San Francisco Giants Outfielder Primed for Improvement After Solid 2024 Season

The San Francisco Giants young outfielder had a solid 2024, and could see improvements in the coming year.

Sep 28, 2024; San Francisco, California, USA; San Francisco Giants outfielder Heliot Ramos (17) runs toward home to score a run on a fielding error by St. Louis Cardinals infielder Masyn Winn (0) (not pictured) during the first inning at Oracle Park. Mandatory Credit: Robert Edwards-Imagn Images / Robert Edwards-Imagn Images

With the San Francisco Giants' first pick of the 2017 MLB draft, the club selected Heliot Ramos out of Leadership Christian Academy in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico.

Ramos would spend the next five years in the franchise's minor league system, with many outlets ranking the outfielder as a top-100 prospect throughout before making his Major League debut on April 10, 2022. The young star would be optioned and recalled multiple times throughout the year, and see only 22 plate appearances at the MLB level.

After spending time at the Major League level in the first month of 2023, Ramos would once again be optioned to Triple-A, where he would succumb to injury less than three weeks later. A right oblique strain would see the outfielder sidelined for much of the year, again failing to eclipse 100 plate appearances at the top level of the sport, reaching only 65.

2024 would prove to be different. It served as the coming out party for Heliot Ramos. The outfielder was able to prove his ability with enough consistent playing time, hitting .269/.322/.469 with 22 home runs, 72 RBI, and a 125 OPS+ across 518 plate appearances while getting his first nod as a National League All-Star.

Now 25 and with one full year of Major League experience under his belt, Ramos's production at the plate could take another step forward in the coming year.

Baseball Savant shows that Ramos's power was not just beginner's luck, as the analytics have the outfielder in the 85th or better percentiles for each of xSLG (90th percentile), average exit velocity (85th), barrel rate (92nd), hard-hit rate (85th), and bat speed (90th).

While the power is there for Ramos, the outfielder has not shown the best plate discipline, with only 37 walks and a massive 135 strikeouts. His walk rate of 7.1 percent ranks in the 36th percentile while his strikeout rate of 26.1 percent ranks in the 23rd percentile.

Defensively, Ramos played all three outfield positions but saw the majority of his time in center field. It proved to be his worst of the three, however, with -7 Outs Above Average, while he posted positive one Outs Above Average in each of the corner outfield positions.

Ramos has already proven to be a solid cornerstone of the Giants' offense with what he was able to accomplish at the plate in 2024. The coming campaign should see the outfielder take another step forward in his development, and could even see him cement himself as the key to the team's success.