Goldeyes’ Croes signs with San Fransisco Giants

Winnipeg Goldeyes infielder Dayson Croes has a new baseball home after signing with the MLB’s San Francisco Giants on Wednesday.

The 25-year-old has pieced together back-to-back campaigns of sensational hitting for the Fish, and after an off-season where he continued to shine internationally, his talents finally became too great to ignore at the next level.

“First and foremost, just thrilled for him,” said Goldeyes field manager Logan Watkins, who has previously expressed that Croes belongs in a Major League organization.

It’s the second time in the last 11 months that Croes received a serious look from a Major League organization. He nearly signed with the Minnesota Twins last June, but issues with his work visa prevented the deal from going through.

That’s now a thing of the past.

“I was kind of anticipating hardly having him much at all this year,” Watkins added.

Croes hadn’t reported to Goldeyes’ training camp, which opened on April 26, as he finished his time at a job he secured during the off-season. He was expected to miss the first few weeks of the season before joining the club at the end of the month.

He represented the Netherlands at the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) Premier12 tournament in November and played for the country in a pair of exhibition games against teams from the Nippon Professional Baseball Organization in Japan last month as a part of Team Netherlands’ prep for next year’s World Baseball Classic.

Croes followed that up with an otherworldly performance at the Baseball Champions League Americas tournament earlier this month when he registered 12 hits, three home runs and seven RBI on the strength of a .706 batting percentage in three games.

“I thought for sure a team in Mexico was probably going to offer him some pretty big money to go there, which hadn’t happened,” Watkins said.

“God has weird intentions sometimes. He kept Mexico away from him long enough that an affiliated team was waiting to make a deal. His patience, I know he was probably thinking, and we’ve talked about it, ‘What more do I have to do to get picked up?’ and I think his patience is finally going to pay off.”

Croes has been the American Association’s model of consistency since arriving in Winnipeg in 2023.

The product of Noord, Aruba, landed in the provincial capital as a hungry 23-year-old after going unsigned out of Quincy College (Illinois). Former Goldeyes skipper Greg Tagert gave the left-swinging contact-hitter a chance, and he did so well — winning American Association Rookie of the Year after leading the league with 135 hits — that he became a top priority for Watkins to re-sign once he took over the team.

He encored in 2024 by finishing second among all players with 128 hits and third with a .342 batting average.

Croes, a two-time league all-star, strung together four different stretches of registering one hit in at least 10 consecutive games, including nearly setting a franchise record with a 25-game hitting streak in his rookie year.

He becomes the second player in the Watkins era of the Goldeyes to be scooped up by a Major League organization. Infielder Adam Hall signed with the Milwaukee Brewers after six contests last season.

“It’s been a year or two coming for Dayson,” said Watkins. “He should have been probably gone already, but yeah, kind of bittersweet. Even last year when we lost Adam Hall, you’re always happy for him, but in my situation, I’m kind of thinking in my head, ‘Oh man, what would this team have looked like if we could have kept him?’ That’s kind of the same thing with Dayson.”

The Goldeyes open a six-game pre-season schedule this evening in Fargo against the Redhawks (6 p.m.). The club begins its regular season on May 8 against the Cleburne Railroaders in Texas.