The deadline has passed for MLB clubs to designate prospects for protection in the upcoming Rule 5 Draft, and the San Francisco Giants opted to make no changes to their 40-man roster, leaving several prospects unprotected — including three recent first-round picks.

Reggie Crawford (2022), Will Bednar (2021), and Hunter Bishop, the 10th overall pick in 2019, all went unprotected. Three omissions that highlight how sharply the Giants have struggled at the top of the draft in recent years.

The Giants’ slide into relative mediocrity — marked by just one postseason berth since 2016 — has many causes. Their difficulty developing elite homegrown talent isn’t the whole story, but it’s far from an insignificant part of it.

Crawford, Bednar, and Bishop were all selected near the top of their respective drafts and, consequently, sit near the top of the list of examples where the Giants have come up short in an area where they simply cannot afford to be.

The situations that left these three former first-rounders exposed vary widely, and each are worth further examination.

A Closer Look at the Giants’ Three Unprotected First-Round PicksReggie Crawford

The Giants selected Crawford 30th overall out of Connecticut in 2022, betting on a seemingly boundless ceiling for a rare two-way talent.

As a pro, the pitching side has clearly outpaced his work as a hitter. San Francisco made him a full-time pitcher last season, and he offered a glimpse of his immense upside in Triple-A, posting a 1.04 ERA over seven outings.

The talent is undeniable, but the innings have been scarce. Crawford has thrown only 37.1 professional innings and did not pitch at all in 2025. Since being drafted, he has undergone two shoulder surgeries, on top of his pre-draft Tommy John surgery in 2021.

Reggie Crawford makes his first AAA strikeout pic.twitter.com/yOQ2a3pB1w

— Sacramento River Cats (@RiverCats) May 19, 2024

Given the limited sample and extensive injury history, some teams may decide he isn’t worth the Rule 5 risk. But first-round talent gets more leeway than a 15th-rounder, and someone may be willing to take a chance. If so, that chance just might come with a different organization.

Will Bednar

Taken with the 14th overall pick in 2021, Bednar became the Giants’ first pitcher selected in the first round since Phil Bickford in 2015.

Bednar was a College World Series hero at Mississippi State, posting numbers that drew comparisons to Randy Johnson’s dominant run at USC.

Randy Johnson in the 2001 World Series:
17.1 IP, 1.04 ERA, .150 batting average against, 19 Ks

Will Bednar in the 2021 College World Series:
18.1 IP, 1.47 ERA, .084 batting average against, 26 Ks https://t.co/V8tk3vkuun

— Nick Suss (@nicksuss) July 1, 2021

His professional career, however, got off to a slow start. Back injuries limited him to just 53.2 innings over his first two seasons. He rebounded to throw a career-high 54.0 innings in 2024, but his command lagged well behind — issuing 47 walks across three levels.

That was particularly troubling for Bednar, the younger brother of Yankees reliever David Bednar, because pounding the zone had been one of his defining strengths in college.

Those issues persisted in 2025. Bednar walked 39 batters in 52.1 innings, spending most of his season in Double-A Richmond. He did appear to settle in after a rough opening stretch, showing improved command down the stretch, but not enough to convince the Giants to protect him. His brief first taste of Triple-A likely didn’t help: two outings, 1.2 innings, five earned runs.

Really frustrated by the Giants’ decision to leave Will Bednar unprotected.

His last 25 outings:

37.1% K
10.7% BB
3.96 ERA
2.52 FIP

The fastball is in the 90s with great carry. The sweeper is legit. Command has been an issue, but you don’t find stuff like this every day.

— Matthew Knauer (@matthewk36711) November 19, 2025

Bednar will be 26 by midseason next year, and this increasingly looks like another difficult first-round miss for the Giants. It’s worth noting he was also left unprotected last winter and went unclaimed.

The Giants are effectively running the same play again, hoping he can build on the progress he showed late in the year without another club taking the gamble.

Hunter Bishop

It just doesn’t appear as though it’s going to work out for Bishop, the toolsy outfielder from Arizona State whom the Giants selected 10th overall in 2019.

He has not posted an OPS above .730 in the minors since his draft year — including a .722 mark with Triple-A Sacramento in 2025 — and the strikeouts have continued to pile up. His 29.8 percent strikeout rate ranked seventh-highest in the Pacific Coast League among hitters with more than 300 at-bats, a reflection of swing-and-miss issues that have never meaningfully improved.

When Bishop was drafted, there were some fun parallels drawn between him and Barry Bonds — both power-hitting Arizona State outfielders who attended Serra High School.

Those comparisons disappeared quickly once his pro career began, largely because the power never materialized. Bishop has topped 10 home runs only twice in his minor-league tenure and finished with seven in 96 games this past season.

A serious shoulder injury in 2022 cost him the remainder of that year, all of 2023, and part of 2024, derailing any developmental momentum he had. It’s been an unfortunate run for a player with such loud raw tools, and he will almost certainly go unselected in this year’s Rule 5 Draft.

Hopefully, he can show enough going forward to at least debut for the team he grew up cheering for.

Other Rule 5 Decisions Underscore a Shift in Philosophy

It’s not just that the Giants chose not to protect three players once viewed as cornerstone pieces of their future — it’s that they didn’t protect a single player at all.

A pair of Top 30 prospects, infielder Diego Velasquez (No. 22) and right-handed pitcher Gerelmi Maldonado (No. 23), were also left unprotected, as was Spencer Miles, who impressed in the Arizona Fall League.

Maldonado is one of the more intriguing omissions. Signed for just $145,000 in 2021, he can run his fastball up to 101 mph, but he has yet to advance past Single-A, due largely to the Tommy John surgery he underwent in 2023 that halted his development. The upside remains considerable, though the lack of upper-level experience makes him a difficult Rule 5 stash.

The Giants under Buster Posey have become far more selective with their Rule 5 protections. Last year, they added only two players — Carson Seymour and Carson Ragsdale — to the 40-man roster.

That marks a notable shift from the last four offseasons under Farhan Zaidi, when the club protected 16 players in total, several of whom went on to become meaningful contributors, including Randy Rodriguez (2021), Heliot Ramos (2021), and Camilo Doval (2020).

The Giants’ choice to leave all of their Rule 5-eligible prospects unprotected — including three recent first-round picks — reflects an organization in flux. The margin for error at the top of the draft is slim, and in recent years San Francisco has simply missed too often.

Gone are the days when the Giants owned one of the best stretches of draft success the sport has ever seen. This rough spell for San Francisco reaches well back into the prior decade.

I mean look at this. Panik is their best 1st rd pick in the last 14 years. https://t.co/JLMrX9pCVA pic.twitter.com/TA6jlkJlUe

— Dave (@gggiants) November 19, 2025

And while the reasons vary from player to player, the cumulative effect has left the Giants searching for the steady pipeline they once relied on. Leaving all three former first-rounders unprotected only crystallizes, in a single moment, how frequently they’ve fallen short.

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