NRIs: pitchers

There are thirteen NRIs who will be in the big league camp next week. Maria Guardado has a piece on the Giants website about them.

Five of them are pitchers, all right-handed: Tristan Beck, Tyler Cyr, Matt Frisbee, Sean Hjelle, and Kai-Wei Teng.

Beck is a starter but has not pitched above A+ ball. He’s a SoCal boy originally and pitched for the Stanford Cardinal. He came to the Giants from the Braves in the Mark Melancon trade. (Melancon is now with the Padres.) He’ll be 25 in June.

Cyr is a Bay Area boy and was the Giants 10th round pick in 2015 (from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University). He was a closer at AA (Richmond).  He’ll be 27 in May.

I hope Frisbee throws a slider!  He’s from North Carolina and was the team’s 15th round pick in 2018. He was a starter at UNC-Greensboro and also in the Giants system at San Jose. He’ll turn 25 in November.

Hjelle (say “jelly”) is from Minnesota and was a 2nd round pick from the same 2018 draft. He was a starter for Kentucky and has made 40 starts for the Giants in the minors. We’ve heard a lot about him and he seems to be on the fast track, jumping from low-A to AA last year. He’s 6′-11″ and would be the tallest major-league pitcher in history (just nipping Randy Johnson) if he makes the bigs. He’ll be 24 in May.

Kai-Wei Teng is from Taiwan. He came to the Giants from the Twins (who had signed him as an international free agent in 2017) in the Sam Dyson trade. He’s a starter with a big body (6′-4″, 260 lbs.) but is still young and has not pitched above Class A. At Augusta he struck out 39 of the 110 batters he faced in 2019 (5 starts, 29 IP). He’s 23 in December.

I’ll look at the position players in another post. Things change fast in Zaidi Land and I have to do my homework to keep up on all these guys! I note that lefty Seth Corry was not on the list. He was drafted out of high school (he’s from Utah) in the 3rd round in 2017. He’s started 50 games in the Giants low minors. FanGraphs has a profile on him and rates him the 11th best prospect in the organization. He turns 23 in November and will probably start the year at AA.

–M.C.

p.s. I should note that the Giants retained their AAA team in Sacramento, the River Cats, as well as their AA team in Richmond (Virginia), the Flying Squirrels. Their new Class A Advanced (A+) will be the Eugene Emeralds. The San Jose Giants drop from A+ to Class A. The minor league contraction eliminated the low-A level and that included the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes. The Class A Augusta GreenJackets are now a Braves affiliate. All MLB teams are now affiliated with four teams at four levels (AAA, AA, A+, and A). There are no AA teams west of Texas.