The hometown hero was on the board. As was the top high-school pitcher for an organization lacking in top-end pitching talent. Nearly ready-made college pitchers, too, were still dangling, legitimate options to step into a taxi squad as soon as this (abbreviated) season.
The Giants made “a pretty easy decision,” Farhan Zaidi said, by passing over all of the above, going with yet another catcher for an organization that has one star catcher and another on the rise.
This is where the pitchforks rise, the mobs calling for Turlock’s Tyler Soderstrom, for young Oregon flamethrower Mick Abel, for Oklahoma’s Cade Cavalli. Let the Giants explain why NC State catcher Patrick Bailey is not causing much second-guessing within the organization.
“Simply put, he was in a spot on our board where — we’re in the business of best available player,” amateur scouting director Michael Holmes said in a Zoom news conference Wednesday night, a successful first venture into the new normal. “It was just too good of a talent for us not to be in play on. Everybody that we sent in to see him — despite the fact it was a shorter season — every guy that came out of there felt really good about his ability, both on the offensive and defensive side. And we really think we got a guy that can impact the game on both sides of the baseball. Guys like that, you can never have too many of them in the system.”
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