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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — You might say that Giants outfield prospect Luis Matos had a terrific six-game series in Tacoma last week. It might be just as accurate to say that he laid waste to the Rainiers pitching staff. He sprayed line drives. He turned almost every plate appearance into a cardio workout for opposing outfielders. He collected 16 hits in 30 at-bats and caused so much damage that he might be barred from visiting the locally renowned Museum of Glass.

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Matos had three hits in the series opener May 30. Then three more hits the next day. He went 4-for-6 with a home run and a double the day after that. Then another two-hit game. And another three-hit game.

His performance in the series finale Sunday looked like a whimper by comparison: just 1-for-4, which reduced his average to .397 in 17 games since getting promoted to Triple-A Sacramento from Double-A Richmond. But the box score doesn’t show that he also scorched a line drive in his last at-bat. Finally, the Rainiers had an outfielder standing in the right place to snag one.

After every game, Matos receives a phone call from his father, Jose Luis, who doesn’t miss a streaming pitch from Bobures, a small town on the southern shore of Lake Maracaibo in Zulia, Venezuela. The gist of the conversation after Sunday’s game: Why didn’t you get a 17th hit?

“Every game — every game,” Matos said with a laugh.

“El me llama me dice, que paso aqui? Por que esto? Por que hacia algo mal? El sabe. El sabe.”

He’ll call me and say to me, what happened here? Why this? Why did I do something wrong? He knows. He knows.

There is less and less to pick apart this season. After a speed-bump development year in 2022 in which Matos dealt with a nagging left quadriceps injury, struggled to compete at High-A Eugene and plummeted down top-prospect lists, the 21-year-old outfielder is turning heads again. Beginning with the opposing pitcher.

Matos began the season by hitting .304/.398/.443 in 31 games for Richmond to earn a rapid promotion out of an Eastern League that often eats hitting prospects alive, especially in the chill of April. Giants coaches weren’t surprised that Matos’ elite bat-to-ball skills began to translate into success. What most excited them was the progress Matos began to demonstrate in working counts, tightening up his strike zone and not letting pitchers turn his greatest skill — his ability to flick his wrists and put almost any pitch into play — into a liability to be exploited.

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At Richmond, Matos struck out just 12 times. He also drew 17 walks. A year earlier at Eugene, where Matos hit .211/.275/.344 in 91 games, he drew just 27 walks all season.

“He’s getting a little older and — ” said Sacramento hitting coach Damon Minor, stopping himself mid-sentence. “When I say old, he’s what, 21? But you can see that the baseball knowledge is expanding and so is the understanding of how to be meticulous with his work. Guys who are really talented at putting bat to ball really take off when they understand how to use their aggressiveness and make it smaller, reduce it down to the pitches you can do damage with.”

First Triple-A home run for Luis Matos! 💥

The No. 7 @SFGiants prospect leaves the yard as part of a four-hit day for the @RiverCats: pic.twitter.com/RBjdQRJzwl

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) June 2, 2023

Minor coached Matos with Scottsdale in the Arizona Fall League last October, when the right-handed hitting center fielder was named the top defensive player in the prospect-studded circuit. The performance with the bat wasn’t there — Matos hit .233/.280/.361 with two home runs in 22 games — but the exposure to upper-level pitching had the desired impact.

“He’s really starting to understand how pitchers will attack him and he’s taking that into the game,” Minor said. “He’s making sure that every swing matters in his pregame work. In the Fall League, the work wasn’t quite there. There were a lot of swings. Now he’s really honing in on what he’s doing in the cage so he’s prepared for the game.”

And when he gets pitches to hit?

“Oh my goodness, it’s fun to watch,” Sacramento manager Dave Brundage said. “He’ll get hits in 0-2 (counts) to 2-0 to 0-0. He’s hitting different pitches. It’s not like they’re just feeding him fastballs. Sure, he’s made some easy outs along the way where maybe you’d like to see him work deeper counts. But for the most part, he knows who he is right now. There are a few soft hits mixed in there, sure. But the approach stays middle of the field. That’s what stands out to me.”

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The results might be loud but Matos exudes a quiet stillness in the batter’s box. He stands mostly upright with a balanced posture. There’s no rocking or exaggerated load as he waits on a pitch. Just lightning-fast hands and a swing that almost looks like he’s flicking away a mosquito.

“Those hands are really, really good,” Minor said. “His bat speed has a really high engine. He can really control the barrel with his body. And his swing is very simple. That really helps him be always geared up and always on time.”

He won’t get 16 hits every series, though. Or every month. In Tuesday’s home series opener against Las Vegas, Matos led off the first inning by popping up the first pitch. He hit a double-play grounder on the first pitch of his next at-bat. In his third trip to the plate, he looked at one ball before grounding into an inning-ending fielder’s choice. Matos averaged 3.6 pitches per plate appearance in Richmond. He’s down to 3.1 pitches per plate appearance in Sacramento.

His last two plate appearances Tuesday hinted at progress, though. He took a borderline 3-1 pitch and dropped his bat in anticipation of heading to first base before the home plate umpire made a strike call. He flied out to center on the next pitch. In the ninth, Matos stepped up to bat with the River Cats down to their final out, trailing by a run and with runners at first and second base. Matos worked the count full, fouled off three high fastballs and popped up to end the game. His hitting streak came to an end, but not without a nine-pitch battle.

On one hand, facing higher-level pitchers who are more reliable around the plate is something that should work to Matos’ advantage. On the other hand, those pitchers also have different shapes on their breaking balls and make it harder than ever to gain count leverage.

Matos, a gifted center fielder, also is working to improve his reads and routes in the outfield corners. And he’s working with Sacramento fundamentals coach Jolbert Cabrera on his base-running technique, which has room for improvement. If you’re going to get on base 16 times in a six-game series, it’s probably a good idea to enhance your skills in that area.

Giants catcher Patrick Bailey has seen Matos at his best (in Low-A San Jose in 2021, then at Richmond to begin this season) and at his worst (in Eugene last season). Bailey said he’s not surprised Matos is finding his hitting groove now that he’s gotten out of A-ball.

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“You go through the wringer there,” said Bailey, who had his own struggles at Eugene last season. “Going back to San Jose, Matos was the best hitter I’d ever seen bat-to-ball. And last year, I don’t know, man. There’s something about Eugene that does something to hitters. He was popping up a lot. He always chased, but there was a little more swing and miss for him. So it just kind of snowballed.”

Matos always got rewarded for swinging the bat. For the first time, at Eugene, that wasn’t happening. He missed time with the quad injury and acknowledged the issue was still affecting him after he returned to the active roster.

“Last year was hard,” Matos said in Spanish through interpreter Ashley Magdaleno. “I got hurt right away and coming back, it still bothered me a lot. But thank God I’m better now. I feel really good. I honestly feel I’m playing the same game. The only difference I’ve noticed is here in Triple-A, there are a lot of pitches that come from the big leagues. But I honestly think it’s the same. I feel good in my best moments at the plate.”

After a long season at Eugene followed by exposure to higher-level pitching in the Arizona Fall League, Matos went home to his batting cage in Bobures and changed his practice habits. He reported to major-league spring training for the first time in February (the Giants had to place Matos on the 40-man roster to protect him from being taken in the Rule 5 draft) and listened in his player plan meetings with manager Gabe Kapler and president Farhan Zaidi.

But the first voice in Matos’ head belonged to someone else.

“My dad has known me since I was little,” Matos said. “He knows my swing. He knows how I play. He knows everything about me.”

Jose Luis Matos was an infielder and outfielder who played briefly in the Cleveland system before a shoulder injury ended his baseball dreams. Jose Luis never got a chance to appear with a full-season affiliate, but his brother, Malvin, played five years in the Texas Rangers organization before embarking on a decade-long career in the independent leagues. Bobures might be a small lakeside town in a state that has not produced many major-league players, but Luis Matos is cousins with the Basabe twins who play professionally, including Luis Alexander, an outfielder who played briefly for the Giants in 2020. Another cousin, 21-year-old outfielder Alexander Suarez, is in the Giants system and at San Jose again this season.

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They are a strong extended baseball family. Most strong baseball families have a strong patriarch.

“Mi papa esta al tanto de todo,” Matos said. “El ver todo el juego.”

My dad is aware of everything. He sees the whole game.

Jose Luis Matos wants nothing more than to be in the stadium when his son makes his major-league debut.

“He says, ‘I’ll be there every single day,'” Luis Matos said. “He says he’s going to live at the stadium.”

The Giants set industry standards when it comes to hosting families for major-league debuts. They arrange last-minute flights and hotels. They send someone with a placard to pick them up at the airport. They set families up with tickets and field passes.

But for players with family in Venezuela, the logistics can be daunting. Venezuelan citizens need a B1/B2 visa to enter the U.S. as a tourist or to conduct business — a process that includes filing 11 separate documents and can take from three months to years to process. It doesn’t help that the U.S. Embassy in Caracas withdrew diplomatic personnel in 2019 and suspended consular services. And with Venezuela’s political and economic instability creating a humanitarian crisis in recent years, with roughly a quarter of the population living as migrants in other countries, the Biden administration in October announced that it would cap monthly travel authorizations to 30,000 for applicants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

“Nothing is ever easy when dealing with Venezuela,” Giants attorney Matt Valdez said. “It’s a really complicated place to navigate. Call-ups aren’t always choreographed, either. So it’s a moving target that depends on factors that are outside (our) scope. But we know it’s a big day for players and their families, and we do our best to assist.”

The Giants do not have a spot for Matos at the moment. Their position player corps is the healthiest it’s been all season now that Austin Slater, Joc Pederson and Thairo Estrada are back from the injured list. But as Tuesday night’s game at Coors Field demonstrated, the Giants are one outfield collision away from needing reinforcements. Slater and Mike Yastrzemski came out of their hip-to-hip collision without significant injury. Whenever there’s a need, though, Matos is one level and a phone call away — and already on the 40-man roster.

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“I just keep focusing on what I’m doing and put in the hard work every day,” Matos said. “The rest is up to them.”

(Top photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

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