The Marco Luciano era is over for the San Francisco Giants, and it’s hard to not feel poignant about it. On Friday, the team quietly announced that Luciano had been claimed off of waivers by the Pittsburgh Pirates, a popular home for former Giants top prospects, as Joey Bart, Alexander Canario, Bryan Reynolds, Kyle Crick, Tyler Beede, and many others can attest to. Luciano was placed on release waivers, not designated for assignment, which means there’s no corresponding move. The Giants weren’t getting rid of the slugger to make room on the 40-man roster for anyone else, but rather to just dip down to 39 players, presumably so they have a little flexibility ahead of Wednesday’s Rule 5 Draft.
It’s the end of an era that was at times exciting and promising, at other times disappointing and confusing, and, in the end, kind of sad. Luciano was signed as a teenager in 2018, and quickly became the team’s top prospect, a title he held for quite a while. His bat speed and power were tantalizing — especially given that he was a shortstop — and he posted a .322/.438/.616 (178 wRC+) line in his debut season in Arizona, playing rookie ball as a 17-year old. The sky was the limit, and the dreaming commenced.
From there, things slowly went downhill, and never really recovered. Luciano’s power remained mesmerizing, but his batting averages plummeted and his strikeout rates spiked. Still and all, he remained one of the top prospects in the organization, with plenty of offensive potential. But it was a different story on the defensive end, where the Giants were insistent on keeping Luciano at shortstop, years after evaluators had given up on him.
In 2024, things officially went fully sideways. Luciano, who had already burned an option year after being added to the roster as a Rule 5 protection (and playing sparingly in 2023), was vaguely anointed the starting shortstop over the offseason by Farhan Zaidi, as the franchise moved on from Brandon Crawford. But he was beat out in Spring Training by mild-hitting Nick Ahmed, and what followed was a disaster. Luciano was given a chance to fill in for Ahmed in May, but the defensive concerns were on full display. After three not-good-but-not-awful games, Luciano fell apart completely, committing five errors in as many games (even though he didn’t enter until the eighth or ninth inning in two of those games). He would only play three more innings at shortstop for the Giants, and was soon optioned.
San Francisco brought him back later in the year, with Zaidi proclaiming that he would be the designated hitter with Jorge Soler traded. But Bob Melvin was hesitant to play him, his playing time was sporadic, and he was again optioned not long after. The Giants had, at this point, moved him to second base, where he played nine MLB games in September, looking better than at shortstop … but not particularly good.
Last offseason the Giants announced that Luciano would be moving to the grass, and he spent 2025 — his final year with an option — manning left field for AAA Sacramento. He wasn’t awful but wasn’t good either, but, of more concern, the offense disappeared. Luciano still flashed a lot — he hit 23 home runs and posted stellar exit velocities — but he held just a .214 batting average, a 30.6% strikeout rate, and a 96 wRC+. With the writing seemingly on the wall as the year came to an end, Luciano ended his final season in the organization in painfully horrible style: over his final 11 games with the River Cats, he hit 2-45 with no extra-base hits and 28 strikeouts.
It was abundantly clear that Luciano — who didn’t play in the Majors at all in 2025 — would be on a new team in 2026. It was just a matter of when and how he would get there. Waiving him just to clear a spot that isn’t even needed for a player is perhaps the most painfully accurate way for this all to end.
No one would have thought, when Luciano was populating the top half of top 100 lists, that his time with the team would end with a mild waiving, after just 41 games played, and no home runs hit. Hopefully a new organization — and hopefully one that doesn’t bungle his development so poorly — is just what he needs.
