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When it comes to production from specific positions, the Giants have a position that’s up there with baseball’s worst. Giants center fielders have combined to hit .189 this season, with a .260 OBP and .329 SLG. Not great. They’re exactly two OPS points ahead of the Guardians in this department, but there’s a huge difference between these two teams: The Guardians have a reigning Gold Glove winner in center field, and the Giants have a couple of guys who are solid. They’re getting nothing from their center fielders in terms of run production, yet it’s not because they went with a defense-over-offense arrangement.

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As it turns out, the biggest problem here is health, not personnel. When Mike Yastrzemski is in center, he’s been fine, with a .449 SLG and .751 OPS. Austin Slater has hit well when he’s in the lineup, but he’s only managed four games in center because of his wonky hamstring. So it’s not quite accurate to describe the Giants as having a center-field problem. We knew there’d be problems if Slater wasn’t healthy, and you’re seeing why. Get the Slaterzemski platoon back, and everything is humming like it was supposed to.

The Giants’ center field situation doesn’t need fixing, then. It just needs health. The reason that the Giants fare so poorly in the early-season CF splits is because Brett Wisely, Cal Stevenson and Bryce Johnson have combined for eight hits, two extra-base hits and 21 strikeouts in 71 at-bats as center fielders. Get the expected contributors in there, and center field should be an asset, not a sinkhole.

And yet.

There’s a way for center field to be the story of the season. If you’ve enjoyed the Casey Schmitt experience and are in the mood for another prospect with superlative defense and a high batting average, let me unfurl the glossy brochure for Luis Matos, who’s thriving after a recent promotion to Triple A. In terms of need and fit, it’s hard to get better than this.

It was just a few months ago that it wasn’t guaranteed that Matos was going to be protected from the Rule 5 Draft. He was hurt and lousy for the High-A Eugene Emeralds last season, and it wasn’t unreasonable to think that other teams would shy away from the idea that he could be on a major-league roster all season. He was still a top prospect, though, so the Giants protected him. In a best-case scenario, he’d rebound and only waste a 40-man spot for a season.

Except there was an ultra-best-case scenario that’s playing out now. In this scenario, Matos wouldn’t just rebound, but he’d be considered for a role on the major-league roster this season. He’d thrive and thrive and thrive, to the point where it would be almost negligent not to call him up.

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Matos started this season hitting .304/.399/.444 for the Double-A Richmond Flying Squirrels. It’s not easy to post a line like that in the Eastern League, and it’s especially difficult to do so in April. No matter, Matos raked, and he was promoted to Triple A, where going into Tuesday’s game he was hitting .409. That’s a 9-for-22 stretch, so don’t get too excited, but he’s already matched his career high in triples at any level (2).

More than any of this, though, is how he’s thriving. Matos isn’t buoying his high batting average with a swing-first and swing-often approach. He’s making contact in a preternaturally freaky way, as he’s wont to do, but he’s also being patient enough to take walks. He’s walked more than he’s struck out this season, which isn’t a profile you see from a lot of minor leaguers. It definitely isn’t a statistical profile that you usually see from 21-year-old players in Triple A, which Matos is.

Let’s color in that ultra-best-case scenario now, then, and talk about another contact-hero coming off a lackluster minor-league season when he was 21. Pablo Sandoval wasn’t even included in the 2008 Giants’ top-30 prospect list by some dullard named Andy Baggarly, but he eventually showed bat-to-ball skills that are so rare and hard to fake that he ended up on the major-league roster. He thrived.

Now imagine Panda being a speedy, plus defender in center field. You have the 90th-percentile outcome for Matos’ career.

Those kinds of expectations aren’t fair, of course, so let’s talk about the 50th percentile outcome. It’s still great. Matos has a skill that’s hard to teach — plus center field defense — and he has speed, but he supplements all of this with a true unicorn ability to put the bat on the ball. He’s always been an outlier with his low strikeout rate, and he’s supplemented that this season with an increased walk rate. It’s everything the Giants could have asked for, and it happens to be at a position of need.

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This is putting a lot on the shoulders of a kid who was 12 years old when Sandoval caught the foul pop that ended the 2014 World Series. It wasn’t that long ago that Matos was a developmental enigma, so maybe we shouldn’t overreact to a sudden turn of good fortune. But Keith Law was cautiously optimistic about him in his preseason rankings, even going so far as to remind the reader that he’d would still be young for A-ball. Instead, Matos is on the 40-man roster and doing everything right in Triple A.

The only questions are a) can he keep this up in Sacramento, and b) how would the Giants fold him into a healthy roster? That healthy roster would include Yastrzemski, Slater, Michael Conforto and Mitch Haniger, for sure. That leaves one outfield spot, and it’s not outlandish to think Blake Sabol is more of an outfielder than a catcher now that Patrick Bailey is up. There might not be room for Matos.

He’ll be up eventually, though, and he’ll be the new Schmitt, at least in terms of immediate excitement. In a confusing season so far, it turns out the Giants might have secret weapons behind the secret weapons. It’s not hard to plot out a future for a Giants team that’s not just defensively OK up the middle, but thriving. Matos should be a part of that.

This month? Next month? Next year? The necessary roster machinations that deal with injuries will have more to do with the specific timing, so don’t assume anything aside from that. But the best story of the 2023 Giants just might be an athletic 21-year-old who happens to fit the exact profile the Giants are looking for. Luis Matos doesn’t have to debut this season, but my guess is that he does. And when he does, Giants fans will have hope for a young, homegrown outfielder like they haven’t had since George Foster, Gary Matthews, Jack Clark, Dave Kingman or Garry Maddox.

You know the Giants are interested in Matos’ progress, which is why he’s been moved so aggressively. He doesn’t have to save the Giants’ season, but he can build on his improvements this season. The Giants are a Craigslist ad looking for peanut butter, and Matos is a different Craigslist ad looking for jelly. There seems to be a match, here. There seems to be a legitimate match.

The Giants have two of the top five WAR leaders for rookies in baseball (Sabol, Schmitt), and it’s time to get greedy. Matos doesn’t need to be rushed, but he fits the roster. He’s gone from the bottom of the 40-man barrel to the top of the options that could help at a premium position for the Giants this season.

And then, maybe, possibly, perhaps, we’ll see. It sure looks encouraging from here, though.

(Photo: Stan Szeto / USA Today)

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