Last week, SB Nation Reacts polled Giants fans with a surprisingly complicated question: Who should be the starting second baseman next year? Casey Schmitt had been penciled in for that position post-Luis Arraez trade, but his meniscus had other plans. Still, the idea that he’d simply take the position following rehab and possibly to start next season flowed logically from that development… until the trade deadline, when the Giants grabbed former top prospect Marcelo Mayer from the Boston Red Sox. Now… who knows?… maybe?
Okay, well, Giants fans are pretty certain that Schmitt is still the plan. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that Matt Chapman is still on the team and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, blocking Schmitt from playing his best position. It also has a lot to do with the fact that only the injury has prevented the post-Arraez plan from being realized.
It’ll be interesting to see if Chapman and Schmitt are able to return at close to their peaks following their respective surgeries, but in Schmitt’s case, this breakout year had some red flags in it that might simply lock in as he gets a little older and has a knee problem. And it’s this fluctuating circumstance that could open the door for Marcelo Mayer to be, say, the Opening Day second baseman for the San Francisco Giants… in July or whenever the lockout ends. If you’ve been following the FanDuel links in these posts all season, this paragraph just offered some interesting questions for your digital wagering.
I’ll mention here that Casey Schmitt and Marcelo Mayer are both alumni from the same high school (though they missed each other by a year). I just didn’t want you to think I didn’t know that or, if you hadn’t heard that yet, there you go (it was Eastlake High School down in Chula Vista). But I also feel it’s worth mentioning as a possible piece of anecdata to counter the Boston (and East Coast) media’s attack on Mayer. Obviously, the Red Sox dumping him on the Giants in exchange for Erik Miller (9K, 1 BB, 4 hits, 0 earned runs — just 1 run — allowed in 5.1 IP) has a whiff of Rafael Devers about it in that it’s a signal that Boston might’ve soured on the player. Still, it confounds one outsider’s perspective (Keith Law), even if the consensus seems to have coalesced around the idea that Mayer, in his post-prospect peak, might actually be very close to washing out of the bigs, and that this change of scenery could be one last great chance to prevent that from happening.
So, the idea of Mayer not becoming one of the many thousands of failed prospects in baseball history because the Giants coached him up or whateverwhich then leads to him being the team’s starting second baseman next season seems like a huge stretch. Law’s assessment is pretty damning:
His front leg stays very stiff through contact, with his knee locked in place, and he can’t cover the lower third or anything below the zone. When he’s swung at anything below the bottom of the zone, he’s whiffed 56.5 percent of the time, and pitchers are going to keep attacking him there until he makes an adjustment — and he chases those pitches too often, too.
He does offer that leaving Mayer at one position (and suggests second base) rather than moving him around might allow him to focus on the swing changes he needs to make. There’s certainly potential there, and he’ll be just 24 whenever next season starts. Casey Schmitt made his debut in his age 24 season and hit .206/.255/.324. You know, sometimes these things can take time. Plus, Marcelo Mayer has every reason to listen to Ron Washington after what happened with Luis Arraez. Y’know, unless Mayer has an aversion to being successful.
Now, the prospect of Marcelo Mayer realizing the high rating he’d been given in the minors is less probable than Casey Schmitt continuing to be a productive major leaguer, but I’m not so sure that Schmitt can repeat his 2026, and whatever he regress to the mean of could simply make the second base position feel less locked down. Is this uncertainty why I don’t think it’s a 70/30-level guarantee that Schmitt will be the second baseman next season?
Possibly.
We’ll likely get to see Mayer this weekend when the Giants go to Fenway Park to get their brains beaten in by the Boston Red Sox as they speed towards 100+ losses on the season. Maybe the Giants think they can steal a win or two based on the revenge factor. Maybe Mayer is looking forward to showing them what they gave up on. He’s currently 5-for-14 with a homer, a double, a walk and 7 strikeouts in his rehab assignment with the River Cats. I’ll admit that he’d really have to have a huge series to even raise the question of if the job is his next year, but this is the time in a lost season when such experimentation ought to happen. The Giants were/are big stinky losers even with Casey Schmitt hitting like he did. I don’t think anything should be set in stone with this roster.