All too often Alexander Canario gets lost in the shuffle of Giants top prospects. Names like Joey Bart, Heliot Ramos, Marco Luciano, Hunter Bishop and even Patrick Bailey are seen as the future in San Francisco.
Canario should always be mentioned among those names, too.
The 20-year-old was signed out of the Dominican Republic in July 2016 when he was 16 years old. He played 10 games in the Arizona Rookie League last year before finishing the season in Short-A with the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes, and put up solid numbers. Over 59 games between the two levels, Canario hit .318 with 16 homers, 20 doubles and a 1.000 OPS.
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But the power-hitting center fielder also struck out 80 times in 236 at-bats. Canario currently is training in Sacramento at the Giants' alternate site and director of player development Kyle Haines has seen a lot of growth in the young prospect.
“He’s always had plus tools across the board,” Haines said to Baseball America's Steve Kroner, “and now he’s kind of learning how to have more of a veteran at-bat.”
When asked about Ramos and Luciano, Bart made sure to mention Canario's name as a player who really impressed him in Sacramento. At 6-foot-1 and 165 pounds, Canario is a twitchy athlete with sky-high potential. This past season, 38 of his 75 hits went for extra bases, and 41 percent of all his hits in the minors since 2017 have gone for extra bases.
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If Canario can hone in on his high strikeouts, he easily could become a top 100 prospect.
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"[He] definitely seems to be controlling the strike zone better, grinding out at-bats and not just going in there and kind of having that Rookie-ball mindset where every pitch that he can reach, he’d try to hit it out of the park," Haines told Kroner.
Canario is the Giants' seventh-ranked prospect by MLB Pipeline, and Baseball America has him higher at No. 5. Between him, Ramos, Bishop and Luis Matos, the Giants have some big-time outfield prospects, and that's certainly a problem they'll live with.