How Giants ended up with top international hitter in back-to-back years originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SAN FRANCISCO — When Buster Posey took over as the Giants president of baseball operations after the 2024 MLB season, some around the game wondered just how plugged in the future Hall of Famer and father of four would really be as a lead executive. The organization’s international scouting department found out pretty quickly that Posey intended to be involved at every level.
Not long after he took over, Posey made a trip to Boca Chica in the Dominican Republic to visit the Felipe Alou Baseball Academy, home to the organization’s Latin American prospects. He met with staff members and teenage players, and one day he watched as two promising young shortstops took batting practice, pulling his phone out to capture some of their swings.
“It meant a lot to our staff and to the players that were there,” senior director of international scouting Joe Salermo said on Thursday’s Giants Talk podcast. “It was an incredible power statement by him.”
It was also a chance for Posey to get an up-close look at a department that right now is running as smoothly as any in the organization.
One of those young shortstops, Josuar Gonzalez, was the top international position player available in last year’s class. The other, Luis Hernandez, was the best player available this year, and both are now Giants. Hernandez, a 17-year-old from Venezuela, signed Thursday morning for $5 million.
Picking up the top international position player in back-to-back years would be a coup for any organization. But for the Giants, who have had trouble with development over the past decade in general, it’s stunning.
It also could prove to be transformative for an organization that has been stuck in neutral at the MLB level for four seasons.
At the Winter Meetings last month, Giants officials spent hours discussing not just free agents, but their own internal options. The room lit up one day when Gonzalez was brought up. Posey described the reviews as “glowing” for an 18-year-old who hit .288 with 33 stolen bases in 52 games in the Dominican Summer League.
“As much as anything, I think you just look at him and you’re like, ‘This is different,'” Posey said. “You watch the way he walks around the batting tunnel before he even takes a swing. You listen to the ball coming off his bat. The defense is very real. I think you just combine all of that.
“He’s a very confident kid, too. It’ll be exciting to watch him. A long way to go, still, but it’ll be exciting to watch him.”
Gonzalez was so impressive in his debut, particularly on defense, that some scouts already grade him just about on par with top Giants prospect Bryce Eldridge. When Eldridge graduates from prospect lists this summer, Gonzalez vs. Hernandez will be a fascinating conversation for evaluators.
Nearly all of this year’s bonus pool went to Hernandez, who will join a group of young Giants from Latin America that started to arrive stateside last year. Even before he signed, five of the organization’s top 10 prospects were international prospects, led by Gonzalez, who is currently ranked No. 82 overall by MLB Pipeline and is one of just six 18-year-olds on their top 100.
Gonzalez signed for just under $3 million and has drawn comparisons to Francisco Lindor, who was worth 5.9 bWAR last season. With that season alone, he gave the New York Mets nearly as much value as the Giants have gotten from all of their international prospects since their title years.
In a recent study released by Baseball America, the Giants (9.2) ranked 26th in bWAR from international prospects signed since 2012. There have been 16 teams to receive at least 30 bWAR over the same span, and the Giants are light years behind several rivals, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, who lead the way at 80.2 bWAR. If you go back further, it’s just as bad.
Other than Pablo Sandoval, who signed out of Venezuela in 2002, the Giants got virtually nothing from international prospects between the days of Juan Marichal and Orlando Cepeda and their title years.
As the entire farm system started to dry up after the 2014 title, Brian Sabean and Bobby Evans identified Latin America as one area where they needed to make huge strides. In 2015, big changes were made behind the scenes to further that effort.
The entire scouting department had been run by John Barr, but with the international market exploding, Salermo was promoted and named director of international scouting, allowing one part of the scouting department to focus on college and high school players and the other to focus only on international prospects.
Evans, the GM at the time, views that as one of two changes that allowed the Giants to improve their standing in the international market, the other being the implementation of a slotting system in 2017. Salermo was later promoted to senior director by Farhan Zaidi, with Felix Peguero taking his previous title.
“Joe had a lot of energy for it and his passion stood out,” said Evans, who is back with the Giants as an advisor to Posey. “We put together, I think, a dream team of experience and administration and scouting prowess. We ramped up our scouting staff and we’ve continued to invest in it. We knew how important it was.”
It can take half a decade for even the best Latin American prospects to reach the big leagues, and the progress behind the scenes had a similar pace. The Giants tried to make a splash in 2015 by giving $6 million to Lucius Fox, but they ended up cashing that chip a year later in a deal for Matt Moore.
It turned out that smaller signings over that period would be much more impactful, anyway.
Salermo’s first class included Camilo Doval, who signed for $100,000. A year later, a skinny but talented right-hander named Randy Rodriguez signed for $50,000. In those two, the Giants got back-to-back All-Stars who originally signed for about what the 26th man on the roster gets for just one month in the big leagues.
“When we started going, things became a little more clear as to the type of player we wanted to get and the type of pitching we wanted to get,” Salermo said. “We started to focus on the process and how we can get better as a whole and create depth to the organization.”
While Doval and Rodriguez were huge success stories, Marco Luciano — signed for $2.6 million — never panned out. The jury is still out on Luis Matos, who was part of Luciano’s class.
Those two are reminders that international additions are even more unpredictable than players taken in the regular draft. Because most are signed when they should be high school sophomores, there’s a much wider range of outcomes. Salermo smiled during a recent interview and noted, “You’re dealing with an age group that changes every month, basically.”
“There’s going to always be misses, but I think if we take a chance on premium position guys, guys with good makeup, guys with athleticism, guys that can adapt to the information, it’s a step in the right direction,” he said.
Both Gonzalez and Hernandez check those boxes, and they’ll give the Giants one of the best infield collections in the minors. They used their first-round pick on Tennessee infielder Gavin Kilen last summer, and their No. 4 prospect is 18-year-old Venezuelan Jhonny Level, who signed for about $1 million in 2024 and dominated the Arizona Complex League last summer before a cameo with the San Jose Giants. In the ACL, Level was teammates with Argenis Camaya (19) and Keyner Martinez (21), who are currently the organization’s two best right-handed pitching prospects.
The influx comes at a time when the Giants are set long-term with most of their big league infield, but the hope is that one of the additions will be ready to step in and become a star if Willy Adames has to eventually move off shortstop. The reality is that the group also simply gives Posey and general manager Zack Minasian a lot of options.
If they are to swing a major deal for a high-end starter or established outfielder at the deadline or next offseason, the odds are good that a young infielder will be the centerpiece of the package.
For now, the Giants are happy to have and develop them all, and to finally be in this position. They might have struck out in a lot of other areas in recent years, but their international scouting group has become a well-oiled machine, one capable of edging the rest of the industry in back-to-back years.
They all got together Thursday to close the loop with Hernandez, a player they first saw in 2020. Salermo said Hernandez reminds him of former A’s star Miguel Tejada and current Colorado Rockies shortstop Ezequiel Tovar, and while Gonzalez has the higher ceiling, Hernandez is viewed as having a very high floor.
Hernandez is so advanced that he may skip the Dominican Summer League, which would allow him to join Gonzalez in the Arizona Complex League this season. From there, the Giants hope it will be a race to the big leagues.
“They know each other, they’ve been around each other,” Salermo said. “With social media now, they know the bonus, they know the hype. I think they’re both competitive kids, I think they’re both great kids. I think the future is very bright for the San Francisco Giants.”
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