Down on the Farm: What We Learned From Week 2

1.  David Villar 3B and Sean Roby 3B/1B hit home runs.  Villar quietly had a great season last year for AA Richmond and hit 20 HR's.  He already has 5 for the AAA Sacramento River Cats.  Roby just a quietly hit 19 HR's for A+ Eugene last year and tops Villar with 6 already for Richmond.  Despite all that, neither of them are frontrunners to be the Giants 3B of the future.  That would be Casey Schmitt 3B who is at at Eugene to start the season. 

2.  Brett Auerbach can play many positions.  Auerbach's primary position is catcher but he also played all 3 OF positions last year over 2 levels.  This season he's already played C, 2B, 3B, LF and CF for AA Richmond Flying Squirrels.  Even better he's slashing .294/.400/.471 in a tough hitting environment.  This week, Kap used Joey Bart as a DH on a day Curt Casali was the catcher.  The risk in that is if Casali has to come out for some reason they lose the DH for the rest of the game.  A utility player who can be more than an emergency catcher would largely eliminate that risk.

3.  Marco Luciano SS is off to a hot start in A+ Eugene.  Luciano is slashing .320/.357/.520 after 7 games.  It's still early but on the negative side Patrick Bailey C and Hunter Bishop OF are still struggling hitting .190 and .148 respectively.

4.  Kyle Harrison LHP's second A+ start was even better than his first.  Harrison's line for his first start was 4 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 7 K's.  He bettered that for his second start, 5 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 9 K's.  

5. Will Bednar RHP's second start went better than his first.  First a reminder that Will Bednar was the Giants first round draft pick last year.  His first full season start was marred by 2 walks and 5 HBP's in 3.2 innings of work.  More worrisome, his FB reportedly topped out at 92 MPH.  His second start went better was his FB was reported to be 93-95 MPH and he walked just 1 batter and struck out 5 in 4 IP.

Bonus:  Pace of Play rules work.  I haven't been able to verify this one but I saw a Twitter report that under new pace of play rules which were enforced over this weekend, average length of games was shortened by 30 min.  That's significant and would definitely make the game more enjoyable to watch.  The first game it was enforced at AA level, Giants pitching prospect Kai-Wei Teng RHP who is known to be a "deliberate" worker, was reportedly dinged with a ball call for taking too long between pitches.  It does work both ways as Pirates Prospect Nick Gonzalez 2B is said to have gotten hit with a strike call for taking too long.  That's all good.  Looking forward to some meaningful measures to shorten games at the MLB level.