"Development at a major league level"

I enjoy any chance I get to listen to the Razor and Mr. T on KNBR, especially when they have folks from the Giants' organization on. Once you get past Ralph's long expository questions (where he seems to ask and answer half a dozen questions before he runs out of his own answers and finally settles on a question for the guy to answer), sometimes there are some interesting nuggets to be found. For me, one of those nuggets was the perhaps inadvertent admission that some of the Giants young players are, in fact, being developed up in the bigs, instead of in A-ball. For anyone who's watched a Giants game season, this isn't exactly news. But it was somehow satisfying to hear that the Giants are aware that their guys are in over their heads, regardless of the frightening implications for the players and the season.

Yesterday, while interviewing Bobby Evans, the Giants Director of Player Personnel, Ralph asked about the goals for the team this season. Evans said that "It's a tricky thing. . . . With young players, you're going to have players that struggle. . . . When you're developing at a major league level, or finishing the touches of development, it's going to have its bumps in the road."

And this is what it comes down to - development of the young players is occurring at the major league level, not in the minors, where you'd normally expect such development to occur. And that's why we are seeing boneheaded base running, sloppy defense, and guys with a poor approach at the plate. It also speaks poorly for the development of position players in the Giants organization if so few (or any?) of those players are truly ready for this level.

Sure, we're getting some flashes of excitement. We haven't seen guys running hard around the bases like this in years. But at the same time, if we don't start seeing a general mastery of the basics by the kids, then we will have wasted yet another season. And we may have ruined the prospects for these guys by rushing them into the majors before they were ready.

But as usual, I'm hoping to be proven wrong. Let's hope that by the end of the month, we see a team of guys that display at least a basic competence at the major league level. If not, then it'll be a really long summer.