![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/DrewCavanaughcatcher-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nDrew 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.<\/p>\n
Over the past three minor-league seasons, not long after the San Francisco Giants drafted him in the 17th round in 2023, he\u2019s kept a notebook to jot down reminders and inspirational refrains.<\/p>\n
Following a disappointing 2024 season, his first full year as a professional baseball player, he starts each entry with the same phrase.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t forget what it\u2019s like not to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI live by that quote,\u201d Cavanaugh said.<\/p>\n
Cavanaugh\u2019s first full year contained plenty of emptiness. How do you shed an \u201corganizational player\u201d label when you seldom see the field? How do you convince minor-league coaches and coordinators that you\u2019re worthy of an opportunity when it\u2019s a struggle to crack the lineup at Low-A San Jose?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go up and play four or five games in a row and think, \u2018Wow, this is great,\u2019\u2009\u201d Cavanaugh said. \u201cThen I\u2019d go back down (to San Jose), and it\u2019d 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\u2019t playing every day. That was my driving force. It\u2019s been my driving force ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019 3-1 loss to the Atlanta Braves on the shores of McCovey Cove.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt great,\u201d Cavanaugh said of his single that scooted past Braves second baseman Ozzie Albies in the fifth inning. \u201cI 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 \u2026 it was just a surreal moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Giants reached the mathematical halfway point of the season with a 33-48 record, but don\u2019t tell someone like Cavanaugh that the next 81 games won\u2019t mean a darn thing. Standings aside, every opportunity to play is precious. If you need a reminder, there\u2019s a notebook in Cavanaugh\u2019s locker. Flip to any page.<\/p>\n
The club promoted Cavanaugh from Sacramento on Friday because catcher Daniel Susac experienced back discomfort and made an early exit from Thursday afternoon\u2019s game against the Athletics. The Giants could have summoned Jes\u00fas Rodr\u00edguez, who was already on the 40-man roster and spent time in the big leagues earlier this season.<\/p>\n
But Rodr\u00edguez is a work in progress with the glove, and it\u2019s apparent that backup catcher Eric Haase has limitations as well. Cavanaugh is their best defender, and while he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The early read on Susac\u2019s injury is that he\u2019s only expected to miss the minimum 10-day period on the injured list. Cavanaugh might not be with the Giants for long.<\/p>\n
Even so, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Cavanaugh didn\u2019t have to wait quite so long between starts last year \u2014 he played in 91 games and amassed 402 plate appearances \u2014 but he was as itinerant as a player can be whose job is to squat at home. Cavanaugh played for four of the Giants\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
Yet it wasn\u2019t enough to earn an invitation to major-league camp this past spring, which can be difficult to accept when you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
At least the Giants summoned Cavanaugh from minor-league camp five or six times to fill out Cactus League exhibition rosters. Except, well \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cI never got in a game,\u201d he said. \u201cNot once. Isn\u2019t that crazy?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really fell in our lap,\u201d Niekro said in a phone interview on Friday. \u201cI saw him throw and said, \u2018OK, I don\u2019t care if he gets a hit all year. That\u2019s gonna play.\u2019 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\u2019 hitters, or as much as we could provide for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe 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\u2019s what Drew did for us. I was really happy when the Giants drafted him because, well, it\u2019s the Giants, and he wasn\u2019t coming back to us anyway. He\u2019d gotten his credits up to transfer to a D-I.\u201d<\/p>\n
Niekro would get occasional texts and pictures from longtime Giants coach Ron Wotus in extended spring training with updates on Cavanaugh\u2019s progress. There was no way Niekro would miss the kid\u2019s debut. He stayed up late to watch Friday night\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo freaking cool,\u201d Niekro said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n The Giants promoted Cavanaugh from Sacramento because catcher Daniel Susac experienced back discomfort. (Justine Willard \/ Imagn Images)<\/p>\n
Cavanaugh\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
They saw an uneven game that included a few highlight defensive plays \u2014 right fielder Victor Bericoto made a diving catch and first baseman Rafael Devers smothered a ground ball to record an out \u2014 in addition to a few lapses in the field.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s double, which led to a run in the fifth.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s flyout to shallow center field and was doubled off before he could retreat to first base.<\/p>\n
The Adames mistake was the inattentive or overaggressive base running that the Giants saw so often from Mauricio Dub\u00f3n during his four seasons from 2019-22. But Dub\u00f3n matured and turned himself into a useful niche player with the Houston Astros and now in Atlanta, where he\u2019s having a career-best offensive season.<\/p>\n
Dub\u00f3n 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\u2019s staff, are now thriving with the Braves.<\/p>\n
Michael Schwartze, the Giants\u2019 former analytics and game strategy director, is Atlanta\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re Kapler\u2019s castoffs,\u201d Dub\u00f3n said, smiling.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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, \u201cI think I\u2019m going to trade for Yastrzemski.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s impossible to tell what Cavanaugh\u2019s future holds, but there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the smallest sample, but Cavanaugh got off to a solid start Friday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe took confident swings,\u201d Giants manager Tony Vitello said. \u201cYou didn\u2019t see anything out of place. He wasn\u2019t out of control. And then I\u2019d 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\u2019t notice him. \u2026 You (wouldn\u2019t) realize that he just got here this morning, if that makes sense. That\u2019s not \u2018vote for him for the All-Star team\u2019 stuff or anything like that (but) it speaks to how good he was back there.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looked comfortable, made the dugout comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
As comfortable as the home dugout can look with a 33-48 record, anyway. With so much of the schedule remaining, it can\u2019t hurt to have someone like Cavanaugh on the roster to remind everyone that the next game is a gift, not an obligation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had walk-offs, we\u2019ve had good road wins, good home wins, so we\u2019re capable of doing anything,\u201d Vitello said. \u201cBut now we\u2019re 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\u2019ve had with folks, everything\u2019s day to day for me. Just got to look for any area we can improve, even if it\u2019s just an inch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drew Cavanaugh is a 24-year-old catcher and a child of the digital information era who uses a very…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,2329,99],"class_list":["post-729445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}