Well, maybe a little. Hector Sanchez, beloved El Magneto, was signed to a minor league contract.
But I keep scouring the innertubes for news. While doing so, I came across a tribute to Matt Cain that I wanted to share. Anyone remember El Lefty Malo? A fine blogster on the Giants, real name Alex Lash. He now has a new gig, the Frisc. This is from the Frisc. Because if you can't read about the Giants' future, you might as well read about their glorious past.
19 comments:
"February is the new January", that is, the market won't heat up until right before spring training. Cot's says the Giants have $182M already committed--that does not give them much flexibility since they say they want to avoid the CBT. I do expect some roster-bating, but I think Longoria was The Big Splash, and any other moves will be on a smaller scale.
giants may need to make at least one more solid move. Little tweaks just might not do the trick. Longoria will have to hit above 280, and 25 dingers or more, to make a significant inpact on offense, and a lot of that has to be in clutch situations. Hoping that his fielding remains elite.
By their own statements they need to, and intend to, acquire a significant outfielder, presumably a corner OF who has a potent bat so that they can play a glove man in CF. They can’t be through now, with only the Longoria deal done, as they turned out to be, pretty much, last year once they got Melancon. What, for instance, if Longoria gets hurt, and they have no Arroyo for third, so are left with the dismal choices of Jones and Sandoval? Some other strong bat has to be added.
Here's a radical idea. Starlin Castro, recently dealt to the Marlins in that Stanton 'trade', wants out of there. How about we pick him up, &, in an Ian Desmond-like move, convert him into an OF? The guy has been around quite awhile, but is still only 27 years old(!), & coming off of a good offensive Season. He can't be any worse in the OF than some of our other options. Panik is an endearing character, so I would be sad to lose him, but, when you really think about it, having Castro as a right-handed batting 2B could also help to balance our lineup. Or, another reason to get Castro (& keep Panik) is to bolster the collection of solid IF's. Castro can play 2B or 3B, so we could cut Sandoval loose. Sandoval is nominally a switch-hitter, but not really. So, again, we would pick up right-handed batting versatility by exchanging Sandoval for Castro. Castro, Panik, & Longoria would still get tons of AB's each, especially if Castro plays a bit of OF, too. And, prospect-wise, Castro probably wouldn't be nearly as expensive as some of the other people who we've been sort of linked to.
I like your idea, I'll bet Castro would make a good OF. He's making $11M/year for '18 and '19 and there's a club option for '20 ($16M, $1M buyout). I wonder what kind of payroll flexibility the team has at this point, I get the feeling they don't want another contract even if it is reasonable. What the Giants really need is someone like Austin Slater to step up this spring and show some big-league stuff.
Sergio talks sliders at FanGraphs.
Geez ... that is a reasonable Contract, especially compared to some of the other nutty moves that we've been contemplating. Conventional wisdom seems to be that they are going to make one additional reasonably-sized signing, so it might as well be Starlin Castro for $11M for 2 years. We were paying Denard Span exactly that much, if I recall correctly.
Jay Bruce goes to the Mets.
That's fine ... it was the wrong move for us, other than that he still has to come to AT&T as a visiting player & homer at least once in every game. I'm w/ McCovey Chronicles - our most cost-effective & logical initial move to shore up our OF is to sign Austin Jackson to play CF. I do NOT want to see us sign Billy Hamilton & his sub-.300 OBP. Our other OF move can be for a right-handed hitter w/ some power (like a converted Starlin Castro, for example).
Austin Jackson had a negative defensive fWAR IN 2016 and 2017, and in CF specifically, a minus 12.8 UZR/150 in 2016 and an even worse rating, 19.5, last year. Signing him, I think, would be painfully unwise, given his deterioration in the field; he once was an asset in the OF, as of course were Angel Pagan and Denard Span, before they weren’t. I’d rather see the Giants splurge on a powerful corner OF and hand CF to Duggar or Duggar and Hernandez or, depending on cost, Jarrod Dyson and Hernandez. DrB on his blog likes Cameron Maybin for CF, whom I also think poorly of but less poorly than Jackson.
No Bruce? From me, a Whew of relief.
Three thoughts:
1. Whatever move the Giants make vis-à-vis the OF, it will not be one bandied about on the inter-tubes. They've got their own secret sauce and they'll use that.
2. They are just waiting until one the many bandied-abouts is left unsigned at the end of February and they can get him on the cheap.
3. I have no fucking clue.
I'm rooting for a youngster (or a cast-off with a Spring Training invite) to solve our outfield problem.
Comparing the current field prowess of Austin Jackson to Denard Span is very misleading. Jackson is just barely <0. Span is well below 0. In other words, Jackson is a former elite OF who is now more-or-less replacement, while Span is a former average OF who is now a huge liability. Defensively, Span is more like Aaron Rowand, while Jackson is more like Ichiro.
No one on this blog thread was comparing Jackson to Span. What I wrote, as my inclusion of Pagan shows, was an adducing of two names familiar to Giant fans, in support of the argument that center fielders get worse when they get older, as Pagan and Span did, and as Jackson has. Jackson is likely to be still worse in 2018 than he was in 2017, just as he was worse in 2017 than he was in 2016. That is why, I think, the Giants would be dumb to put him in CF between a progressively more limited Pence and a left fielder who’s there primarily for his bat. Why get a make-do who won’t do unless you have no other reputable choices?
I miss Angel Pagan - and Blanco! Aaron Rowland brings back weird memories. They all had their days.
Going from "crappy" to "average" is big improvement. Let's hope the Giants at least get to "not half-bad" with their OF solutions.
Going from crappy to Average IS a big improvement. Settling for average, however, is a last resort. Given that the dismal quality of OF defense in 2017 cost us lots of defensive runs, made life harder for our bullpen, and depressed the Giants’ loyal fans, I will be and ought to be highly disappointed if the team settles for average, and still more so if they do so and don’t have to. I don’t want to go to an average doctor on the grounds that I might have gone to a lousy one, or read an average novel because the one I read previously stank. Ditto here.
From Jane Lee at MLB.com:
The Giants avoided arbitration with all five of their eligible players, agreeing to one-year deals with second baseman Joe Panik and relievers Hunter Strickland, Sam Dyson, Cory Gearrin and Will Smith.
https://www.mlb.com/giants/news/giants-avoid-abitration-with-panik-4-others/c-264647202
From this, my takeaway is that, despite my persistent whinging about relief pitching, the Giants are intending to go into next year with pretty much the same crew they had last year, hopefully healthier. The above, plus Law and Melancon and Osich or Okert and you pretty much have it. I'm thinking they try to sign an outfielder, and use our rotating crew of youngsters who never quite fit the bill last year for the other spot. I'm not sure what they want to do about pitching, maybe use Blach/Crick/Stratton for the two open spots and hope for the best. That could put them under the luxury tax, which is something that clubs seem to be aiming for. I'm sure that management is not in the happiest of moods, having been rebuffed by Ohtani, Stanton and Bruce, regardless of what we thought of them. Which is a whole other problem. The stats show that the Phone is a pitcher's park, and that means guys who are paid to hit dingers don't want to come here (although Ohtani had to have been headed for the AL any way you look at it). Well, fuck them. I want to see the Giants do something to totally fuck with the paradigm, like have great pitching and win anyway.
(Checks last year's stats. Sighs, heads for liquor cabinet.)
Stanton could hit homers in SF, the large field would not hold him back, which would give us an advantage, ie; like when we had Bonds. We had a player that could routinely go deep, which was a very powerful homefield advantage. The fact that we now have guys who are more likely to hit the outfield wall, than hit the ball over it, seems to be quite a disadvantage as other teams seem to have a few players who can from time to time, and more frequently than the giants hitters, go deep at the giants home field. It definitely costs the giants important runs.
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