SF Giants don’t plan to hand shortstop job to Marco Luciano

The keys might be in the ignition, but the Giants' top prospect must earn the right to get behind the wheel.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Marco Luciano needed no translation to answer this question.

The 22-year-old, one of the San Francisco Giants’ most anticipated prospects since he signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2018, is no stranger to major-league spring training. But this year, the circumstances are different.

After the departure of Brandon Crawford, the shortstop job is Luciano’s for the taking. Does Luciano believe he’s ready to seize it for the next decade and beyond?

“Oh, yeah,” Luciano said, oozing confidence, elongating the final syllable.

Amid the fanfare when the Giants’ franchise shortstop was pulled for the final time with two outs in the bottom of the ninth last October, Luciano snuck up the dugout steps and jogged out to take his position.

The symbolism bordered on extravagant, a changing of the guard taking place before our eyes.

But Luciano was not handed the keys to the position that day. He enters this spring in the driver’s seat, and the keys might even be in the ignition, but the Giants don’t just want to hand this sports car to somebody who has barely taken it for a test drive.

“You never come into camp with a rookie and say this is your job, period,” manager Bob Melvin said. “We want Luciano to grasp it and take it, but he’s gonna have to do that. There are some other guys who can play the position. We’ll see how it goes. As we sit here right now it’s a great opportunity for Marco.”

Battling a back injury that cost him much of 2022 and a hamstring strain that cost him a month last season, Luciano had played only 74 games above A-ball when the Giants called him up last summer, one of 12 players to make their major-league debuts for San Francisco in 2023. When he took over for Crawford in the final game of the season, it was his 14th appearance at the major-league level.

But in that small sample, Luciano displayed why evaluators have been raving about his hitting ability since before he was legally an adult.

While he batted only .231 with six walks to 17 strikeouts in 45 plate appearances, of the 22 balls he put in play, 13 left the bat at 95 mph or harder — the definition of hard contact — and his 111.8 mph single off Dodgers reliever Ryan Yarbrough was the seventh-hardest-hit ball by any Giant all season.

“What we saw at the end of last year, I think it showed a lot of poise, both defensively and offensively, when he came up,” president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said. “We’re asking a lot from him, just because there isn’t a lot of upper-level experience, certainly not a lot of big-league experience, but from what we saw, we certainly think he can handle it.”

There are not many other options internally if, for whatever reason, Luciano is not on the Opening Day lineup card.

Otto Lopez, a 25-year-old former Blue Jays prospect, was brought in just before camp opened and looks to have the inside track at a utility role. Casey Schmitt’s heralded defense didn’t translate to shortstop, and his hitting fell off a cliff. Tyler Fitzgerald may be more athletic than any of them, but he also has even less major-league experience.

The Giants could still look externally, and Melvin didn’t rule out making another addition. The Brewers’ Willy Adames has been a recurring name in trade rumors. Crawford, of course, remains unsigned on the free-agent market.

But the best-case scenario is for Luciano to take the job and run with it.

“It’s all about giving my best and taking advantage of that trust that they have in me,” Luciano said through Spanish-language interpreter Erwin Higueros. “At this level, you never stop learning. You have to improve yourself in every aspect of the game, especially as a young player. But for me personally, I’m going to work on my defense.”

A physical specimen even at 16, the question surrounding Luciano since he signed as an international amateur has been whether he could stick at shortstop. He stands a muscular 6-foot-1, with the omnipresent gold chain around his neck weighing more than whatever body fat he might have.

But the Giants came away from the small sample last season with a renewed confidence that those concerns were overblown.

“I feel like Marco has always been this built,” Zaidi said. “Even seeing him at a young age it really stood out. Like with a lot of guys that age you almost want to make sure he doesn’t get too big, especially with our belief that he can stick at short.”

Luciano got to know Lopez over the offseason in the Dominican Winter League, where they were teammates for Leones del Escogido.

It was there that Luciano also encountered his biggest challenge at the plate, batting .170 with 18 strikeouts — but also 12 walks — in 59 plate appearances over 18 games. That, still, was better than his winter ball experience the previous year, when he was shut down after five games when his back flared up again.

The winter league reps outweighed the lack of performance, Zaidi said, and didn’t impact their evaluation of Luciano entering spring.

Luciano said the experience taught him some valuable lessons that he’ll take with him into camp.

“I felt comfortable (at the plate) in the beginning, but then afterward I wasn’t comfortable. I was a little bit out of sorts,” Luciano said, noting the strike zone is larger there than in the major leagues. “It was a great experience because you have players who have been through it, experience in Japan, Korea, here in the big leagues, players that have played a long time in the Dominican. You absorb all that experience from them. So for me in particular it was a great experience. …

“I learned a lot in hitting, that I need to be a little more patient. But that’s something that I have to work on, not just over the winter but here.”