The San Francisco Giants went back to the family well on Saturday. With the 90th overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, they selected Rutgers outfielder Peyton Bonds. Yes, that last name is the one you’re thinking of.
Peyton is the nephew of Giants legend and MLB’s all-time home run king Barry Bonds. He’s also the grandson of Bobby Bonds, the former big-league slugger who hit 332 homers, and the son of Bobby Bonds Jr., a longtime minor league player who topped out at Triple-A. So the baseball pedigree is pretty deep. But the Giants insist that’s not why they took him.
“We’re drafting Peyton Bonds, not his last name,” Michael Holmes, the team’s senior director of amateur scouting, told reporters. “His talent, his tools, his projection — that’s what sold us.”
What the Numbers Say
Peyton, 20, put together a strong final season at Rutgers before a hamstring injury cut things short in April. In 36 games, he hit .352 with a .436 on-base percentage and a .535 slugging percentage. That’s a .972 OPS. He had six home runs, 29 RBIs, and stole 13 bases in 15 tries. Not bad for a guy who missed the last month of the season.
The standout tool here is the raw power. At the MLB Combine, Bonds posted a 110.6 mph 90th-percentile exit velocity — the fifth-highest mark at the event, according to Baseball America. That bat speed is legit. The question is whether he can consistently translate it into game power. Some scouts think adjustments to his swing path could unlock more home runs as he moves through the minors.
MLB Pipeline had him ranked 81st in this draft class. Baseball America slotted him at 114th. So the Giants grabbed him a little earlier than those rankings suggested, but not by a dramatic margin.
Defense and the Center Field Question
Bonds stands 6-foot-5, 230 pounds. That’s not a typical center fielder’s build, but he’s athletic enough to handle the position. Scouts rate his speed as average and his glovework as solid. He made 80 putouts at Rutgers with a .976 fielding percentage. MLB Pipeline projects him to stick in center field as he develops, which would give his profile a nice boost if the bat keeps progressing.
The Giants had extra familiarity with Bonds because they’d already scouted his Rutgers teammate, Trevor Cohen. Cohen was San Francisco’s third-round pick in 2025 and is now the organization’s eighth-best prospect. So the scouting department knew the program well.
Peyton Bonds is now part of an organization that knows the Bonds name better than anyone. But he’ll have to earn every at-bat on his own. The raw ingredients are there. The rest is up to development — and a little luck staying healthy.
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