Rule 5 pick Blake Sabol making big impression at SF Giants camp. Can he make the roster?
"I don’t think you can ever expect anybody to come in and produce the way he’s produced," Giants manager Gabe Kapler said Saturday, after Sabol reached base all five times to the plate to improve to 9-for-17 (.529), with a 1.871 OPS.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — You probably hadn’t heard of Blake Sabol before the San Francisco Giants acquired him in the Rule 5 draft this past December. Yet his presence commands a room.
“It’s fun to talk to a few guys in this clubhouse with their confidence,” starter Alex Cobb said, recalling a telling interaction with the 25-year-old former Pirates farmhand, whom the Giants are hoping can convert into a good enough catcher to carry his enticing left-handed bat (and infectious personality) on their 26-man roster.
“I talked to Sabol about what his concerns are going into the season,” Cobb said. “He’s very confident in his catching.
“I was like, can you hit?
“He goes, ‘Oh yeah, I can hit.’
“I love that.”
What Sabol has done so far with his commanding presence in Giants camp couldn’t have made a better case for a spot on the active roster, a requirement of his Rule 5 status (if he is not on their roster, they must offer him back to Pittsburgh).
“I don’t think you can ever expect anybody to come in and produce the way he’s produced,” manager Gabe Kapler said Saturday, after Sabol reached base all five times to the plate to improve to 9-for-17 (.529), with a 1.871 OPS.
In his third at-bat Saturday, Sabol launched his third home run of the spring, tying Michael Conforto for the team lead.
But it might have been his other four plate appearances that excited Kapler the most.
In his first at-bat, Sabol saw the third baseman playing back and laid a bunt down the line that he beat out for a hit. He then put himself in scoring position by swiping second base. After lining a single to right in his second time up, Sabol advanced first to third on a hard-hit ball to center. And he resisted the urge to pile on to his stat line by swinging at bad pitches, drawing a pair of walks in his final two trips to the plate.
“Blake knows what we value around here,” Kapler said. “He knows that we’re going to get really excited about waiting a pitcher out and showing discipline at the plate. … Blake is really locked in at the plate right now, (but) this is spring training. So I think we can appreciate the quality of his plate appearances (and) how he’s hitting the ball.
“Really the thing that’s standing out the most is the baserunning. Every ball he hits, he’s running like it’s a regular season game and the game is on the line. I just think that earns a lot of respect from teammates and coaches. He’s showing you a lot of different aspects of his game. We just want to get him as many reps as possible for the rest of camp.”
What that could mean for Sabol in the near future is some reps in the outfield, despite the Giants’ insistence through the first half of camp that his path to the roster was exclusively as a catcher. That comes partly out of performance — Sabol might just hit his way on to the roster, no matter how little the Giants care about spring numbers — but mostly out of necessity, with Mitch Haniger (oblique) shut down for at least the next 5-7 days, Luis González (back) sidelined for the rest of camp and Austin Slater (elbow) still out.
“If that helps get me in the lineup, I’m happy to do it,” Sabol said, also describing his default temperament and cracking a smile. “I have a brand-new, cool-looking outfield glove that I’m excited to use.”
It could represent another path to the roster for Sabol, should San Francisco prefer to go with a more experienced duo behind the plate, such as Roberto Pérez and Joey Bart or Austin Wynns. It seems Pérez, the most veteran of the group, has a spot if he is healthy, while Bart is off to another hot start this spring, batting .400 (4-for-10) with a homer and a double.
As far as Sabol’s receiving, though, “guys have been raving about throwing to him and his set up,” Cobb said, later backed up by Kapler. “Just his demeanor and confidence as a catcher right now is really impressive.”
So, what’s the catch?
While Sabol was a natural backstop growing up — he admired Joe Mauer and Matt Wieters, two receivers with similarly large frames to his 6-4, 225 build, and only transitioned into the outfield to improve his draft stock — he hadn’t played the position consistently since college until last year, when he got word Pittsburgh was seeking catching converts and volunteered himself.
Sabol’s pitch-framing metrics in 2022 were among the best in the minor-leagues, which the Giants say has held up in camp. But he is still raw defensively — look no further than his tough time Thursday, which Kapler said was “not his best game behind the plate” — with concerns over his ability to control the running game, an even larger emphasis this year with the incoming pitch clock and larger bases.
When faced with adversity, Sabol returned to a familiar place.
“My dad (Rob) … sometimes with guys, they’d have a bad game and my dad might be hard on them and you could get sad or upset about it,” Sabol said. “Me, I would get pissed, like nah dad, I’m gonna hit three homers tomorrow. And I just struck out three times the game before.”
That confidence? It has always come natural to him.
“Honestly,” he said, smiling. “I was a really cocky little kid.”