The San Francisco Giants are struggling offensively at shortstop.
Nick Ahmed — who the Giants signed to a minor league deal on February 26 — is hitting just .222 on the season, with 1 extra base hit and 4 RBIs.
As a team, the 4-8 Giants are tied for 24th in the MLB in hits at shortstop (8).
Perhaps this should have been expected. With Brandon Crawford manning shortstop since 2011, the Giants haven’t had to worry about the position’s production for 13 seasons. But that has now changed, with Crawford playing for the St. Louis Cardinals.
Luckily for San Francisco fans, their organization’s top prospect appears ready to solve their shortstop woes.
Here’s what you need to know about Marco Luciano, San Francisco’s (near) future franchise shortstop:
Giants’ Luciano is More Than MLB Ready
Minor League Baseball can’t contain Luciano.
Through 9 games with San Francisco’s AAA affiliate, the Sacramento River Cats, Luciano is hitting a staggering .371 with an .946 OPS.
Although he hasn’t hit any home runs yet this season, Luciano’s 55 career minor league home runs across 301 games proves that his bat carries a lot of pop.
Luciano — who’s the Giants’ top prospect and MLB’s 10th-ranked shortstop prospect, according to MLB.com — can also hit the ball to both gaps, and has also shown an ability to steal bases.
In fact, Luciano crushed a nearly 100 mph double off of 2023 World Series hero Jordan Montgomery on April 7, while Montgomery is working his way toward debuting for Arizona Diamondbacks.
One downside to Luciano’s offensive skillset in the past has been his strikeout rate. In 2022, Luciano struck out 100 times over 74 games, and only tallied 46 walks.
However, Luciano seems to have fixed that in 2024. He currently boasts a near 1:1 walk to strikeout ratio, with only 12 K’s and 9 walks to this point.
Strikeouts aside, Luciano has been impressing the Giants for years.
But why isn’t he in the MLB yet?
Injuries and Defense Have Slowed Luciano Down
One reason the 22-year-old Luciano isn’t with San Francisco yet is that he missed a large chunk of the Giants’ 2024 spring training due to a hamstring injury.
Giants first-year manager Bob Melvin told MLB.com’s Maria Guardado on March 8 that this injury made it tough to assess Luciano’s readiness to start the 2024 season.
“It’s not like Marco has gotten a lot of consistent at-bats.” Melvin said. “Obviously, the hamstring thing set him back quite a bit. We want to make sure we get him a little deeper in games and play him a little bit more, but we also have to understand that he’s coming back from an injury that you don’t want to happen again.”
Luciano’s hamstring is now healed. Yet, it’s also worth mentioning that he would be a defensive downgrade at shortstop for the Giants.
His career minor league .934 fielding percentage is significantly below the .961 fielding percentage the Pittsburgh Pirates — who were the MLB’s worst defensive team at shortstop last year — had as a team.
But the Giants need offensive firepower if they’re to contend with the star-studded LA Dodgers in the NL West this season.
And Luciano has a whole lot of firepower.
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