Mason Black

Black is one of the higher-ranked prospects in the San Francisco organization. He is a former third-round pick after impressive work for Lehigh University and has since pitched effectively as a minor league starter with 378 strikeouts in 320 innings of work. His time in the majors in 2024 was a humbling experience, as the league enjoyed a lot of success off him, hanging a 6.44 ERA and a 1.68 WHIP on him over nine games while hitting over .300 on his three primary pitch offerings. The one area of success he had in the majors was his slider, which was a no-hitter on the season as nobody safely batted one of his 39 sliders into play. Black's calling card is a delivery that provides better than average extension, allowing his pitches to play up a bit more like a Joe Ryan, but only his slider grades as an above-average pitch on the pitch modeling. The extension allowed him to get a better than average whiff rate on a four-seamer, which had a .333 average against, so the path to success for Black could very well be a move to the pen to focus on a fastball and slider approach. Simply put, his outcomes since graduating out of Double-A have been challenging between the big-league humbling and the run environments of the PCL.