The highlight of a three-week summer camp might have come from a player who never will see the field for the Giants this year. Early on, top prospect Marco Luciano hit a long homer on a fastball from Rico Garcia, a hard-throwing righty who made the opening day roster and has had a strong start to the 2020 season.
That homer was the talk of camp for a few days, and on Friday, hitting coach Donnie Ecker revealed a cool behind-the-scenes story about the swing.
"My favorite story with him was asking him to talk about four-seamers that have hop and have ride up in the zone," Ecker said on a Zoom call with reporters. "He talked about it and shared his experience with feeling like he's always fouling those pitches off. Our hitting department created a way to talk about game-planning with him for that (pitch) and the next day he ended up facing Rico Garcia and he homered on it. It told us a lot about the aptitude there."
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For an 18-year-old to walk into camp for the first time and homer off a mid 90s fastball is impressive in isolation. To do it a day after learning how to adjust to that pitch tells you why scouts believe Luciano could be a top five prospect in baseball by the end of this year. The Giants saw that potential at the plate and in the field, where Luciano showed the skills that can keep him at shortstop as he fills out.
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Ecker describes Luciano as "special" and told another story that demonstrates his ability to adapt. Luciano struggled against a slider machine one day and the next day came in eager to take another crack before doing anything else on the schedule.
"He just asked for the slider machine, and it just lets us tap into the more important things beyond baseball, which is a little bit of their ethos and the ingredients that make them who they are," Ecker said. "I learned a lot in those 10 minutes around Luciano. There's a fire inside of him. He's got a really steely-eyed focus."