{"id":525251,"date":"2026-03-09T20:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T20:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/525251\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T20:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T20:29:10","slug":"giants-projected-to-take-uc-santa-barbaras-ace-in-the-2026-mlb-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/525251\/","title":{"rendered":"Giants projected to take UC Santa Barbara’s ace in the 2026 MLB Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

After being one of the most consistent teams in the 2010s, the San Francisco Giants<\/a> have been incredibly average over the last few seasons. Over the past four years, the club has maintained a .500 average, give or take a few games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Given their nearly .500 status over the years, that has not helped them in terms of drafting. The last time they held a top-five first-round pick was back in 2018, but not anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the draft lottery back in December, San Francisco was given the fourth overall pick. Here, they will have some of the top talent to choose from.\u00a0<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Giants sign ex-Padres, Mets 3.76 ERA lefty who transitioned from starter to reliever<\/a><\/p>\n

Giants projected to take UC Santa Barbara’s ace in the 2026 MLB Draft<\/p>\n

With only three other teams drafting in front of them, their big board is clearer than that of other teams selecting later. There is always the case that a front office could “snipe” another front office’s top pick, but not when only a few are selecting in front of you.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here, SF can put together multiple players they would like to select and won’t have to worry about 10 teams selecting in front of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With this in mind, Bleacher Report’s Joel Reuter<\/a> suggests they will take a shot on UC Santa Barbara’s ace, Jackson Flora.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Flora spent the 2025 season pitching behind first-round pick Tyler Bremner in the Gauchos rotation. Now he is the unquestioned ace of the staff and a strong candidate to be the first arm off the board. The 6″5′, 205-pound righty has been up to 100 mph with his fastball while showing a terrific changeup\/slider pairing, and he had a 1.50 ERA and 28-to-7 strikeout-to-walk ratio through 24 innings.”<\/p>\n

Now, if the Chicago White Sox<\/a>, Tampa Bay Rays<\/a>, and Minnesota Twins<\/a> do not draft a pitcher, it could be on the Giants to take arguably the best arm on the board with their first-round pick.<\/p>\n

More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After being one of the most consistent teams in the 2010s, the San Francisco Giants have been incredibly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-525251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}