Tuesday was deadline day for major league teams to make changes to their 40-man rosters, in order to protect their prospects from getting poached by rival clubs in the Dec. 10 Rule 5 Draft. The San Francisco Giants, coming off a disappointing 81-81 season and missing the playoffs for a fourth straight year and eighth in the last nine, went into the day with no vacancies on their 40-man roster, and ended the day with no changes.
President of baseball operations Buster Posey, evidently, deemed none of the Giants’ minor league prospects who are eligible for the Rule 5 Draft worth keeping, leaving all of them vulnerable to being taken by any other team — perhaps reflective of the fact that the Giants’ farm system is rated only 20th in baseball, according to final rankings for this season put together by Bleacher Report.
Some of Posey’s decisions were surprising, however. Three of the Giants’ first-round draft picks from the past seven years went unprotected. Reggie Crawford, taken in 2022, Will Bednar — brother of the New York Yankees’ David Bednar and drafted in 2021 — and 2019 No. 10 overall pick Hunter Bishop were all excluded from the 40-man roster, meaning that when the Rule 5 Draft takes place on Dec. 10, any of them could be taken by another organization.
But according to MLB.com minor league baseball experts Jonathan Mayo and Jim Callis, in a report published Tuesday, Posey’s toughest decision involved none of the Giants’ high draft picks, but instead a right-handed pitcher signed in 2021 as an international amateur free agent out of Palo Negro, Venezuela, Gerelmi Maldonado.
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Despite a setback with Tommy John surgery that caused him to miss the entire 2024 season, Maldonado has seen his velocity rise since being signed for $145,600 at the age of 17. At that time, his fastball topped out in the low 90s. Within a year he had it up to 97 mph and even after his surgery, Maldonado can now hit triple digits.
“Maldonado can reach 101 mph with late life on his fastball and can overpower hitters with a sweeping 82-85 mph slider as well. Tommy John surgery in December 2023 cost him all of the following season and means he hasn’t progressed past Single-A, where he recorded a 3.97 ERA with 69 strikeouts in 59 innings this year,” wrote Mayo and Callis.
Though the Giants are clearly prepared to let Maldonado go, Posey may have been taking a calculated risk by leaving the 21-year-old fireballer unprotected from the Rule 5 Draft. Under MLB rules, a player selected must be placed on the major league roster of the team that takes him and kept there for a full season, or returned to his original team.
Posey may be gambling that no other team is willing to promote a pitcher who has yet to throw an inning above the Single-A level straight to the big leagues with no option to send him down to the minors.
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