Who is the 20th-best prospect in the Giants system?
The holidays are right around the corner, and so is another benchmark event: the halfway mark of the 2026 Willie McCovey Memorial Community Prospect List. Yes, if you can believe it, we’re almost halfway through our journey of ranking the top 44 prospects in the San Francisco Giants organization.
But we’re not there yet! In fact we haven’t even established a top 20, though that’s coming soon. For now, we need to focus on one number up or down from 20, depending on your point of view, because we officially have the No. 19 prospect in the system: catcher Drew Cavanaugh, who makes his CPL debut.
2026 was a great year for the Giants farm system, full of surprising performances, feel-good stories, and breakout campaigns. And nobody encapsulates that quite like Cavanaugh, who began the year as an afterthought and ended it as one of the top catching prospects — arguably the top catching prospect — in the system.
Cavanaugh, who turns 24 next month (a few weeks before, I would assume, reporting to Scottsdale as a non-roster invitee to Spring Training), was the team’s 17th-round pick in 2023, and signed for a modest $50,000. A 17th-round catcher is someone you expect to be more organizational depth than honest-to-goodness prospect, and the Giants initial treatment of Cavanaugh confirmed that. After playing just 17 games in his debut season, the Giants only used Cavanaugh for 38 games with Low-A San Jose in 2024. His status in the organization was emphasized when he spent nine games that season with AAA Sacramento, serving as the emergency body when the River Cats were shy a catcher. The Low-A to AAA “promotion” may look, on the surface, like a sign of a player who is highly regarded, but in actuality it’s almost always the opposite. The emergency roster fill-in, while an important role, is reserved almost exclusively for back-of-the-org logistical fillers, whose development the team is not highly invested in.
When 2025 began, Cavanaugh was once again in San Jose for a third stint in the Cal League. Only this time he blossomed into a prospect, and then a prospect to keep an eye on, and then finally, a damn good and exciting prospect. Cavanaugh hit his way out of San Jose, slashing .293/.450/.556 for a 1.006 OPS and a 170 wRC+. He didn’t slow down at all in High-A Eugene, where he hit .298/.407/.496, good for a .904 OPS and a 149 wRC+. That earned him a trip to AA Richmond to end the year, where the offense started to come back to earth, though still held strong thanks to an absurd walk rate: Cavanaugh hit .186/.375/.302 for the Flying Squirrels which, in the offensively-challenged Eastern League, was still good enough for a 116 wRC+. And while the organization clearly views him as a good prospect now, he did still get some run filling in for AAA Sacramento, where he admittedly struggled his way to a .184/.245/.265 line, for a .511 OPS and a 34 wRC+ in 14 games.
The left-handed hitter is a legitimate prospect now, and you can see that in the way the Giants used him: not just in the promotions, but in the fact that he played 91 games, after just 47 in 2024. And he not only had great success in those 91 games, but showed off a new tool: after hitting just two home runs in 343 plate appearances in his first two seasons, Cavanaugh smacked a whopping 14 dingers in 402 plate appearances this year (he also stole seven bases in nine attempts, just for good measure). Those 14 dingers were well spread out, too, giving Cavanaugh a very fun tidbit: he did a home run trot for all four of the Giants full-season affiliates in the same season. Very cool.
On top of the offense, Cavanaugh further proved that he’s a strong defensive catching prospect. He’s no Patrick Bailey, but you could make a very strong case that he’s already a better defender than the two prospects who will likely fight to back up Bailey this year — Jesús Rodríguez and Daniel Susac. That defensive ability makes it very easy to see Cavanaugh not just getting to the Majors, but holding down a role there, and if he can continue building on his 2025 offensive success, he could carve out quite a career.
The big question for Cavanaugh heading into 2026 (where he’ll almost surely start in Richmond as the primary catcher), is if he can improve his contact rates. While he flirted with hitting .300 at Low-A and High-A, the Florida Southern backstop was below the Mendoza Line in both upper Minors stops. And across the four levels, he had a quite-high 27.4% strikeout rate (though, interestingly, that rate didn’t increase at the higher levels).
It’s a fun year ahead for Cavanaugh. I always love keeping an eye on how prospects do the year after a breakout campaign. After being one of the best stories of 2025, will Cavanaugh build on that in 2026, and end the year as a top-10 prospect in the system, or perhaps even in the Majors? Or will he come back to earth a little bit, and look more like what we expect 17th-round catchers to look like? That’s what makes Minor League Baseball so exciting!
Now let’s add to the list. Head to the comment section to click the “rec” button on the player you wish to vote for!
The list so far
- Bryce Eldridge — 1B
- Josuar González — SS
- Jhonny Level — SS
- Bo Davidson — CF
- Dakota Jordan — CF
- Luis Hernandez — SS
- Gavin Kilen — SS
- Carson Whisenhunt — LHP
- Blade Tidwell — RHP
- Keyner Martinez — RHP
- Jacob Bresnahan — LHP
- Trevor McDonald — RHP
- Argenis Cayama — RHP
- Luis De La Torre — LHP
- Trevor Cohen — OF
- Jesús Rodríguez — C
- Parks Harber — OF/3B
- Carlos Gutierrez — OF
- Drew Cavanaugh — C
Note: Clicking on the above names will link to the CPL where they were voted onto the list.
No. 20 prospect nominees
Josh Bostick — 24.1-year old RHP — 3.71 ERA/4.59 FIP in High-A (119 IP)
Trent Harris — 26.10-year old RHP — 5.44 ERA/4.69 FIP in AAA (41.1 IP); 1.69 ERA/1.73 FIP in AA (16 IP)
Gerelmi Maldonado — 21.11-year old RHP — 3.97 ERA/4.65 FIP in Low-A (59 IP)
Lorenzo Meola — 21.11-year old SS/2B — .784 OPS/109 wRC+ in Low-A (70 PA)
Daniel Susac — 24.6-year old C — .832 OPS/94 wRC+ in AAA (407 PA)
Joe Whitman — 24.2-year old LHP — 5.29 ERA/3.61 FIP in AA (117.1 IP)
Note: Each player’s first name links to their Baseball-Reference page, and their last name links to their Fangraphs page. All stats are from the 2025 season.
Category: General Sports
