SF Giants will give Marco Luciano ‘a good chance’ at shortstop

SAN FRANCISCO — Bob Melvin perched on the top step of the third base dugout Saturday morning and directed his gaze toward the shortstop. Marco Luciano fielded ground balls while Nick Ahmed made throws to first base, wearing a black brace where his glove usually was on his left wrist.

While Ahmed, 34, is out, the Giants manager plans to get a good look at the 22-year-old still considered the organization’s shortstop of the future.

“We patched it up with Casey (Schmitt) for a few days and Casey did a good job,” Melvin said. “But if Marco is going to be here, Marco is going to play a shortstop role. That’s why he’s here.

Amid the Giants’ recent string of injuries, Luciano was one of the last players on the 40-man roster to remain at Triple-A Sacramento. Initially, when Ahmed was placed on injured reserve, the club called up Schmitt, who played effective defense and provided one hit but was otherwise 3 for 22 (.136) in six games.

Before this season, injuries limited Luciano to just 74 games and fewer than 300 at-bats between the upper two levels of the minor leagues, and the Giants wanted to give him as much experience as possible. As injuries piled up and Luciano’s production improved, it became untenable to hold him out any longer.

“It was a chance to give him a few more reps, but we think it’s a good time to bring him out and give him a good chance at that position,” president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said. “We raised him thinking that at some point we were going to get him into the lineup and have him run at shortstop… In reality, we think that every game he plays in some way strengthens builds his record as a major league shortstop.”

All 32 of Luciano’s infield games at Triple-A this season have been at shortstop, where the club remains confident he can stay for the long haul.

Making his first start Friday, Luciano stepped to his right and caught a ball in the hole, but couldn’t finish the play for an out. He fielded a routine ground ball and nearly took LaMonte Wade Jr. off the bag at first base with his throw. He turned five ground balls into outs.

“Look, he’s done a lot of work… a lot work,” Melvin said. “At some point, if he’s going to be here, he’s going to play shortstop. He’s the shortstop of the future here and he was the guy who played the most shortstop there (in Sacramento).

The consensus among evaluators has long been that Luciano’s bat is more advanced than his glove, but Zaidi said he was impressed by the progress Luciano made at the plate this season for the River Cats that wasn’t necessarily reflected in his .266 batting average. or one home run in 128 at-bats.

In 158 plate appearances, Luciano had struck out 44 times and walked 29 times. The 18.4% walk rate was the highest of his career, while the 27.8% strikeout rate was his lowest since A-ball. His refined two-strike approach paid off in his final at-bat Friday night, pushing a slider into right field for his first career RBI.

“We really like this approach,” Zaidi said. “That’s something we saw him improve a lot on last year. When we saw him in the big leagues, we thought his batting quality was good, better than you sometimes expect for a guy coming up for the first time. He continued like that there and got some quality hitters. I watched a lot of Sacramento games and was impressed.

“The home runs, he has so much power, it’s going to come. If he can keep that batting quality going here, I think he has a chance to get going.

What that might mean when Ahmed is ready to return remains to be seen.

Before suffering the left wrist strain that has kept him sidelined since last Friday, Ahmed was hitting just .236/.274/.291 but had provided some well-timed hits from the bottom of the lineup and generally lived up to his Gold Glove reputation defensively, rating in the 97th percentile with plus-4 outs above average.