During the Baltimore series just finished, I made this minor league deal with the Giants:
Traded 22-year-old minor league first baseman Steve Williams, 23-year-old minor league right fielder Trey Duffield and 28-year-old minor league first baseman Matthew Mercedes to the San Francisco Giants, getting 25-year-old minor league first baseman Joe Barker and 24-year-old minor league catcher Steve Erickson in return.
The three guys I traded I really don't see having much of a future (especially Mercedes, who's 28) with the big club, but the key to the deal was adding Barker. I saw his name come up quite a bit when I shopped various players and his profile is intriguing to say the least. Now I'll start by saying we really don't need a 1B with Yordan Alvarez in tow for the next several years, and Chris Sharp a strong prospect at Durham. But this guy was too good to pass up. Here are his ratings:
An unusually impressive power/speed combo for a first baseman. Of course "first baseman" is used loosely since he's terrible in the field and is best suited to being a DH, which is perhaps why the Giants had no problem moving him. But his numbers back up his ratings, as he was 293/375/556 in the PCL with 17 HRs and 17 steals and already has hit 2 in 3 games with Durham. This trade is more to help Durham right now as Barker takes Nate Clark's place in the lineup. It's going to be exceedingly difficult to find a spot with the big club for him but I'd rather have too many good players than too few. And Erickson is a half-decent catching prospect, building up our organizational depth at that position.
Also we had some weekly awards come in:
I would have gone with Jhon Diaz, but...
And from Montgomery:
Barillas is yet another 1B prospect we have. He has 65 current power and can mash. He was acquired from Kansas City as part of the Ronaldo Hernandez and Ian Lewis for Jack Leiter and Mebrys Viloria deal back in 2024 and has had issues staying healthy the last couple of years (he missed nearly all of 2026) but has been impressive. Most likely he'll end up as trade bait given our depth charts but he could fetch something interesting.