Giants draft recap: Rounds 11-20

After two days, 20 rounds, and more than 600 names announced (some even with correct pronunciations!), the 2026 MLB Draft has come to a close. It was a very fun one for the Giants … after a few years of losing picks due to the Qualifying Offer, the Giants had their full slate this time around … and then added an extra pick in the top 30 when they traded Patrick Bailey, all while getting lucky in the lottery and landing the No. 4 overall pick.

What follows is a breakdown of the final 10 selections that the Giants made on draft day.

If you want to read about the earlier picks, here are the links:

No. 4 Jackson Flora (RHP)
No. 29 Carson Bolemon (LHP)
No. 55 Kaden Waechter (RHP)
No. 90 Peyton Bonds (OF)
No. 118 Carlos Martinez (RHP)
Rounds 5-10

The Giants kicked off the second half of the draft with a player who posted comical numbers this year: first baseman Charlie Bussey III, a right-handed hitter out of Francis Marion, taken with the No. 328 pick. Obviously players are drafted first and foremost based on scouting their live mechanics, which is good because it’s hard to know how much stock to put into smaller school stats. Bussey is Example A: in the Division II Conference Carolinas, playing against competition such as Ferrum College and Shorter University, Bussey hit a truly laughable .489/.604/.866 with 21 home runs and 40 stolen bases in 60 games, while walking well over twice as frequently as he struck out.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that he’ll be a good Major Leaguer if he can keep those numbers up at the next level.

Perhaps more importantly, Bussey, who turns 23 in December and is listed at 6’2, 205, played in the Cape Cod League this summer, where he hit 6-27 with one double, nine walks, seven strikeouts, and three stolen bases. He was the D2 National Player of the Year this season, which is a great honor … remember that not all great players and prospects come from big name schools, as Bo Davidson frequently reminds us.

In the 12th round, with the No. 358 pick, the Giants took their fourth player who has some serious MLB bloodlines: prep outfielder Josiah Kemp, from Choctaw High School in Oklahoma. Kemp, a right-handed hitter, is the nephew of three-time All-Star Matt Kemp, whom the Giants were all too familiar with given his excellent run with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Kemp, who has a commitment to Oklahoma that the Giants will have to buy him out of, is an exceptionally athletic and twitchy outfielder. He’s fairly lean, but projects to fill out as he grows. If he can maintain his speed and agility as he adds strength, he could become a very intriguing two-way player. He has good speed with both his bat and legs. The Giants need more athletes, and they just got one. Kemp was the No. 311 prospect on Baseball America’s big board.

With their 13th-round selection, No. 388 overall, San Francisco turned to Arkansas left-handed pitcher Colin Fisher. The soon-to-turn 22-year old saw his stock drop a little bit in his third year with the Razorbacks, and he finished the season with a 5.59 ERA and a 4.80 FIP while getting moved to the bullpen after 10 starts. That rough start probably cost him a few rounds in the draft, but there’s still a lot to like, as evidenced by the fact that Fisher still was listed as the No. 268 draft prospect on Baseball America’s big board.

Fisher has a good frame, with a listed height of 6’3 and 225 pounds. His curveball is his best pitch, but to this point he has struggled to put together a competitive fastball. Needless to say, that will be something he needs to address in the Minor Leagues if he wants to have success at the next level. He did have good command though, as he only walked 17 batters in 56.1 innings this year. With three years at Arkansas on his ledger, he’s someone that Tony Vitello will have had some experience watching and playing against. Like so many prospects, Fisher also pitched in the Cape Cod League this year, where he had a 4.70 ERA in 15.1 innings, with nine strikeouts and six walks.

San Francisco continued the pitching theme in the 14th round, taking Houston right-hander Alex Solis with the No. 418 pick. Solis, who is listed at 6’1, 190, and turns 22 in December, doesn’t have very good college stats, but that’s not unusual at this part of the draft. This past year, which was his junior season, was his best year, as he posted a 5.50 ERA and a 4.05 FIP while working almost entirely in relief. Solis cut his walk rate nearly in half this year, issuing just 11 bases on balls in 37.2 innings, with 37 strikeouts.

While his numbers aren’t great, he certainly has experience playing against decent competition, as he spent all three of his collegiate years at Houston in the Big 12. Given his role in college, it seems likely that the Giants will jump straight to using Solis as a reliever in the Minor Leagues.

In the 15th round, with the 448 selection, the Giants chose third baseman Drew Smith from Oregon. Smith had a spectacular year in the Big 10, hitting .342/.425/.622 for a 1.047 OPS and a 139 wRC+. He showed off some serious power gains, with 16 home runs in 272 plate appearances … after just 12 homers in 496 prior plate appearances.

So why was he available in the 15th round, when he finished 15th in a quality conference in OPS, just a few percentage points behind No. 1 overall pick Roch Cholowsky? A few reasons. For starters, Smith was a four-year college player, so he’s on the older side. Having turned 23 last month, Smith is only nine months younger than the other Oregon third baseman in the Giants system, Sabin Ceballos … who has already logged more than 700 plate appearances in AA. The other primary reason is that, despite his .342 batting average, Smith had a 25.0% strikeout rate in his senior year at Oregon, which is incredibly high for a college player, especially a four-year player.

Still and all, late in the draft the Giants got a guy with good power, who hits the ball incredibly hard, and has a track record of success at a good baseball school, while playing a defensively important position (he also has some defensive versatility, as he’s played second base and the outfield). That’s always a win in my book! And when he makes it to High-A, he’ll have plenty of experience at the ballpark, as the Eugene Emeralds share a field with the Oregon Ducks, where Smith played all four of his collegiate seasons.

After a pause, the draft resumed for the 16th round, where the Giants got a very exciting player: Wake Forest third baseman Dalton Wentz. A powerful switch-hitter, Wentz was projected to be drafted at the start of the day, if not at the end of Saturday … he was ranked as the No. 165 prospect by MLB Pipeline, No. 170 by Baseball America, and No. 188 by ESPN. As such, the Giants will surely have to use some of their savings from earlier underslot signings to facilitate a Wentz signing, as he’ll likely command something like a sixth-round bonus … perhaps higher given that he was a draft-eligible sophomore, so he can head back to school.

Wentz, who was a Freshman All-American, had a spectacular 2026 in his second season of college ball. He slashed .306/.414/.629 on the year, with 18 home runs in 60 games, which was tied for fifth in the ACC. He’s a serious power hitter, for better and for worse — his .323 isolated slugging was an outrageously good number, while his 22.7% strikeout rate surely gave scouts pause. He’s a very aggressive hitter, also for better or for worse, with strikeouts driven more by swing decisions than contact ability (although, despite that, he had a 15.1% walk rate).

Despite his size (he’s listed at 6’2, 215), Wentz also plays second base, though his future is almost certainly at a corner, be it in the infield or the outfield. His biggest strength on defense is, fittingly, his arm strength. Ultimately, the Giants got an extremely-powerful switch-hitter who will turn 21 later this month, about 10 rounds later than he was projected to go. That’s extremely exciting, though whether or not they can sign him now becomes one of the biggest questions of their 2026 draft class.

In the 17th round, with the No. 508 pick, the Giants got an extremely Giantsy player: Western Michigan outfielder Tanner Mally. A right-handed hitter who is about to turn 22, Mally has a whole lot of Wade Meckler in his game. His contact ability is truly absurd: this year he posted an almost unbelievable .446 batting average, with a .554 on-base percentage (and while the Mid-American Conference isn’t the best baseball in the world, it is D1). And he did all of that while striking out just 13 times in 243 plate appearances.

The downside? He ends his college career without having recorded a single home run, in nearly 500 plate appearances. So not a lot of power in that bat. But my goodness can he hit, and he’s got some speed as well, and used it to steal 19 bases this season. That speed has allowed him to become a quality defensive player in the outfield, and I would expect the Giants to develop him in the center of the grass.

Mally also played summer ball last year in the Coastal Plain League, where he hit .316/.446/.393, with only eight strikeouts in 148 plate appearances (funnily enough, despite the donut in college, he hit two homers in summer ball). He’ll be a fun player to follow, and we know the Giants will be enamored with his skillset.

The Giants returned to pitchers in the 18th round, selecting UC Irvine southpaw Ryder Brooks with the No. 538 pick. After having subpar results as a starter in 2025, Brooks returned to the bullpen this past year for his junior season. The overall results were mixed — he posted a 4.86 ERA and a 3.59 FIP — but the move to the pen helped Brooks decrease his walk rate, while his strikeouts took off. In all, he struck out 41 batters in 33.1 innings, while only walking 11 (though he did hit seven batters).

A three-year Anteater, Brooks pitched in the Cape Cod League last summer and struck out 12 batters in nine innings, though he walked seven. Brooks has an incredibly smooth and repeatable motion, with a highish release that induces a lot of ground balls. He lives in the low-90s currently, so his fastball has a lot of room for improvement, but his sweeper is a very nice pitch.

With their penultimate pick of the draft, No. 568 overall, the Giants picked another third baseman, Mikey Bell from Gonzaga. A right-handed hitter who grew up in Fresno, Bell has a lot of power, and in 2026 hit .379/.456/.607 with nine home runs in 54 games, en route to West Coast Conference Player of the Year honors (he won the award in both of his seasons with Gonzaga, after transferring from a community college). He also showed off some considerable contact improvements, lowering his strikeout rate from 20.4% in 2025 to 14.2% this past season.

Despite lowering that strikeout rate, Bell, who is 22, has a good amount of chase in his game, and will likely strike out a lot in the Minors unless he makes some adjustments. But his power plays to all parts of the field, and that led to him sneaking into the Baseball America top 500 draft prospects list, at No. 444. There’s also a lot left to untap there: Bell posted better exit velocities than his power numbers would suggest. He’s spent some time in the outfield, and could end up at a corner there, or at first base.

While Bell won’t be as hard to sign as Wentz, he’ll likely command a decent bonus, as he was scheduled to transfer from Gonzaga to Georgia. An SEC school offers a lot more NIL money and a better chance to showcase himself against top talent before potentially entering the draft as a fifth-year senior, so the Giants will have to compete with that.

And finally we arrive at the team’s 20th-round pick … their 21st and final selection of the draft. With the No. 598 pick in the draft, the Giants returned to the defining position of their draft by selecting right-handed pitcher JP Robertson from Mississippi.

Robertson spent just one year at Mississippi after transferring from a community college, and ended the season with a 4.34 ERA and a 4.25 FIP. He worked almost exclusively as a reliever, and had some serious punchout stuff, as he recorded 49 strikeouts in 37.1 innings, which is very impressive in the SEC. He has some notable command issues to work through, though, as he also issued 21 walks.

But there’s a lot to work with there, as Robertson has some serious power. He lives in the mid-upper 90s, and has tickled triple digits on the radar gun. His cutter has a lot of movement, and he also has an intriguing slider. Despite his command issues, he has a compact delivery that should be fairly repeatable. Robertson will likely be used as a pure power reliever, and that’s something the system has been awfully short on this year.

And that’s the 2026 draft for the Giants! For stats and videos on all 21 picks, go check out our draft tracker.

A huge thanks to all the great publications and prospectors who help provide so much information pertaining to the draft. A special thanks to Bluesky users EB and Giant Futures, whose posts helped me fill out my understanding of these 10 players. Give them a follow.