With the 13th pick in the 2025 MLB draft, the Giants selected Gavin Kilen, a 22-year-old shortstop out of Tennessee. If you’re in a hurry, the quickest way to describe him is he’s a left-handed college bat who should move quickly — maybe even very quickly — although he’s likely to move to second base.
But if you’re in the market for a long-winded but semi-accurate way to describe the pick, I have you covered, too. All you have to do is remember a few things and use your imagination.
First, remember that teams almost never draft for need. They choose the player at the top of their board, regardless of any holes in the organization or major-league roster. Second, remember that teams don’t expect instant gratification. They pick the best player available, whether they’re two or six years away.
Now pretend that there’s a team that hated all those stupid draft norms. Maybe they have an impetuous owner, one of the noisy ones. They want to draft a player who fits what the team needs now. And they don’t want to wait. They want the fast-moving players, the ones who will help everyone keep their jobs.
That’s also the kind of team that would have made this pick. To be clear, the Giants are still the normal organization from the first example. But if they were to draft like they had their version of Al Davis or George Steinbrenner in the room, this is also the selection they would have made.
And that’s the best way to describe Kilen: He just happens to be exactly the kind of player the Giants need right now. He might move quickly. Heck, he might get to the upper minors by this time next season, and once a player is in the upper minors …
That would make him the pick of a Yosemite Sam-type owner, and he just so happened to be the pick of an organization that was acting responsibly. That’s always a fun coincidence.
Kilen’s best tool is his bat, by all accounts. Here’s what Keith Law wrote about him after the pick:
He’s on the smaller side, and he’s not going to stick at shortstop, but he combines excellent contact skills, very strong exit velocities, and a swing that tends to put the ball in the air on a line.
Lots of contact. Line drives. Gap to gap. If it’s a profile that seems rough for a left-handed hitter at Oracle Park, that’s a fair concern, but don’t overthink the ballpark. Left-handed hitters definitely help the Giants win. They just break more helmets after 420-foot outs. That’s their problem. You still get the left-handed hitters who can contribute and hope they have good senses of humor.
Another note of interest is with Kilen’s developmental path, which took him from Louisville to Tennessee this last season. At his new school, his exit velocities took off, and his plate discipline stats improved, too. Not only was he hitting the ball harder, but he was swinging at less garbage while doing more damage at pitches in the middle of the zone.
Gavin Kilen seems like a fast mover with a high floor and a high ceiling. (Kate Luffman / Tennessee Athletics)
If that sounds familiar, that’s because that’s been the organizational philosophy for the last several years. Whatever Tennessee helped Kilen with is exactly what the Giants want their hitters to do. It’s what they’ve been preaching since the last front office was running things.
Also, if you were wondering if Buster Posey was going to prefer ballplayer’s ballplayers, the square-jawed, toolsy grinders, here’s your answer: Sometimes he’ll pick the player that the quants and analysts love, too. Heck, sometimes he’ll even make the same pick that the last guy might have. A lot of the same people are still around, after all. The pick was less of a statement and more of a confirmation: Yep, still picking the best player on the draft board, regardless of who’s in charge, thanks for asking.
Will it work? No idea, of course. Kilen seems like a fast mover with a high floor and a high ceiling, but a lot of prospects have had that profile. The only thing we know for sure is that among prospects with that profile, he’ll have a career somewhere between Eddy Martinez-Esteve and Will Clark, unless it’s a little better or a little worse.
Still, it’s a fascinating pick, one that just happens to align with all sorts of interests. It aligns with the interests of the impatient. It aligns with the interests of the common fan who knows more about the NFL Draft and expects to see this guy soon. It aligns with the interests of the fans who don’t really give a rip about the draft or minor leaguers, but are still hoping for good players to arrive on the Giants roster quickly and out of nowhere. And, yes, it aligns with the interests of dorks like me who care about exit velocities and chase rates, both of which, in Kilen’s case, hint at a player with a great chance of success in the majors.
The Giants had one more pick on the first day of the draft (they forfeit their second-round pick to sign Willy Adames), a third-round pick that they used on Trevor Cohen, a outfielder out of Rutgers. He was also a metrics darling at the MLB Draft Combine, with the fifth-highest average exit velocity (101.1 mph) on the second day of the event, and Giants director of scouting Michael Holmes touted his low strikeout rate (8 percent) on a conference call after the draft. He said the combination of high exit velocities and contact rates didn’t lead to much power because of a swing that resulted in a lot of grounders, but that it was something the organization feels confident they can work with.
The Giants are also hoping Cohen can stick in center field as a professional. A fun fact is that he was playing right field at Rutgers because center was filled by Peyton Bonds, Barry’s nephew and Bobby’s grandson. Bonds will be eligible for the draft next year, and while you’re not sure if he’s among the top 1,000 prospects, you’re pretty sure the Giants should draft him. You’re not wrong.
If you were looking for batted-ball metrics, the Giants had a draft for you. If you were hoping for a hitter who could help the Giants score more than a couple lousy runs against the Dodgers, the Giants had a draft for you. If you were looking for both, well, you just might be the audience for this article. The Giants definitely had a draft for you. We’ll know in a year or nine if it all worked out.
(Top photo: Kate Luffman / Tennessee Athletics)