Still seeking southpaws

The Giants have a deal (2 yrs, $7M) with lefty reliever Jake McGee. The 34-year old veteran (11 seasons, 546 games) came up with the Rays and spent time with both the Rockies and the Dodgers. He's a local boy (born in San Jose) but went to HS in Nevada and had his first pro stint at age 17. Lifetime (475-2/3 IP) McGee has a 3.59 ERA, 3.39 FIP, and 3.00 SIERA*. By comparison Tony Watson has a career line of 2.80/3.61/3.47 over 591 innings, and he's a free agent. I assume they don't expect to re-sign Watson and that's why they targeted this guy.

This is a good move as the Giants need lefty arms and competition for spots in the bullpen. Pitchers and catchers report on February 17. I have not heard of a corresponding 40-man roster move to make a spot for McGee.

--M.C.

*if you are not familiar with SIERA FanGraphs has a primer

Tommy La Stella

Rumor has it the Giants will sign veteran infielder Tommy La Stella. The word is a three-year deal which is an eternity in Farhan Land. I can see the appeal of La Stella as he is a lefty hitter and can play both second and third. He started out in a utility role and as a pinch-hitter with the Braves and the Cubs (2014-2018) and then moved to the Angels in 2019 and split time with them and the A's last year. His career slash line is .274/.349/.423 (104 OPS+) but has produced over an .800 OPS the last two seasons. His calling card is avoiding the strikeout. I'm sure they love his positional flexibility.

--M.C.

Southpaw signed

The Giants brought in Alex Wood to add a lefty arm to the starting rotation. Wood should be familiar to Giants fans from his tenure in Los Angeles with the Dodgers. Most recently he pitched four innings of relief in the 2020 World Series, allowing two hits and no runs with five whiffs.

A quick check of Baseball-Reference shows that his last full season was 2018 when he started 27 games. The year before that he was an All-Star. He just turned 30 years old and has a 3.45 ERA (3.51 FIP) over eight seasons and almost 900 IP (138 GS).

It is a $3M deal for one season with incentives. Another low-risk move by Zaidi, Harris, & Co.

--M.C.

Happy New Year!

I suspect that everyone is happy turning the page on 2020 and that all of us are looking forward to better things in 2021. Perhaps one of those things will be a full season of baseball! The game has other problems besides the pandemic--labor relations, for one--so it is hard to know if everyone can get together and pull it off. Things will continue to be different. Things will continue to be uncertain. But I like to be optimistic so I'll hope for the best and talk about baseball and the Giants here at RMC as if all is normal and that we will start Spring Training at the end of next month.

The Giants were a nice surprise last season, showing an improved offense that scored runs early and often and gave the team a fighting chance in many games. Alas, the pitching was not up to par and that kept the team from any chance of consistent winning. Still, they finished close to .500 (29-31) and were more interesting than expected. Over a full 162-game season I suspect the team's weaknesses would have been more exposed and they might have lost a little of that luster by the end. But that was 2020 and we are on to 2021 now.

The Giants have not made any big moves and I don't expect them to make any either. They will continue to improve around the margins and to make incremental upgrades. They are, by their own admission, "sticking to the process." It's frustrating for fans but I think it's the right way to go. The Padres are making headlines with splashy acquisitions of big-name stars, but they are in the right position to do that. They have a good team with a young core of talent and they are quickly closing the gap between themselves and the front-running Dodgers. They had a surplus of prospects that they could trade, and that's what they did. The Giants are not there. They don't have the talented young core (yet) and they don't have a surplus of tradeable youngsters. The Giants aren't close enough to the top teams to make up the difference with fancy free agents or wheeling-and-dealing. It's a re-build, and it takes time.

Go to the site called Cot's Contracts. Click on the payroll link. All the answers are there. This season, Buster Posey, Johnny Cueto, Kevin Gausman, Evan Longoria, Brandon Belt, and Brandon Crawford will make a combined $110M or so. Next year only Longo ($19M) is guaranteed a contract and both Buster and JohnnyC have low-cost buyouts. Longo has a buyout in 2023 and there are no other commitments on the payroll after that. I think you can see how that informs the team's decision-making.

The Giants highest-rated prospects are mostly pretty young and still at A- and AA-levels. I expect they will be fast-tracked to AAA and get early call-ups, but it will be a year or two before they will be in the lineup regularly. Thus we will have more of the infamous Zaidi "churn" and we will continue to see an emphasis on player development on the major league club. That's Kap's forte--that's why he was hired.

I suppose I've been beating around the bush and what I mean to say is that I don't have high expectations for the 2021 Giants. I think they will be fun and interesting, but I don't think they will make much noise. I'd love to be wrong, of course. But I'm reading all the gauges and all the needles are pointing toward a .500 team at best. I can live with that. It's where they happen to be on the cycle, and they just need to keep the faith and keep going forward. Things will get better!

I hope everyone has a healthy and prosperous New Year.

GO GIANTS!

--M.C.

All righties

If the Giants opened the baseball season tomorrow their starting pitchers would all be right-handed. Is this a problem? Probably. But there is plenty of time to scrape up some scrappy southpaws before Spring Training, am I right? I am.

The word is that lefty starter Andrew Suarez is signing with a KBO club and that opened up a spot on the 40-man. The Giants promptly filled it with a right-hander, 30-year old Anthony DeSclafani, most recently of the Cincinnati Reds. The accent is on the "De" as in "DEE-scla-faw-nee" and he's been a 2.5+ WAR pitcher in the past. If he joins Shaun Anderson, Logan Webb, Johnny Cueto, and Kevin Gausman in the rotation that's five right-handers. That's a big "if" as Spring Training is a long way away!

The Giants also added righty reliever Matt Wisler, a 28-year old with big strikeout stuff. They also picked up an intriguing Rule V player from the Mets, RHP Dedniel Nunez. His A-ball numbers are 33 K in 22 IP (85 TBF) with only 3 BB.

Pitching, pitching, pitching. The Giants need lots of it, so let's keep the arms a-comin'!

--M.C.

The New Minor Leagues

When you and I say "baseball" we mean the game. The sport. The players. The parks. The lines on the field. The pitching, the fielding, the hitting. That sort of thing.

When MLB says "baseball" they mean "MLB." The © ™ $ sort of thing.

MLB, its monopoly status reinforced by the powers-that-be over the last 100 years, will now absorb the minor leagues, downsizing them in the process. Is that still a thing, "downsizing"? It sounds so 80s, I don't think they call it that anymore. "Slash-and-burn" seems better. Anyway, each of the 30 MLB clubs will get four minor league affiliates, one each at AAA, AA, Advanced-A, and A-level, meaning 120 total. Several dozen minor league franchises and some leagues will evaporate. MLB is the only game in town and you either join up or get left behind.

There really ought to be independent baseball. It would be good for the game. Imagine if a plucky startup league featured briskly played games with lots of balls in play, and contrasted that with the lumbering MLB pace and over-reliance on the long ball. It would be good for fans and the competition would force MLB to improve their product. But MLB is a protected monopoly, and it will do its very best to cease-and-desist your ass into submission if you do your own thing.

Frankly, that's un-American. Much of MLB is un-American, and it ought not to be. The draft is the most blatant insult to the basic liberty of citizens seeking to ply their trade. From that follows all the contractual nonsense that is nothing more than vestiges of the odious reserve clause. And the stifling of competition, when "the free market" is so fundamental to the American Mythos, goes beyond hypocrisy to apostasy. The business of sports in America is disturbingly at odds with its nauseous self-promotion.

One has to put on one's big-boy pants to stay sane. Contradiction is the adult state of life!

So, back to the news. The Giants, it seems, will retain their links to Sacramento at the AAA level and also to Richmond (VA) at the AA-level. The San Jose club will become A-level, dropping a notch, and the new Advanced-A team will be the Eugene Emeralds. There are no AA-leagues west of Texas, by the way. I'm sure everyone will say they are excited and look forward to the future and in the meantime there will be lawsuits and other wrangling going on but in the end the juggernaut will prevail.

Now if we can get MLB and MLBPA to hammer out a new agreement so we have the possibility of baseball in 2021 that would be a hopeful start. The pandemic will of course decide how things play out this spring, but I remain oddly optimistic. I'm not sure why I can rant about the ravenous excesses of capitalism in one paragraph and feel upbeat in another, I've no rational explanation. Perhaps I'm figuring 2021 will, just by the fact it is not 2020, be better!

Happy Holidays!

--M.C.

Roster-ing

The Giants had some interesting decisions to make at yesterday's arbitration deadline and they decided to let go of starter Tyler Anderson and infielder Daniel Robertson. Catcher Chadwick Tromp and pitchers Rico Garcia and Melvin Adon, who are all pre-arb, were also let go.

The Giants offered contracts to outfielders Austin Slater, Darin Ruf, and Alex Dickerson. Pitchers Wandy Peralta, Jarlin Garcia, and Trevor Gott were also signed.

Arbitration-eligible infielder Donovan Solano and pitcher Reyes Moronta were both tendered contracts but have yet to sign.

I thought they might give Anderson another shot but with Tyler Beede returning from surgery I think they want to keep a spot open for him. I thought they'd hang on to Tromp as well and perhaps he will return on a minor-league deal. Buster Posey is expected to play in 2021 so that changes the backup catcher formula a bit.

The Giants 40-man roster is now at 35 players. Yaz, Dick, Solano, Buster, Belt, Longo, BCraw, Dubon, Bart, Ruf, Flores, Slater, FNG Jason Vosler, Gausman, Cueto, Webb, Suarez, Shaun Anderson, Rogers, Coonrod, Garcia, Moronta, Baragar, Peralta, Selman, Gott, and Beede make up the major-league portion so far (that's 27 players). Pitchers Kervin Castro, Conner Menez, Camilo Duval and Gregory Santos bring the list to 31, and the final four are outfielders Jaylin Davis, Luis Alexander Basabe, Steven Duggar, and Alexander Canario.

The Winter Meetings take place December 6-10. Originally scheduled for Dallas, they will be held remotely.

--M.C.