Meet the SF Giants area scout who signed Kyle Harrison and Logan Webb
All eyes were fixated on De La Salle High School left-hander Kyle Harrison as he toed the slab against Saint Francis High School during an early season matchup on March 10, 2020 in Concord, California. Harrison, a UCLA commit, was a top prospect that had brought out talent evaluators from nearly every big-league organization. But no one was more zoned into the show than SF Giants area scout Keith Snider.
SF Giants starting pitcher Kyle Harrison pitches against the San Diego Padres. (2023)
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While the Giants had glimpsed fragments of Harrison's performance during his gold-medal-winning tenure with Team USA a year earlier at the WBSC U-18 Series, Snider desired a firsthand look at one of the highly touted prep southpaws in the country. He initially planned to attend Harrison’s outing just a week earlier, but the unpredictable Bay Area weather uncharacteristically postponed the game.
He would have several other chances, Snider figured.
Snider, 67, is a prototypical baseball lifer with nearly three and a half decades of experience. After briefly coaching at the University of Pacific for a few seasons in the 1980s and moonlighting with the Montreal Expos and Florida Marlins as a scout and coach, Snider joined the Giants in 2006 as an area scout covering Northern California, Northern Nevada, and Hawaii –– a gig that netted him the first annual Dick Tidrow Scout of the Year honor in 2022.
“I just liked the whole process of hunting the players that a lot of scouts say they like to hunt, like going out and finding the players and discovering them or going into the showcases and seeing some guys that kind of catch your eye,” Snider said in a conversation with Giants Baseball Insider.
The Giants have placed a heavy emphasis on acquiring local talent since Farhan Zaidi’s regime took over the baseball operations department in 2019. At times it's seemed like every acquisition hailed from the Bay Area. Each of those additions has been a welcome sight for Snider, who can seemingly translate each name into a wealth of anecdotes from watching the player's amateur career.
“I get a kick out of it because I scouted almost every one of them,” Snider said.
Snider is credited with signing outfielder Austin Slater out of Stanford, who the Giants selected in the eighth round of the 2014 MLB Draft. Tristan Beck and Scott Alexander were once on his radar. He saw Brandon Crawford tear up competition in the East Bay. He paid Mitch Haniger a visit in high school playoff games in the South Bay while periodically checking in on J.D. Davis up in Elk Grove.
Even Aaron Judge’s name circulates Snider’s brain from time to time –– the American League single-season home run king was once a beloved member of his scout team, the same one Joc Pederson and Mark Mathias once played for, too.
It’s safe to assume that nearly anyone who has passed through Northern California with a prospect pedigree has been seen in person by Snider. If they’re lucky, he’ll turn his insights into a write-up that is eventually sent up the ladder of the Giants organization.
Harrison undoubtedly earned the write-up, with Snider and Giants crosschecker Matt Woodward finally getting their shot to see the left-hander a week after the rainout. It was worth the wait, as Harrison dominated Saint Francis by striking out 11 hitters in five innings. He flashed a fastball ranging from 91-93 mph with a drop-and-drive crossfire stride. While raw, his secondary stuff was rather potent. Snider saw a projectable frame on the mound –– one that could generate swings and misses in his sleep.
“I’ve talked to a couple other scouts that probably saw him earlier than I did and then talked to some coaches that Kyle had played for when he was like 12-13 years old, and they said he's always been a big swing and miss guy,” Snider said. “And I guess because of the slot where he throws from and where the ball comes out of –– it appears to be coming out of his shoulder area a little bit –– the ball gets right on top of the hitters. They don't see it coming out of his hand. There's deception there.”
The Giants were prepared to see more doses of Harrison as the MLB Draft approached later in the summer. Snider had only seen a few other players thus far –– Mike Brown from the University of Washington, Chase Davis from Elk Grove, Tommy Troy from Los Gatos, and Cole Carrigg from Turlock. He wouldn’t see any more the rest of the season as the COVID-19 pandemic halted sports across the country, putting a wrench with a side of chaos into the plans of scouting directors from all 30 MLB clubs.
Despite seeing him pitch just once at De La Salle, the Giants felt confident enough in the limited sample size to build their draft around taking Harrison in the third-round of the 2020 draft. To sway him away from UCLA, they coughed up a $2.5 million signing bonus, four times the slot value assigned to the pick.
Harrison blasted through the minor league system, anchoring himself as the top left-handed pitching prospect in the sport because of his strong ability to miss bats and produce weak contact from a delivery based on deception and late movement. He’s struggled with command issues from time to time, but Harrison’s 14.6 K/9 in 69 career minor league starts creates a ceiling that could remain atop a big league rotation for the foreseeable future.
San Francisco called up the 22-year-old to make his first big league start against the Phillies on Aug. 22 in Philadelphia. The outing was strong, but Harrison’s home debut six days later marked his arrival with an exclamation point: 11 strikeouts in 6 ⅓ innings of work against a Cincinnati Reds club vying for a postseason spot.
“Kyle really wanted to go play,” Snider said. “I think that was the bottom line of the whole thing. He just really wanted to go play. I mean, just how he's going about his business, even from day one. Getting to the big leagues at age 22 –– he was on a mission and he believes he's a big leaguer and he was going to work at it.”
Two days after attending Harrison’s electrifying Oracle Park welcome, Snider stuck around in San Francisco before heading home to Stockton to see another one of his Northern California prodigal signees take the bump: Logan Webb.
Now established as one of the more consistent arms –– he’s currently rocking a 3.51 ERA with a sport-leading 187 innings pitched –– in the National League, San Francisco’s ace right-hander had a much different path to the big leagues than Harrison, who is almost exactly five years younger than Webb.
Sergio Estrada-USA TODAY Sports
Webb wasn’t on too many radars until his senior season at Rocklin High School. On May 5, 2014, he squared off against Granite Bay’s Mitch Hart in a late-season matchup that progressed as a pitching duel. Snider was there to see Hart –– the Giants did eventually take him in the 35th round, but he opted for college –– but shifted focus when he noticed Webb’s paint pellets through five innings were registering at 94-96 mph on the radar gun.
“People are looking at each other –– there's probably like 25-30 scouts there –– and everybody's looking at you, ‘Anybody know who this kid is?’ Nobody had any idea of who he was,” Snider said. “And so there was a mad dash to their cell phone to start calling their cross-checkers and their scouting director.”
The Giants did their homework on Webb, watching him throw at Rocklin playoff games and inviting him to pre-draft workouts at Oracle Park. They selected him with their fourth-round pick in 2014 and instead of attending Cal Poly, Webb signed for $600,000 –– nearly $160,000 above the value assigned to the pick.
While never a nationally-ranked prospect by the major farm system publications, Webb pitched well in limited innings at the minor league level despite undergoing Tommy John Surgery in 2016 and serving an unlawful 80-game drug suspension a few months before his 2019 MLB debut.
“I think he's very coachable and I think he was willing to make any adjustments that he needed to do to get to the big leagues, and he had a lot of good instructors along the way,” Snider said.
Webb is a far different pitcher from when Snider first laid eyes on him. In high school, the right-hander relied on a higher arm slot with a four-seam fastball that played up in the strike zone and was complemented by an over-the-top 12-6 curveball. He’s since transformed into a lethal sinkerballer with two plus secondary pitches –– a changeup and slider, which are each mixed in evenly.
“Because of the looseness of the arm, the low three-quarter slot, and how the ball comes out of his hand –– It just has that real natural late sink to it,” Snider said. “A lot of guys try forever to get that sink, that kind of movement, and they never do and this guy's got it almost naturally just by dropping his slot.”
Logan Webb and Kyle Harrison make up a dynamic potential 1-2 punch atop the Giants rotation for years to come. They may overpower hitters with different styles, but they both impressed Keith Snider during their prep careers in Northern California enough to get drafted by the Orange and Black. They've made both Snider and the SF Giants look smart.
“I just think if they stay healthy, they definitely have the stuff," Snider said. "I think they have the athleticism and they have the competitiveness to be No. 1 and No. 2. That's gonna be up to the coaching staff and them as well, but the way Logan's been pitching and the kind of stuff that Kyle has, there's no doubt that I think they can pitch at the top of the rotation for years.”
