SCOTTSDALE — As the Giants were putting together two big trades last July that would send key relievers to the teams in New York, they talked internally about the way the deals would be perceived.
They figured the industry perception would be that they did much better in the Tyler Rogers trade, which brought Drew Gilbert and Blade Tidwell back from the Mets, but some in the front office felt the Camilo Doval trade with the Yankees might become even more impactful down the line.
Catcher Jesus Rodriguez was the centerpiece of that trade, and he has shown off positional flexibility this spring that could make the consistent .300 hitter a good option in the big leagues this year. Right-hander Trystan Vrieling added upper-level depth and team officials talk glowingly about the potential of 18-year-old lefty Carlos De La Rosa.
The fourth player, though, is the one who has had the quickest rise since last July’s trade deadline.
Parks Harber was injured when the deal went down, and while he had succeeded in the Yankees system, he was also a bit old for A-ball. Six months later, Harber is in Giants camp as a non-roster invitee, and there’s a chance he could be an option later this season.
Harber, who will start the season in Double-A, is short on professional experience and the Giants still are trying to figure out where he ultimately will land defensively. But they have no doubts about the other side of the ball.
Asked recently about what drew the front office to him at the deadline, general manager Zack Minasian smiled.
“He can hit,” he said quickly.
The Giants have had that at the top of their Harber reports since he was a high schooler in the Georgia area, but Harber has taken another step forward since last year’s trade. He had a 1.097 OPS in 25 High-A games after the deadline, with seven homers and a nearly even strikeout-to-walk ratio. In the Arizona Fall League, that OPS jumped to 1.196 and he had 12 extra-base hits in 17 games. Again, the strikeout-to-walk ratio was strong, but it was development on the other side of the ball that really could make him interesting down the line.
Harber made seven outfield starts — all but one in left field — in Eugene and started four games in right in the AFL. That could be crucial for a 24-year-old who has a .942 OPS in the minors but has played two infield spots — first base and third — that are blocked for years to come by Matt Chapman, Rafael Devers and Bryce Eldridge.
“I’m comfortable out there,” Harber said on Monday’s “Giants Talk” podcast. “The more reps the better, just because I always grew up as an infielder. But I’m happy to play anywhere.
“The outfield, for me, it’s a challenge, right? It’s new, it’s something that I can learn. Any position they want to put me at, I’m happy and I want to do my best.”
Like with any young hitter, the Giants are going through the process of figuring out how best to spread out the reps. In live BP sessions, Harber has mostly played third base, and his spring debut came there over the weekend late in a game. On Tuesday, he entered at DH.
Harber hasn’t played a Double-A game yet, and the front office wants to make sure his 2026 is balanced. There always is a need to protect against injuries at the big-league level, so moving a player to the grass prematurely isn’t as easy as it looks, but once a hitter is in Double-A, there’s also a need to figure out a path.
“I think when they really start pressuring you to put them at the major-league level, you want to be prepared,” Minasian said.
What has never been in question is the bat. Harber hit 18 homers in his final year at Georgia and followed that with 20 as a senior at UNC, but other parts of his game were more limited, and he admits now that he wasn’t always in the kind of shape he needed to be in.
Harber hoped to get drafted after both his junior and senior years, but like fellow non-roster invitee and future Flying Squirrels teammate Bo Davidson, he never heard his name. The Yankees had been on him before the 2024 draft and the day after the final round, he was on a flight to their facility in Tampa Bay. He played less than 100 games for the organization before the Giants came calling.
Minasian said director of pro scouting Hadi Raad, director of player procurement Josh Zimmerman and assistant GM Paul Bien were among the people who pushed hardest for Harber’s inclusion as it became clear that the best path forward last July was sending Doval to the Yankees. The Giants set a “pretty high bar” in negotiations, per Minasian, and getting Harber was a “big part of it.”
“It went back to his bat, and I think we had separate opinions from both the analytical group and the scouting group that just saw him as a really, really interesting player to get our hands on,” Minasian said.
At the time, the front office was looking at Harber as a third and first baseman, but the bat looked so advanced down the stretch and in the Fall League that there’s a desire to add versatility. The Giants haven’t yet discussed what the start of 2026 will look like for Harber, although time alongside Davidson in the Double-A outfield should be part of the initial plan.
For now, they’re just getting a longer look at his ability as a hitter, and giving him a few weeks at Scottsdale Stadium to get comfortable with veterans who might one day be big-league teammates.
“I think (I’m) just getting knowledge from everyone,” Harber said. “I think everyone in this clubhouse has different roles and different experience, so it’s just picking each person’s brain whether it’s someone who has been in the league for 10 years or a guy who is coming up through the minors recently. I think that’s kind of been the coolest thing, is you get a lot of different experiences.”
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