was just a surreal moment.”
The Giants reached the mathematical halfway point of the season with a 33-48 record, but don’t tell someone like Cavanaugh that the next 81 games won’t mean a darn thing. Standings aside, every opportunity to play is precious. If you need a reminder, there’s a notebook in Cavanaugh’s locker. Flip to any page.
The club promoted Cavanaugh from Sacramento on Friday because catcher Daniel Susac experienced back discomfort and made an early exit from Thursday afternoon’s game against the Athletics. The Giants could have summoned Jesús Rodríguez, who was already on the 40-man roster and spent time in the big leagues earlier this season.
But Rodríguez is a work in progress with the glove, and it’s apparent that backup catcher Eric Haase has limitations as well. Cavanaugh is their best defender, and while he’s not viewed as a difference-making offensive force, the rare lefty-hitting catcher owns a .406 on-base percentage in four minor-league seasons. So the at-bat quality has a chance to be good.
The early read on Susac’s injury is that he’s only expected to miss the minimum 10-day period on the injured list. Cavanaugh might not be with the Giants for long.
Even so, it’s a stunning turn for a team that began the season with the two-time defending Gold Glove winner, Patrick Bailey, behind the plate. After trading Bailey, at least for now, their primary catcher is a guy who was backing up in Low-A at the start of last season.
Cavanaugh didn’t have to wait quite so long between starts last year — he played in 91 games and amassed 402 plate appearances — but he was as itinerant as a player can be whose job is to squat at home. Cavanaugh played for four of the Giants’ full-season affiliates. He pulled off the rare feat of swatting a home run at each level, too. He finished with 14 home runs and an .849 OPS while playing credible defense.
Yet it wasn’t enough to earn an invitation to major-league camp this past spring, which can be difficult to accept when you’re a catcher and a team typically has 20-plus pitchers throwing bullpen sessions on a given day. Instead, the Giants brought in minor-league free agents like Haase and Diego Cartaya to catch.
At least the Giants summoned Cavanaugh from minor-league camp five or six times to fill out Cactus League exhibition rosters. Except, well …
“I never got in a game,” he said. “Not once. Isn’t that crazy?”
Cavanaugh felt he was more ready than ever when this season began. The Michigan native spent his entire offseason in Arizona for the first time, hitting with Giants prospects Dakota Jordan and Maui Ahuna. They’d do more than take turns in the cage. Their sessions included plenty of brainstorming and idea bouncing. The theme was to challenge themselves with the nastiest stuff the machines could spit out: high cutters, sweeping sliders and everything in between.
Cavanaugh was a switch hitter while playing for his high school team in Michigan and then at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., where he transferred in hopes of attracting more attention from colleges and scouts. He changed to hit only left-handed during his freshman year at Eastern Florida State College. Then a random connection led him from junior college to Division II Florida Southern College.
Florida Southern coach Lance Niekro, a former Giants first baseman, was looking for a catcher and ran into a mutual friend who had seen Cavanaugh at a hitting facility.
“It really fell in our lap,” Niekro said in a phone interview on Friday. “I saw him throw and said, ‘OK, I don’t care if he gets a hit all year. That’s gonna play.’ Then he has a great offensive year for us. Great kid, never had issues with him, never had to worry about him. He was always prepared, always trying to get insight on other teams’ hitters, or as much as we could provide for him.
“He called his own games. He loved doing it, and he was good at it. I hate making comparisons, but Mike Matheny was a great defensive catcher who always seemed to get the big hits, and that’s what Drew did for us. I was really happy when the Giants drafted him because, well, it’s the Giants, and he wasn’t coming back to us anyway. He’d gotten his credits up to transfer to a D-I.”
Niekro would get occasional texts and pictures from longtime Giants coach Ron Wotus in extended spring training with updates on Cavanaugh’s progress. There was no way Niekro would miss the kid’s debut. He stayed up late to watch Friday night’s game.
“So freaking cool,” Niekro said.
The Giants promoted Cavanaugh from Sacramento because catcher Daniel Susac experienced back discomfort. (Justine Willard / Imagn Images)
Cavanaugh’s parents live in the Detroit exurbs but were in Florida helping one of their sons relocate for a new job. They caught a flight to San Francisco and were in the stands Friday night, along with their other two sons.
They saw an uneven game that included a few highlight defensive plays — right fielder Victor Bericoto made a diving catch and first baseman Rafael Devers smothered a ground ball to record an out — in addition to a few lapses in the field.
Devers failed to scoop a long hop from second baseman Luis Arraez in the third inning, which contributed to a run. Right-hander Trevor McDonald committed a balk that contributed to another. Jung Hoo Lee, playing center field so that the Giants could get Bericoto and Casey Schmitt in the lineup manning the corners, got skittish as he neared the wall and whiffed while attempting to catch Matt Olson’s double, which led to a run in the fifth.
The Giants ran their way out of two potential rallies. In the first inning, Arraez was thrown out trying to go from second to third on a grounder to the left side with no outs. In the second inning, Willy Adames appeared to misjudge Matt Chapman’s flyout to shallow center field and was doubled off before he could retreat to first base.
The Adames mistake was the inattentive or overaggressive base running that the Giants saw so often from Mauricio Dubón during his four seasons from 2019-22. But Dubón matured and turned himself into a useful niche player with the Houston Astros and now in Atlanta, where he’s having a career-best offensive season.
Dubón arrived at Braves camp in the spring to a new clubhouse that had plenty of familiar faces. He played with Mike Yastrzemski in San Francisco. Respected coaches J.P. Martinez and Antoan Richardson, who were part of Giants manager Gabe Kapler’s staff, are now thriving with the Braves.
Michael Schwartze, the Giants’ former analytics and game strategy director, is Atlanta’s assistant general manager. The Braves traded for former Giants catcher Joey Bart earlier this month. One more Giants connection: Dom Smith, who contributed plenty of big hits for the club last season, is thriving in a DH role with the Braves.
“We’re Kapler’s castoffs,” Dubón said, smiling.
The Giants never gave Yastrzemski a proper goodbye after he was traded to the Kansas City Royals at the deadline last season, so they pieced together a video tribute that they showed before his first at-bat Friday night.
Yastrzemski never forgot what it meant to be denied an opportunity, too. For four seasons in the Baltimore Orioles system, he was stuck at either Triple-A Norfolk or Double-A Bowie. His opportunity came when former Giants president Farhan Zaidi noticed his underlying metrics, strolled into the office one day and announced, “I think I’m going to trade for Yastrzemski.”
Yastrzemski debuted in 2019 but was hitting .227 and on the verge of being sent back for an extra pitcher when the Giants decided to keep him around for a series at Coors Field. He went 9-for-20 with two homers and three doubles in that four-game series against the Colorado Rockies and never looked back.
It’s impossible to tell what Cavanaugh’s future holds, but there’s always a place for good catch-and-throw guys who can hit a little bit, get along with everyone and be counted upon to show up in the clubhouse with the same demeanor every day.
There are countless examples of big league catchers who got a foot in the door because they had a pulse and stuck around because they demonstrated that they had a finger on the pulse of the game.
Some of them, like David Ross, who only snuck into Dodgers camp for the first time because they needed a catcher and he lived up the road from their former spring camp in Vero Beach, Fla., ended up doing things like hitting a homer in Game 7 of the World Series and managing in the big leagues.
It’s the smallest sample, but Cavanaugh got off to a solid start Friday night.
“He took confident swings,” Giants manager Tony Vitello said. “You didn’t see anything out of place. He wasn’t out of control. And then I’d like to give him a resounding compliment on the catching side of things, but what I just said back there to (GM) Zack (Minasian) was, you didn’t notice him. … You (wouldn’t) realize that he just got here this morning, if that makes sense. That’s not ‘vote for him for the All-Star team’ stuff or anything like that (but) it speaks to how good he was back there.
“He looked comfortable, made the dugout comfortable.”
As comfortable as the home dugout can look with a 33-48 record, anyway. With so much of the schedule remaining, it can’t hurt to have someone like Cavanaugh on the roster to remind everyone that the next game is a gift, not an obligation.
“We’ve had walk-offs, we’ve had good road wins, good home wins, so we’re capable of doing anything,” Vitello said. “But now we’re reaching a part of the season where you (need) to have a little bit more sense of urgency, and at least for me and the conversations I’ve had with folks, everything’s day to day for me. Just got to look for any area we can improve, even if it’s just an inch.”