SF Giants
SCOTTSDALE — It made some sense as Gabe Kapler explained it. The Giants are unrolling their veteran players slowly, and they’re giving Brandon Crawford more time. They want Mauricio Dubon to get plenty of infield and outfield reps, and he was set to start in center. So, they needed a shortstop.
And so, on a televised night Cactus League game, against the defending World Series champion Dodgers, Marco Luciano became that shortstop.
The 19-year-old has rarely looked like a teenager in his first big-league camp — and, with a body that has put on muscle, in fact does not look like a teenager. Yet, Dustin May has a way of making plenty of batters look infantile.
It was a tough starting debut at the plate for the phenom prospect, who still looked awfully smooth in the Giants’ 1-1, seven-inning tie with Los Angeles at Scottsdale Stadium on Tuesday.
If the third inning brought the first of many Luciano-May battles over the years, Luciano now knows how high he has to climb to be competitive with the upper echelon in the big leagues. Two of the first three offerings from May were 100 mph, according to the stadium gun. Luciano swung through both and was prepared for a third that did not come. The next pitch was a breaking ball that was nasty enough to get the Pitching Ninja treatment.
Luciano’s knees buckled, and he never had a chance.
Dustin May, Wicked Breaking Ball. ? pic.twitter.com/c0Xs1294EU
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) March 3, 2021
The Giants’ consensus No. 1 prospect came up twice more and sat down twice more, an unfortunate hat trick. The at-bats got better, though, and he fouled a few pitches off against lefty reliever Enny Romero in the seventh before swinging through strike three.
“I really liked the last at-bat,” Kapler said over Zoom. “…He did a nice job of attacking and not being thrown off by his earlier at-bats. Even though it’s a spring training game, it is the Dodgers and it was televised, so I imagine his adrenaline was running high, and I thought he took some really good passes in his last at-bat.”
If Luciano were wound up, he didn’t bring that extra energy to the field. He looked smooth in a number of putouts, including a third-inning double play in which he ranged into the hole, handled an A.J. Pollock grounder and quickly relayed to Arismendy Alcantara at second, whose throw to first was in time.
More impressive was Luciano’s cannon. He almost seemed to toy with Elliot Soto in the seventh, taking his time on a groundball before unleashing to first, the throw winning the race.
need a radar gun on Marco Luciano across the infield, that’s a rocket of an arm pic.twitter.com/Cx7Rq4c3hO
— Dalton Johnson (@DaltonJ_Johnson) March 3, 2021
“I think he learned a lot tonight,” Kapler said of the Dominican Republic native. “Thought he played a really good shortstop, too.”