The calendars have flipped over to December, which means baseball moves are incoming. Buckle up, folks: there will be signings and tradings galore before you know it. Some might even be made by the team you’re rooting for!
But while that all happens in the forefront of the league, we have our side quest to continue working on: the 2026 Willie McCovey Memorial Community Prospect List, in which we will work together to rank the top 44 prospects in the San Francisco Giants organization. And we’re more than a quarter of the way through!
Our next addition is right-handed pitcher Trevor McDonald, who has been voted as the No. 12 prospect in the system. It’s a rise of three spots over his No. 15 ranking last year, and this is the highest he’ll make it, as it’s almost certainly his final CPL (and if it isn’t, he’ll presumably be dropping by quite a bit!).
McDonald, who was the team’s 11th-round pick in 2019 (albeit for an $800,000 signing bonus that was in line with a Competitive Balance Round B or early third-round pick) had a strange season, and reasons for both optimism and pessimism abound. He spent almost the entire year with AAA Sacramento, where his numbers were quite middling: in 29 games and 24 starts, he posted a 5.31 ERA and a 5.53 FIP, with 9.11 strikeouts per nine innings and 3.92 walks.
The Giants were, seemingly, not impressed. Every healthy pitcher on the 40-man roster got a look in the Majors before McDonald, and plenty of players who hadn’t been on the 40-man roster got promoted to it just to leapfrog McDonald, ranging from fellow prospects (Carson Whisenhunt) to born-again prospects (Kai-Wei Teng) to Minor League free agents (Joey Lucchesi) to midseason Minor League grab bag journeyman pickups (JT Brubaker).
Finally, with the injuries continuing to mount and the season all but over, the Giants turned to McDonald in September, and he responded with the type of performance that made everyone immediately change their tune and criticize the Giants for not calling him up earlier. McDonald made three appearances in the Majors (two starts), and pitched 15 innings, allowing just 13 hits, two walks, and three earned runs, while striking out 14.
And so, McDonald — who turns 25 in February — is a tale of two arms, and you can craft whatever narrative you want around that. He’s been very unremarkable in nearly 200 innings in AAA, and the Giants have seemed extremely unimpressed: it’s now two years, with two different regimes, where he’s spent the entire year on the 40-man roster, and only gotten called up at the very end of the season when the white towel was waved and roster holes called for an extra arm. And yet, he not only put up excellent stats in an admittedly tiny MLB sample size, but he looked the part along the way. And while it’s a dangerous game to ever suggest a player could be better in the Majors than they were in the Minors, you could certainly try to make that argument for McDonald, and not just because of the numbers: he’s a groundball pitcher (53.3% rate in AAA in 2025) with a four-pitch mix … he stands to greatly benefit from a historically great catcher calling his games, and an excellent defensive infield posting behind him.
It’s a critical season upcoming for McDonald, who only has one option year remaining. Will he establish himself as part of the Major League rotation? Will he be a key part of the Giants bullpen? Or will he, for the third year, flounder around in AAA waiting for a cup of coffee in an otherwise meaningless game?
We’ll soon find out. And until then, we’ve got new names to vote on, so head to the comment section to cast your vote!
Note: Clicking on the above names will link to the CPL where they were voted onto the list.
Drew Cavanaugh — 23.10-year old C — .511 OPS/34 wRC+ in AAA (53 PA); .677 OPS/116 wRC+ in AA (56 PA); .904 OPS/149 wRC+ in High-A (162 PA); 1.006 OPS/170 wRC+ in Low-A (131 PA)
Argenis Cayama — 19.2-year old RHP — 8.16 ERA/6.93 FIP in Low-A (14.1 IP); 2.25 ERA/3.58 FIP in ACL (48 IP)
Trevor Cohen — 22.1-year old OF — .840 OPS/139 wRC+ in Low-A (130 PA)
Luis De La Torre — 22.2-year old LHP — 1.77 ERA/2.46 FIP in Low-A (35.2 IP); 3.72 ERA/3.36 FIP in ACL (38.2 IP)
Carlos Gutierrez — 21.3-year old OF — .896 OPS/150 wRC+ in Low-A (293 PA)
Parks Harber — 24.2-year old 3B — .969 OPS/174 wRC+ in High-A (260 PA); .972 OPS/169 wRC+ in Low-A (83 PA)
Jesús RodrÃguez — 23.7-year old C — .826 OPS/125 wRC+ in AAA (535 PA); .274 OPS/-12 wRC+ in AA (30 PA)
Note: Each player’s first name links to their Baseball-Reference page, and their last name links to their Fangraphs page. All stats are from the 2025 season.