Added Comfort Helps Giants’ Sabin Ceballos Salvage Season
Until the Braves traded third baseman Sabin Ceballos to the Giants in the late-July deal in which Atlanta reacquired outfielder Jorge Soler and reliever Luke Jackson, Ceballos had put together a middling 2024 season.
He had hit .259/.353/.354 with three home runs in 85 games with High-A Rome. Once Ceballos joined the Giants’ High-A Eugene affiliate, something clicked for him.
He improved his OPS by more than 200 points and hit seven homers in 32 games.
Farm director Kyle Haines said the Giants made “some really minor changes” to Ceballos at the plate to “maybe free him up a little bit in the batter’s box and make him feel comfortable.”
The native of Puerto Rico spent his junior season of college at Oregon in 2023—the Braves drafted him in the third round that year—so Ceballos figured to feel more comfortable not only in the city in which he had played but even at PK Park, where the Ducks also play.
“I think that helped him a lot,” Haines said.
Listed at 6-foot-3, 225 pounds, the righthanded-hitting Ceballos has “a well-rounded approach, power to all fields,” Haines said. “We saw that this spring, driving the ball to right-center field, to left-center field.”
Ceballos received 15 at-bats in Cactus League action and recorded nine hits. “Yeah, it was a small amount of at-bats,” Haines said, “but it’s hard to go 9-for-15 in high school, let alone in major league baseball.”
Ceballos’ defense “is always going to be the big question mark,” Haines said, but then he offered a more promising assessment. “I’d say his defense, between the time we got him and now, has improved the most. He’s made some really, really nice plays in major league camp.
“And I think if he continues to trend this way, he has a chance to be average or slightly above at third.”
Haines said the fallback option for Ceballos would be to move to the other infield corner.
“He’d be a plus first baseman right now,” Haines said, “but our hope is to keep him at third base.”
