Prospect Notes: Giants List Updates, the Quinn Priester Trade, and More

During the course of my spring training coverage (especially right at the end), I ran into the Giants affiliates a couple of times as I trailed the Brewers and Dodgers farm systems. I saw enough to make a few tweaks to the Giants prospect list, which I have brief notes on below. You can see the complete updated list over on The Board. I’ve also included notes on a few recent trades.

Toolsy Outfielders With Strikeout Risk Who Have Moved Up

Dakota Jordan’s swing has changed (mostly his posture throughout the swing), and I think it gives him a better chance to hit. I was way out on him making any kind of viable contact before last year’s draft, but he has loud showcase tools (power/speed) and now we’ll see if the proactive changes make a difference for his contact ability. He has also looked good in center field, including highlight reel play in which he collided with the wall at Papago Park, but then forgot how many outs there were and spiked the baseball:

I, for one, appreciate the effort level and intensity on what was one of the last days of minor league camp, and could care less about the faux pas.

Outfielder Bo Davidson came to camp looking even stronger than he was last year and has another gear of power. This group of 40+ FV Giants (along with Rayner Arias) is still very volatile, and any of them might strike out a third of the time. But their tools and physical abilities give them some of the best upside among the position players in the system, and their new FVs reflect that.

Back From Injury

Gerelmi Maldonado and Liam Simon (both 40 FVs) have been on various parts of the Giants list before, but both struggled with some combination of injury and wildness over the last couple seasons. Maldonado was peaking around 98 mph a few years ago but missed 2024 recovering from TJ. Last season, Simon had a 60-day IL stint caused by a balky elbow, and when he rehabbed from it on the complex, his stuff was way down and he couldn’t throw strikes. Both of them are back and throwing 100. Even if they only sustain some of this early-season uptick, they’re both in position to be good middle relievers. If they sustain all of it, their ceilings reside in higher-leverage situations.

Carlos Gutierrez broke out playing for Team Mexico during WBSC U18 play in the fall of 2022; he signed with the Giants the following January, then raked in the 2023 DSL. Though he looked hitterish during 2024 extended spring training, a back injury forced Gutierrez out for all but a few games of the regular season last year. He’s back, and looks healthy and stronger than before; the strength piece is important considering Gutierrez is a likely corner outfielder. He broke camp with San Jose and is definitely on the radar. Let’s see how his hit tool trends across 2025 since he’s effectively skipping a level.

Small-School Arms

Hunter Dryden’s (40+ FV) stuff isn’t better so much as he carried his 2024 instructs look into 2025. The former D-III two-way player is perhaps the best on-mound athlete in the Giants’ entire system, his mid-90s fastball has vertical ride, and he mixes in two shapely breaking balls that play nicely off his heater. He’s on the smaller side, but he’s a premium athlete and might still be scratching the surface of his skill as a hurler.

Niko Mazza (35+ FV) was last year’s eighth rounder out of Southern Miss, where he sat 92-94 as a starter for most of his final two years with the Golden Eagles. I saw him just before camp broke and he was 94-96 with a plus, laterally-oriented slider. He’s a powerful low-to-the-ground athlete with a drop-and-drive style delivery that creates uphill angle on his fastball, and his slider has so much length that at times it’s hard for Mazza to control it. This is a nice two-pitch middle relief foundation, and Mazza seems to be improving pretty fast.

The same is true of Drake George (35+ FV), who came out of NAIA Lewis-Clark State in Idaho (they’re the Warriors) but was largely seen on Cape Cod in the lead up to the 2024 draft. There, he was sitting 93 and showed a promising breaking ball. At the start of his first full pro season in 2025, he’s sitting 94-96 with a hammer upper-70s curveball. His delivery is fairly violent and he has relief projection even though it looks like he’ll be developed as a starter for at least a little while.

Stuff Is Up

Jacob Bresnahan’s secondary pitches – a slider and changeup – were tweaked last year prior to the Alex Cobb trade in which he was acquired from Cleveland. Neither is especially nasty on its own, but they at least force hitters to think about both sides of the plate, whereas before Bresnahan was only succeeding via elevated fastballs. He’s also throwing harder this spring, more regularly 93-96, which is up two to three ticks. His fastball already had exciting non-velo characteristics, so now we wait to see if the added arm strength can be sustained throughout the entire season.

Finally, I want to point out Helcris Olivárez and Joel Peguero. Olivárez (as a Rockie) and Peguero (as a Ray) have been prospects before and have changed organizations multiple times during the last few years as they’ve either been injured or plateaued. Both are throwing incredibly hard this spring. Olivárez is still 24 and sitting 96, while Peguero has been up to 102. Both of them have struggled badly with command (mostly Olivárez) or poor fastball shape (Peguero) in the past, enough that they have not been added to the list, but they’re worth noting in this space.

Quinn Priester Trade Thoughts
This morning, the Red Sox flipped Quinn Priester, who they acquired from the Pirates last July (in exchange for Nick Yorke, scouting report here), to the pitching-starved Brewers in exchange for outfield prospect Yophery Rodriguez, a high 2025 draft pick (Comp Round A, 33rd overall), and a player to be named or cash.

Priester (who graduated from rookie eligibility in 2023) was once a Top 100 prospect thanks largely to the quality of his curveball, but even as he had stretches when his fastball sat 95-98 or so, its plane and lack of movement not only created issues with its playability, but also for the performance of Priester’s curveball, which was nasty but easy to ID out of his hand. The Red Sox augmented some of Priester’s pitch usage after they acquired him, as he used a cutter and curveball mix against lefties and sinker/slider mix against righties. To say his changeup took a back seat to the other pitches would be an understatement — it’s in the trunk at this point. It has put Priester in better position to succeed and be a good team’s no. 4/5 starter.

Is that enough to cough up a late first round pick, which is essentially what Milwaukee did here? There are somewhat disparate opinions about the upcoming draft class. I think it’s slightly better than average in the 50-75 range; the tier of player you’d find in a typical second round extends into the third. That sort of depth doesn’t really have an impact on pick 33, but the Brewers’ draft picks are valuable to them because they’re in a smaller market and need to grow their own talent, and their dev group is good at doing exactly that. That’s also part of why this trade should excite Red Sox fans. Boston’s dev group has been sensational since Craig Breslow arrived and now they get to apply that magic to another first round talent in the near future.

Rodriguez is a fine lower-level outfield prospect. He isn’t super toolsy or projectable even though he’s very young, but he has advanced feel for the strike zone and good (if awkward looking) plate coverage. He can spray pitches from foul line to foul line with his punchy all-fields swing, and he projects as a complementary corner outfielder (he’s fast but isn’t a skilled center field defender) with roughly 45-grade contact and power. The main return in this trade is absolutely the draft pick. Rodriguez’s full scouting report has been added to The Board.

Esteury Ruiz Trade Thoughts
Late last week, the Dodgers sent righty Carlos Duran to the Athletics in exchange for woebegone outfielder Esteury Ruiz. Ruiz isn’t rookie eligible anymore, but he’s is in a sort of “prospect limbo,” as he’s been unable to seize hold of a consistent big league role and spent most of 2024 injured with wrist and knee problems. I was a Ruiz skeptic toward the end of his prospect lifetime, but even still, he is tracking south of my 45 FV grade from his time of graduation. At peak, it looked like he’d hook enough doubles and homers down the left field line to be a productive hitter in spite of pretty serious issues against sliders, and that his speed would lead to meaningful impact on defense or on the bases.

None of that has transpired. His swing changed in 2023, with the addition of a leg kick occurring around that time. For whatever reason, he seemed better able to access power when his lower body was more stationary, and his swing was more handsy back in 2022. Monitoring his early look with the Dodgers for mechanical changes or improvement in bat speed will be important. We have a baseline for Esteury’s bat speed from the last couple of years (an average of 72 mph in 2023, then only 70 mph last year, potentially impacted by his wrist), which could give us the rare opportunity to quantify more than just the on-field performance results caused by the developmental changes the Dodgers might make.

Duran has been added to Oakland’s prospect list; you can read about him over on The Board.

Other Stuff

Rule 5 Draft selections who didn’t make their club have been moved back to their original team’s prospect list on The Board. That’s Eiberson Castellano (back to the Phillies from Twins), Evan Reifert (back to the Rays from the Nationals), and Juan Nuñez (back to the Orioles from the Padres).

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