From Division II to the Fall League, Giants' Pleasants looks to be a keeper

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – On June 9, Elijah Pleasants had his best outing of the year with nine strikeouts over six frames of two-run ball. The fact that his landmark outing of 2024 came for the Oakland Ballers of the Pioneer League set the stage for a whirlwind ride.

Three days later, he agreed to a deal with the Giants. He hopped on a flight that night to join the club at its complex in Scottsdale, where he’s suiting up for the Scorpions during the Arizona Fall League just over four months later.

Rookie-level ball in June. Arizona Fall League ball against a bevy of Top 100 prospects and future big leaguers in November.

After a trio of outings that showcased both Pleasants’ promise and potential but also his need for polish, things largely came together for the 6-foot-5 right-hander during Scottsdale's 4-1 win over Salt River on Friday night at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick.

The right-handed Giants prospect peppered the zone with 42 of his 60 offerings going for strikes. Working primarily with his low-90s sinker/low-80s slider mix, he recorded eight swings-and-misses and four strikeouts across his 3 1/3 innings of one-run ball, and most importantly, no walks.

Solid outings dot the landscape during the premier prospect circuit. But maybe no journey to reach this stage among 2024 participants came with more speed bumps than Pleasants'.

Born in Tacoma, Wash., Pleasants moved to Mannheim, Germany, when he was 2 and lived there until he was 6. The son of two members of the United States Army, he traversed the globe as a kid: Fort Hood, Texas; Columbus, Ga.; Paducah, Ky.; Clarksville, Tenn. His near circumnavigation of the country set the stage in many ways for his travails through the baseball landscape.

“I was constantly meeting new people, constantly making new friends,” Pleasants said. “I think it's something that got easier when I was younger. And so transitioning to now and playing at a lot of different places, it was easy [to acclimate].”

A lot of different places. Pleasants never thought that would be the case in the wake of winning a high school championship and forgoing a 36th-round selection by the Royals in 2018 in favor of his strong commitment to the University of Tennessee.

Three years with the Volunteers in which Pleasants’ 46 1/3 innings didn’t put him on many Draft boards had him headed to the MLB Draft League in 2021 in order to gain more exposure. After a solid showing across seven appearances, he transferred to Dallas Baptist for his final year of collegiate eligibility. Things again didn’t go his way across 7 1/3 frames.

That's why Pleasants went from the SEC in 2021 to the Great Midwest Athletic Conference in 2023. Back near his full-time home in Tennessee, he enrolled at Division II Trevecca Nazarene University to re-establish his prospect profile.

After a solid season there, he was asked back to the Draft League, where he suited up for the Mahoning Valley Scrappers for the second time in three years. (He was teammates there with Danny Kirwin, a fellow Fall Leaguer who took a similarly circuitous route to pro ball.)

“I went from playing for the best team in Division I to playing at a Division II school,” Pleasants said. “So I got to see kind of both ends of the spectrum -- high level of baseball in college at all the places that I went to. I kind of took something away from each place and the competition was good, just like it was in the SEC, and that's what allowed me to go [to the Draft League] and finally get innings under my belt and blossom after that.”

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Pleasants’ 2024 season didn’t begin until mid-May due to the Ballers’ schedule. He racked up 20 1/3 innings with the Rookie-level Arizona Complex League Giants before working 27 more for Single-A San Jose, a stretch in which he held batters to a 2.33 ERA and .194 average-against. He did not allow more than three hits in a single appearance.

At 24 years old, Pleasants’ prospect timeline will need to move quicker than most. But he feels that talent finally married opportunity when he joined the Giants.

“I was just focused on being right there,” Pleasants said of his time in independent ball, “week to week getting better. I wasn't focused on trying to sign, I knew it would happen if I was just focused on what I needed to do.”