SAN FRANCISCO -- The 2022-23 Giants offseason was defined by the chase for a superstar and the unprecedented experience they had with Carlos Correa. This time around, even with Brandon Crawford's uncertain future, the Giants won't be looking for a shortstop.
President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said during his end-of-season media session that Marco Luciano is the frontrunner to be the opening day shortstop, with the hope that the job is his for years to come.
"As we sit here now, we want to give Marco Luciano the chance to be the everyday guy next year," Zaidi said Tuesday. "If anything, his call-up was slowed down by the injury he had this year. We would have liked to see him up here a little bit more, but he's worked his way up and earned this opportunity and we're really excited about what we saw the last couple of weeks."
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Luciano missed all of spring training with a back injury and started the season in Double-A, and he ended up spending just 18 games in Triple-A over two stints. In 14 big league games, he had a .231/.333./.308 slash line with three doubles, six walks and 17 strikeouts in 45 plate appearances. The numbers didn't jump off the page, but the ball certainly jumped off Luciano's bat.
Luciano had an average exit velocity of 93 mph, which would have ranked 14th in the big leagues if he had enough plate appearances to qualify, right between Rafael Devers and Julio Rodriguez. It was a very small sample, but his walk rate would have ranked among the league leaders, too.
The Giants saw enough at the plate to be comfortable that Luciano can handle the growing pains of a full rookie season in the big leagues, and they also saw enough defensively. Crawford set the bar impossibly high, but the staff believes Luciano can play shortstop at the big league level, something that was in doubt as he worked his way through the minors because of his size.
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"I'm optimistic and it's hard not to be when remembering how young he is," said bench coach and interim manager Kai Correa, who coaches Giants infielders. "I think this year is a giant step forward in terms of the consistency of work he put in with the player development group, the consistency of work he put in at Papago (in Scottsdale) in the offseason, to become a more solid fielder on the routine play.
"We all are familiar with the high-end skills that he possesses. The raw power, the arm strength, the ability to run for a man of his size, but now we're seeing him make the routine play in a simpler fashion. There's still a lot to be learned, but as a leaping off point, this season we've seen the benefits of the work that he's put in."
Luciano is the best position player prospect the Giants have had since Buster Posey, and he reached the big leagues before his 22nd birthday. If he is able to reach his potential next year, the Giants could benefit beyond just the production on the field.
Luciano's rookie status is intact, and if he were to win Rookie of the Year next season, the Giants would get an additional draft pick at the end of the first round, a tremendously valuable prize. A rule in the new CBA gave the Seattle Mariners the 29th pick (for Julio Rodriguez) last year and will also benefit the Arizona Diamondbacks when Corbin Carroll wins the award next month.
It would be a nice bonus, but for the Giants, this decision comes down to other factors. If Crawford decides to keep playing, it won't be in San Francisco, and the organization finally has a homegrown shortstop ready for a chance to replace the best one in franchise history.
When he was asked about Luciano during an interview that will air on Thursday's Giants Talk Podcast, Zaidi pointed to "the pure talent level" and the "improvement that we saw this year."
"Since we signed him there's been a question of whether he would need to move to third base, and I think what he has demonstrated this year is that he can play a good shortstop, which we saw at the minor league level and at the big league level," Zaidi said. "It's just the improvement, it's the overall trajectory, and then you can just see the talent anytime he's out on the field. For him to really have worked on his baseball skill level to get it up to where it is now, we just really want to give him the opportunity to take that job and run with it."