SAN FRANCISCO — If the Giants clubhouse were a fourth-grade classroom, then the first week of school would include nonstop cupcake parties.
Jordan Hicks celebrated his 28th birthday on Friday. Heliot Ramos turned 25 on Sunday. And during Tuesday night’s homestand opener against the Milwaukee Brewers, you could’ve sung one chorus of “Happy Birthday” to starting pitcher Landen Roupp (26) and one chorus of “Feliz Cumpleaños” to second baseman Marco Luciano (23).
But those 5-foot balloons in the postgame clubhouse following the Giants’ 3-2 loss? The shiny, silver ones that signified No. 10? Those were brought in to celebrate a different milestone. They were for injured left-hander Robbie Ray, who was celebrating 10 years of major-league service time.
Players who reach 10 years of service time max out their pension benefits. They earn no-trade rights if they’ve been with the same organization for the past five years. Mostly, though, achieving 10 years of service is an occasion that players commemorate because of how difficult it is.
Getting to the big leagues isn’t the hardest part. Staying there is.
Luciano and Roupp are rookies. Ramos is not, although he entered this season having played in just 34 major-league games. Hicks is pitching in his sixth big-league season but his first as a starting pitcher. So he’s been discovering a ton about himself along with the rest of his younger teammates.
Will any or all of them achieve 10 years of service time? It’s something to wish for.
So for this week’s takeaways, here’s a proposed birthday present that could help each of them in their quest to be productive major leaguers who can contribute to the Giants’ aspirations for better times ahead.
Marco Luciano: Positional clarity
Luciano finally got a break in the fourth inning Tuesday night after he fumbled the short hop on a relay throw from right fielder Mike Yastrzemski. He was charged with an error, but the official scorer changed her decision a half-hour later and gave the error to Yastrzemski.
It’s the only bit of charity that Luciano has received in what’s been a disjointed and disconcerting season. He made damaging errors in a seven-game trial at shortstop in May. That wide avenue to at-bats as designated hitter following the July 30 trade of Jorge Soler turned into just five starts there before he was bounced back to Triple-A Sacramento. Now he’s learning second base in the big leagues and his teammate at shortstop, Tyler Fitzgerald, crashed into him Sunday in San Diego because Fitzgerald didn’t trust him to catch a routine pop-up.
Scouts have been saying that Luciano wouldn’t stick at shortstop from the time he signed as a 16-year-old. Many of the Giants’ internal evaluations agree. But Luciano has stayed at shortstop because 1) an infielder has more industry value as a potential trade piece, 2) minor-league metrics suggested that his defense could be playable there, and 3) he was still so young that he had time on his side to improve.
It might be time to listen to those scouts.
Perhaps Luciano will show defensive growth over these final 17 games. Or perhaps he will reinforce the opinions of many within the organization that he should’ve been moved to left field two years ago. Either way, the best gift the Giants can give Luciano is to make up their minds and have a conversation with him before he gets on a flight home to the Dominican Republic.
Luciano said he will skip playing for Escogido in the Dominican Winter League. Instead, he’ll work out with Edwin Castillo, who has been his trainer since he was a 12-year-old turning heads on the international scouting circuit. The pressurized environment of winter ball can be intense and Luciano said he’s better served to take a break to work on himself. After the year he’s had, you couldn’t blame him for wanting to take a step back from trying to fulfill the expectations of others.
Luciano has been professional with reporters all season, saying he is focused only on the things he can control. But he’d have every right to be confused or upset at the lack of a cohesive or consistent plan for his development. He couldn’t be surprised by a trade at this point, either. (Two offseasons ago, the Giants were ready to move him to the A’s for catcher Sean Murphy, but Oakland chose to deal him to the Atlanta Braves, instead.)
For now, Luciano plans to work at both middle infield positions this winter unless he hears differently. So if the Giants really are ready to move him to left field, they could at least do him the courtesy of telling him in two weeks instead of literally springing it on him in Scottsdale.
Landen Roupp: Setting up his curveball
Roupp was making his 20th appearance of the season but his first major-league start Tuesday night, and if you watched his five innings against the Brewers, you’d understand why so many of his coaches and teammates raved about him in the spring. His curveball is a special pitch. It’s even more special when he’s able to get ahead and use it with count leverage.
Roupp threw 35 curveballs out of 68 pitches and generated seven whiffs among 19 swings. He was a tough-luck loser and gave up two runs in the first inning when the Brewers came out swinging against him and four of the first five batters collected hits. But Roupp kept the ball off the barrel in the next four innings and didn’t issue a walk all night.
“I felt like I was pounding the zone and it could have been the reason I gave up some early hits,” Roupp said. “But I’d rather give up hits than walk guys and let them score.”
If Roupp isn’t walking batters, he’s a good bet to be effective. Entering the game, he had issued 19 walks in 31 2/3 innings. He also has become more and more stingy at giving up hits, especially the damaging kind, ever since returning from an elbow capsule sprain. In nine games since Aug. 9, he’s held opponents to a .169 average. He’s faced 156 batters this season and has allowed just one home run.
“It was walks early on and getting behind in counts and not really throwing his fastball for strikes,” Giants manager Bob Melvin said. “So here recently, he’s been doing that, which keeps them off his offspeed stuff. He’s throwing some changeups, some harder breaking balls, too. He has the repertoire. He’s been a starter before. We like him both ways. But it’s good to see him get stretched out some and give us five innings and keep us in the game.”
Roupp has the varied repertoire to start. He throws a sinking, two-seam fastball and he modified his changeup to emulate Logan Webb’s circle change version. Roupp also mentioned working on a slider and a four-seamer, which could be effective when used sparingly at the top of the zone. It’s a pitch that Webb has held onto and breaks out a half-dozen times a start, usually to good effect.
“I think it’s just showing other pitches,” Roupp said. “It’s a pretty good feeling. I came in yesterday on the off day and they told me I was starting. Couldn’t have a better birthday present.”
Roupp commands his curveball so well that he can use it to both sides of the plate like a fastball. It’s tempting to leverage that kind of breaking ball as a reliever. But he would provide so much more value if he can sharpen up the repertoire to start.
Heliot Ramos: A solid finish
Nothing that happens over the next 17 games will take the shine off Ramos’ breakout season. He’s the Giants’ first homegrown outfielder to make an All-Star team since Chili Davis in 1986 and there’s little doubt he will be viewed as a starting outfielder when spring training begins next year.
But final impressions tend to linger and while Ramos is getting his hits, he also has a .273 on-base percentage since the break. Nobody bat flips a walk quite like Ramos, but he’s drawn just eight of them (against 48 strikeouts) in his last 45 games.
After he hit his 20th home run Aug. 25 at Seattle, and was asked whether he still has a shot to be the first Giant to hit 30 in a season since Barry Bonds, Ramos offered a “why not” response. Whether his swing started to get too big or not, he hasn’t hit a home run since then. And he acknowledged there have been times in recent weeks when he’s gotten away from the patiently aggressive approach that made him so successful.
So what is his goal for the rest of the season?
“To be patient and try to have a perfect at-bat all the time,” Ramos said. “Have that mentality of, ‘I’m better than him.’ Not in a bad way but just being competitive all the time.”
Ramos quickly pivoted to offer a second part to his answer. His other goal is to help the entire team finish strong.
“A lot of us didn’t start the year together in the big leagues,” Ramos said. “Then everybody came up later. So it will take some time. But we’re finishing strong and I think we’ll be better for it as a team next year.”
Jordan Hicks: Bonus time
Hicks got to experience life as a ringer Tuesday night. He made a rehab start in Low-A San Jose’s California League playoff series opener and pitched two innings. Hicks allowed two runs, but neither was earned. He allowed one hit, struck out two and didn’t walk a batter. He threw 19 of 27 pitches for strikes.
The Giants expect Hicks to return from shoulder inflammation and pitch out of the bullpen a few times down the stretch, which would cap a season in which he posted a 2.82 ERA in his first 15 starts before the innings began to take their toll.
“This was a real learning experience for him,” Melvin said on Saturday. “You go at it with a certain mindset as a reliever who had to go into ‘pace yourself’ mode. Early in the season, it worked really well for him, but he had some (extra velocity) when he needed it. When we got a little further along, it wasn’t there when he needed it. So it was time to take a break.
“But based on where he got this year, we can get to another level with him.”
There’s another level that Hicks can reach over the next two weeks. His four-year, $44 million contract includes an annual $2 million in innings-based incentives and he needs to record just four outs to earn the next payout of $83,333. He’d earn an additional $83,333 for each 10 innings he throws beyond that.
Happy birthday, indeed.
(Top photo of Landen Roupp: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)
