Giants recall Marco Luciano, will play him at second base

The Giants recalled Marco Luciano and Luis Matos from Triple-A Sacramento Tuesday afternoon. San Francisco optioned Blake Sabol and Casey Schmitt in corresponding moves. Luciano is in Tuesday's lineup at second base against Arizona’s Ryne Nelson. It seems that’ll be a frequent occurrence this month.

Manager Bob Melvin told reporters Tuesday evening that the Giants will play Luciano regularly at the keystone for the season’s final few weeks, as relayed on X by Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area. Tuesday's start there will be the 22-year-old’s first second base action in the big leagues.

Luciano is no stranger to the middle infield. He has started 19 MLB games at shortstop over the last two years. He has nearly 2500 shortstop innings in the minors. Luciano has made 27 appearances at second base in his minor league career, all but six of which have come this season with Sacramento.

Despite his ample shortstop experience, the rookie infielder struggled at the position earlier in the year. He was charged with five errors in only 60 innings. Luciano’s fielding percentage sat at a dismal .865, and while that almost certainly would’ve risen in a larger sample, the frequency of the mistakes led the Giants to quickly decide that he wasn’t ready for everyday shortstop work in the big leagues. 

San Francisco flirted with playing him at designated hitter after the Jorge Soler deadline trade. That didn’t last long either, and he has all of 48 plate appearances over 17 MLB games this year.

The Giants’ playoff hopes have been all but officially ended, so the next few weeks are primarily about evaluation. Luciano’s development is one of the organization’s key storylines. Scouting reports have long touted his raw power, but that has yet to translate into results against upper level pitching. Luciano has four extra-base hits (three doubles and a triple) in 31 career big league contests. 

He only has 10 homers with a .250/.380/.380 batting line over 384 plate appearances in the Pacific Coast League this year. A near-17% walk rate has driven a huge on-base mark, but he’s striking out 27% of the time without making much of a power impact.

Luciano is a few days shy of his 23rd birthday, so there’s still plenty of time for him to figure things out. The Giants haven’t given him any kind of consistent run against MLB pitching before now. That said, his pedestrian upper minors production and the ongoing questions about his long-term defensive home leave a lot unsettled.

Acclimating well to second base could at least address the latter question. The Giants are going to need a long-term solution at the position. Thairo Estrada has held the job for the past three-plus years. He has had a very poor ’24 campaign, though, and the Giants outrighted him off the roster last week. 

Estrada remains in the organization for now, but the Giants will almost certainly move on during the upcoming offseason: either by allowing him to elect minor league free agency or declining to tender him an arbitration contract.

Luciano will need to tighten things up defensively if he’s to stick on the infield at all. Scouts’ questions about his chances of playing shortstop have been more about his hands and lateral mobility than any issues with his arm strength. 

Four of his five errors at the position were of the fielding variety. That’d be problematic no matter where he is on the dirt, though perhaps moving off the infield’s most demanding spot would allow him to be more comfortable.