Giants fans everywhere can't stop talking about Joey Bart. The young prospect is the organization's top prospect, and especially after star catcher Buster Posey decided to opt out of the 2020 season, many hoped that Bart would find his way onto the Giants' roster for Thursday night's season opener in Los Angeles.
That group of hopefuls seems to include whoever runs the social media accounts for BART, as the service tweeted on Thursday afternoon.
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SIGN UP HERE In lieu of Bart, the Giants will have Rob Brantly and Tyler Heineman holding down the catcher spot to begin the 2020 season. Although the young prospect had an impressive spring, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi explained to NBC Sports Bay Area why Bart needs more reps before making his MLB debut.
"As we've talked about a lot, particularly on the position player side from a development standpoint, upper-level reps are important," Zaidi said. "You go to the best players in baseball -- guys like Mike Trout and Mookie Betts had 500 at-bats in Double-A and Triple-A. Joey, unfortunately because of the injury last year, got a little held up, and as we've talked about he's got less than 100 plate appearances at the Double-A level.
"It's really two-fold. One is just getting him more competitive reps and we're planning to set up our Sacramento alternate site to be as competitive as possible and really expose him and the other position players we have to upper-level pitching. The other thing that we want him to work on, which we haven't been able to so far, is getting some reps at first base. We want to maximize his opportunity and obviously we're going to have Buster (Posey) coming back in 2021. Positional versatility is important."
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It likely won't be long before Bart sees MLB action, especially if the Giants run into injuries at the catcher position. Hopefully, for the Giants and their fans, Bart is more reliable behind the plate than the public transit system that shares his name.
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