If you value your sanity, there’s a rule that must be followed when a rookie debuts, and it can be summed up in two words: Calm down. It was the theme of this article about Casey Schmitt-generated excitement, and you’re seeing now why so many caveats were included. It was the theme when Joey Bart came up, and it should probably be something you mutter every time Patrick Bailey does something that reminds you even a little bit of Buster Posey. Baseball is hard. Calm down.
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This rule is helpful for the fan and the player. Set the expectations at a slightly audible buzz and turn the knob up a tick with each positive baseball event. Do not expect a rookie to win Rookie of the Year and a World Series in the same season, then win an MVP two years later. That kind of stuff simply doesn’t happen.
Well, it happened once.
And as long as we’re talking about Posey, we should point out the strange circumstances of his debut. He was called up on Sept. 2, 2009, and didn’t take a single at-bat until a week later. He got three at-bats total for three weeks until he got his first major-league start on Sept. 25. There was no chance to get overly excited about Posey’s debut. He was studied by cryptozoologists who weren’t sure he existed, not baseball fans or analysts. (Also, he started just three games at catcher out of 27 games played in 2010 until Bengie Molina was traded. It was a weird time!)
Which brings us to Luis Matos. On Monday, I wrote a 1,700-word unpublished opus on the difficulties the Giants were going to have trying to fit him onto the active roster, and it ended with two conclusions: “Don’t care, get him up,” and “Someone will get hurt and make these roster considerations moot.” If Mitch Haniger or his agent is reading this, note that I am not legally responsible for anything I write; courts have ruled that my words are considered entertainment, not journalism. But after reviewing the statistics, the potential fit on the roster and other considerations, it seemed like malpractice to keep Matos in Triple A, regardless of how crowded the outfield situation would have been.
Matos is up now, and I’d like to make a formal announcement. I’ve been listening to this new song, and they’re saying that there are no rules. I’m not going to tell you what the appropriate level of excitement is for the Luis Matos Era, capitalized because it is a proper noun. I need you to tell me to calm down.
Welcome to the show!
Here's the KNBR call of Luis Matos' first MLB hit 👏 pic.twitter.com/B9Mh4U70VX
— KNBR (@KNBR) June 14, 2023
Not fair to Matos, and definitely not sensible on my part. It’s not going to help you make sense of the 2023 Giants, either. At least, not yet. We simply don’t know how a 21-year-old who’s just a few months removed from an utterly disappointing season in A-ball is going to adjust to the major leagues. We just don’t. We can look at his batting average, strikeout-to-walk ratio, improved approach, et cetera, and make assumptions, but the “calm down” rule is still very, very much in effect.
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And I’m not going to follow it. This is the most unhinged and unreasonable I plan to be about a position-player prospect transitioning to the majors … ever? Possibly ever. We already explained the muting effects of the Posey weirdness. Pablo Sandoval was so, so, so unexpected that his debut felt like playing with house money. Brandon Belt was definitely a prospect to look forward to, but he was the same age as Matos is now when he was drafted. I was too young to properly appreciate what it meant when Will Clark went from the No. 2 pick in 1985 to the Opening Day first baseman in 1986, so there you go. Matos stands alone.
There are a lot of reasonable reasons for this unreasonableness, to be clear. It starts with the plate discipline, which is nearly impossible to fake. Matos has always had preternatural contact skills, even when he was struggling against older competition. When his numbers were down, the refrain was “Just imagine if he had good swing decisions.” Well, he’s had them all season, showing them off at every level. He saw three pitches out of the zone in his debut, and he didn’t swing at any of them.
Then there are the elite contact skills, which should be immensely enjoyable for a team that should blow past the all-time franchise record for strikeouts. If you’re looking for the last Giants prospect to hit .350 or better in over 200 plate appearances at A-ball or higher, you have to go back over a decade, when Belt hit .352 across three levels in 2010. Posey just missed with a .349 average that season, but if you want to give him an extra point of BA to get him in the discussion, by all means. Belt and Posey were also two of the only prospects over the past 20 years with an ultra-high batting average and a walk-to-strikeout ratio close to 1:1. Both were college players who were older than Matos, so it’s a little tricky to make strong comparisons between all of them, especially across eras.
The most accurate comp, again, is Sandoval, who was 21 when he hit .350 between A-ball and Double A, then streaked from the lower levels of the minors all the way to the majors and hit .345 in his rookie season. Sandoval had a lot more swings outside of the strike zone, so it’s an imperfect comp. It’s apples to oranges, and Sandoval just swung at the strawberry in the middle. Once again, I’m asking you to imagine a Sandoval who plays a stellar center field and zips around the bases like an electric ferret.
But it’s not just the athleticism that’s exciting here; it’s the position. It’s the legacy of Giants outfield prospects, which has been utterly bizarre. The Giants have gone 37 years without sending a homegrown outfielder to the All-Star Game. They’ve gone 45 years without drafting an outfielder who made the All-Star Game with them. Only a handful of teams have had a drought like this over the past decade, but the Giants are creeping up on a half-century.
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The universe owes the Giants an outfielder, then. The baseball gods have been very, very good to the Giants, so maybe it’s greedy to use the word “owes.” Not apologizing for it, though. The last time the Giants had one of those fabled “homegrown All-Star outfielders,” the commercials looked like this:
To illustrate just how unhinged I will be about Matos, here’s something I spent way too much time on. Let’s take the name Matos …
And get rid of a little bit of that “O.”
Now work on cleaning up that “T” a bit.
Flip that “T” around.
Then move this a little bit up, that a little bit down, rotate it just a touch, and … well, well, well, would you look at that?
Willie Mays was listed at 5 feet 10, 170 pounds. Matos is listed at 5-11, 160 pounds. Other than all of this being entirely superfluous and coincidental, it really makes you think.
This is how unreasonable I plan on being. There is simply no way Matos will flop. I am expressly forbidding it. He doesn’t have to break the Curse of Chili Davis and make an All-Star Game, but my guess is he will. He’ll have a season like Luis Arraez is having right now, where he’s unreasonably hot to start the season and MLB.com starts sending push notifications to tell you about his hits. He’ll lead the world in hitting for the first two months of the season, then he’ll lead all outfielders in batting average and WAR and …
Whoops, hyperventilated a little bit. But if you’re feeling the same way, know that you should absolutely not apologize for it. When Matos started the season hitting .304/.399/.444 with more walks than strikeouts in Richmond, he was back on track, and you were right to be giddy. Maybe you’d see him in 2024, even!
Then he hit .398 in Sacramento, with seven home runs. Allow me to swipe some of the Matos fun facts from the aforementioned Monday post that will never be published:
• After being promoted to Triple-A Sacramento, Matos hit .398.
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• He was 22-for-50 (.440) with seven homers in June.
• He had eight games with three hits or more in 24 Triple-A games.
• That was as many three-hit games in Triple A as Posey had in 82 games there. Reminder: Posey was a career .337 hitter in Triple A.
• It was as many three-hit games in Triple A as Belt and Brandon Crawford combined for in 105 games.
• It was more three-hit games in a single season at Triple A than Austin Slater ever had, and Slater played four seasons in Sacramento, with over 1,000 plate appearances and a .316 average.
• Matos had more walks than strikeouts this season, and he has the sixth-lowest strikeout rate in the minor leagues. He was just above Tigers prospect Eliezer Alfonzo, a note I’m including only to make you feel old.
• Matos has one of the best BB-to-K ratios in the minor leagues. The players ranking above him in Triple A are much older. The players ranking above him who are the same age or younger are in A-ball.
This is it. This is the big one. I’m too old to be regurgitating faddish internet slang, but he is him. Him is he. Never forget that Mays started his career 1-for-26 and crying in front of his locker. Never forget that after his incredible rookie of the year season, Willie McCovey struggled so much that he was demoted to Triple A for 17 games. And when you look at, let’s see here, the hundreds of thousands of prospects who didn’t have careers quite that accomplished, most of them struggled in a way that they eventually couldn’t overcome. Baseball is hard. Calm down.
This one time, though, I’m allowing myself a pass. I resolve not to calm down. I can’t promise I’ll never do another rule again, but I get to break this one. I apologize, and it won’t happen again.
Although, have you seen what Wade Meckler has been doing this season? Hold on, let me check on how Vaun Brown’s hitting since returning from injury …
(Photo of Matos signing autographs this spring: Eric Risberg / Associated Press)
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