Giants prospect Davidson continues baseball revival in Fall League

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Bo Davidson is the Giants’ No. 25 prospect. He signed for $50,000 as an undrafted free agent in July 2023 and enjoyed a breakout age-21 season at Single-A San Jose. He was limited to 63 total Minor League games by a hamstring injury and was sent to the Arizona Fall League to make up for lost at-bats and continue to build on a promising first full season.

On paper, that reads as a standard Arizona Fall League bio. Go a little deeper, and the Scottsdale outfielder might have the most interesting backstory of anyone playing in this year’s showcase circuit.

Start with this: For a year and a half, Davidson thought he was done with baseball.

The left-handed-hitting slugger played 14 games at Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C., during the 2021 season and showed promise in the small sample, going 19-for-48 (.396) with seven extra-base hits, 16 walks, eight strikeouts and 16 steals. He didn’t play again in a collegiate setting until 2023.

“[There was] some family stuff, but I really low-key gave up on baseball,” he said. “I was done with it. Then, something kept telling me to come back.”

When Davidson was ready to return, he headed to Caldwell Community College & Technical Institute in Hudson, N.C., (the town of Madison Bumgarner’s high school alma mater) for the 2023 season, in part to play with his best friend, Breon Ishmael. (Ishmael has since transferred to Division II Wingate, where he posted a 1.028 OPS this past spring.) It was roughly seven games into his time at Caldwell Tech that Davidson estimates he first noticed the Giants were paying attention. Soon other teams followed.

“All I can say is they were really liking me, everything I did,” he said. “I have tools, raw tools.”

Those skills led to very real in-game production. Davidson produced a .412/.508/.876 slash line with 16 homers in only 38 games during that 2023 spring. His love for the game reestablished, the outfielder saw more time in the wooden bat summer collegiate showcase Coastal Plain League with the High Point-Thomasville HiToms, and while he went 4-for-22 (.182) in 10 games, two of those hits were homers, and he added 10 walks to finish with a .441 OBP. His last game was as the HiToms cleanup hitter in an exhibition game against the Chinese Taipei National Team on June 28.

Less than a month later on July 25, the Giants made Davidson’s signing official.

Davidson’s game immediately translated to the pro side with a .286/.397/.469 line in 16 games in the Rookie-level Arizona Complex League, and while he got off to a slow start with Single-A San Jose, he took off immediately once he returned from a two-month absence due to the hamstring issue. He hit .440/.564/.868 with seven homers, five triples, eight doubles and an even 23/23 K/BB ratio in the final 26 games of his season in the California League. Those 20 extra-base hits were sixth-most in Single-A, and his 79 total bases placed fifth despite more lost time at the end of August.

After San Jose got bounced from the California League playoffs in Modesto on Sept. 12, manager Ydwin Villegas informed Davidson he was spending the autumn in the AFL, something that was far off the player’s radar at any point in 2024.

“My hitting coaches and other coaches were telling me it’s a big opportunity,” Davidson said. “That pretty much solved that problem of it. I just went with the flow of it.”

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Davidson is 4-for-16 with a double and four walks through his first six games of the Fall League, but he’s shown flashes of what’s shot him up the Giants’ prospect rankings so quickly in his career. The two-bagger registered at 111.1 mph on Oct. 8 at Salt River Fields. Only four Giants Major Leaguers (Jerar Encarnacion, Matt Chapman, Michael Conforto, Heliot Ramos) notched a max exit velocity higher than that in 2024. The two balls he put in play in that Oct. 8 game came with bat speeds of 78.9 mph and 77.7 mph. Anything above 75 mph is considered fast.

“That’s from me being a kid swinging a big bat when I was little,” he said. “My brothers, my mom, my dad all played slow-pitch softball, so there were bats around. I just wanted to pick them up as a kid.”

Davidson also shows plus speed and above-average arm strength, two tools that have helped him play all three outfield spots this fall, though most of his looks have come in right. The raw tools San Francisco first noticed in North Carolina in the spring of 2023 are very much becoming real in Arizona, where he’s rubbing elbows with other top prospects like Scottdale teammate and Pirates prospect Termarr Johnson (MLB No. 75) – the 2022 fourth overall pick Davidson first knew of through Instagram.

Not bad for a guy who was out of the sport competitively just two years ago.

“Just being here every day,” Davidson said, “is a blessing.”