We'll go ahead and finish up the Giants positional depth charts since they help clarify offseason needs. Andrew McCutchen stabilized a disastrous position for most of the season, but was traded at the end of August when the Giants finally threw on the towel on the season. Austin Slater got some games as the RF starter but ultimately the Giants let Hunter Pence have his old position back for the last 10 games of the season, which tells me the position is essentially open for next year.
MLB: Open. Austin Slater and Mac Williamson are internal possibilities but look for the Giants to fill it from outside either through free agency or trade.
AAA: Empty. Eury Perez and Cesar Puello are minor league free agents.
AA: Empty. Luigi Rodriguez established himself as a fan favorite early in the season but tailed off badly in the second half. He is a minor league free agent.
A+: Sandro Fabian wasn't quite ready for the level although he did manage to hit 10 dingers. A 2 for 32 skid over the final 10 games of the season sank his BA to .200. It would be reasonable to have him repeat the level like Jalen Miller did.
Low A: Logan Baldwin showed some gap power and speed with 26 SB's but hit just .249.
Short Season: Dalton Combs raised his BA from .208 in 2017 to .318 in 2018 for Salem-Keizer. That came with power as his SLG% was .512. Not sure about his defense, but the bat seems ready to move up, possibly to San Jose. Mikey Edie finally made it out of rookie ball and hit .325 in limited playing time. Nick Hill played for 3 different levels ending up in S-K. He's still looking for traction on his career.
Rookie AZL: Franklin Labour made his Arizona debut after 2 seasons in the DSL. He slashed .810 with 7 SB's in 130 AB. Austin Edgette is a late round college draftee who hit .286 with an OBP of .402 in 70 AB. Bryan Hernandez got some extra bonus money to sign out of Puerto Rico HS. He hit just .138 but drew 16 BB's in 74 PA for a .342 OBP.
DSL: Robinson Batista showed flashes of power and speed but hit just .250 in his 3'rd DSL season. 17 year olds Robert Gomez and Yohan Polanco did not hit much in limited playing time.
Free Agents: Bryce Harper is the Big Fish in this pond. Expect the Giants to do more than kick the tires. Andrew McCutchen is probably a distant fallback option again. Nick Markakis and Jose Bautista are aging but coming off pretty good seasons. Carlos Gonzalez might draw some interest but he has always had pretty big home/road splits out of Coors Field. Now that Hunter Pence is a free agent, he might actually be a decent buy low candidate on an incentive laden deal. He hit .333 over his last 10 games and was even looking spry in RF.
Summary: This is a position the Giants almost have to fill from outside the organization. I think they will make a run at Bryce Harper, but also likely fall short of signing him. After that, the trade market might be a better bet than the second tier free agents.
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Forget free agents, forget the 40 man roster, and forget our garbage minor league system; the Giants franchise is dog poop right now. We won't see the sunny side of .500 for at least 5 years if there aren't major changes at all levels. Management needs to turn off the spigot hemmoraging money into the majors and re-focus the vast bulk of those resources towards scouting and development.
ReplyDeleteEvery tradable player should be traded now, and any leftovers thrown into the bay. Tear it all down, set fire to it, and forget about W's for a long, long time, folks.
Look at Baseball Prospectus - what do you see? We have less talent than Pittsburgh, less than the White Sox, less than the frikkin' Padres!
No more multi-million salaries! Hire more scouts! Sign more prospects! Panic mode is upon us! Jettison all non-esentials, immediately! The plane is crashing!
Personally, I think the organization is in a shambles. Prospects are garbage, 40 man roster is almost all garbage, and no GM.
ReplyDeleteOn the bright side, we have great announcers and a terrific ballpark - although it is terribly overpriced and saddled with an excruciatingly loud public address system that blares horseshit music and insufferable blatherings at seemingly every possible quiet moment, turning what could be a magical day at the park into a stressful experience of trying to navigate through slowly meandering, zonked out people lulled into consumer mode by the constant, insistently product-oriented jabbering being poured directly into their earholes.
But yeah, we need better prospects - that was the point I was trying to make.
I'm going to assume you are serious here and this is not a satire and not trolling. Wow, Seth! I am happy you were able to get that off your chest!
DeleteYou know, the Giants actually put a lot of money into scouting and player development. There are more than a few "analytical" teams out there who have fired many of their scouts and cut way back in favor of scouting by video and statistics. Do the Giants need to do more of that? Maybe, but they continue to employ scouts in every part of the country and internationally. From everything I've read those scouts do a good job.
The Giants have plenty of money to afford a $200 M player payroll and build up their farm system. I do think they might need a new guy at the top of the scouting department as John Barr's track record in the draft is spotty at best and they may need a new philosophy of what types of players to draft, but the problem is not a lack of commitment or resources for scouting and development.
I also think they got a bit overgenerous with contract extensions for their homegrown core, but a lot of commenters here and on other sites were A-OK with that at the time. It's nice that they rewarded homegrown players who won championships for them, but now they are paying the price.
I love K & K, BUT there are so many hackneyed phrases and miss-calls that they may well need some new material AND glasses.
DeleteBetween getting AT&T'd and backspinning it out of here and changing strike zones and drives that are actually cans of corn, do umpires really "look for strikes" or give strikes gratuitously to pitchers who throw strikes or make a guy who is missing the plate throw one down the middle to get a strike or deliberately change their strike zone as the game progresses?
Some of those things are very injudicious and should be stopped at the head umpire office -- especially changing the strike zone.
Some umpires are good at calling the strike zone and some are notoriously bad -- it's hard to do. (Writers note: I have umpired and I was horrible!) Why not have two good ones on each crew who alternate behind the plate (and 3rd base to recover) AND PAY THEM MORE! The bad umpiring will get us to robots faster than we might want -- although there are many calls for that now. Technology can do a better job and faster.
Wow. Now the giants need to can their announcers too. The sky is falling.
DeleteNo, they're fun they just "need some new material AND glasses"!
DeleteI wouldn't mind if they let Dave go. I often think he's repeating something some one told him -- IMO he's unconvincing as an analyst.
Actually, yeah, the G's don't actually have the best announcers in baseball.
DeleteI watch a lot of local announcers on MLB.TV.
Know what happens, a lot? I learn about Giants players (especially younger ones) from opposing announcers. Background info, professional career history, area the player is from, family stories etc. Why do I almost NEVER hear this from Kruk and Kuip.
I learned more about pitching from Krukow (especially pitching strategy) than I did playing up through Jr. College. But, yeah, now it's repetitive. I can't tell you how often I predict what he'll say. It's old and it's tired.
Ballpark shots of fans, cute families, irreverent characters are fun, but, Good Lord, it's done to absolute death.
To be sure, many, many local announcers are not as good as Kruk & Kuip. But a great many are better. We're used to our guys. And we have great affection for them. But they are not that good. Listen around with unbiased ears.
So, Fangraphs did a poll a few years ago while the Giants were in the middle of their 3 in 5 Championship run. Guess who came out as the best announcers in all of MLB: That's right, the Giants!
DeleteNow that the Giants not won for 4 consecutive seasons who are bum? Yeah, those same Giants announcers....who have absolutely nothing to do with the product on the field!
We'll call this LDS: Losing Derangement Syndrome.
You know when a whole lot of folks were saying much of the same things about the Giants: Fire Bochy! Fire Sabes! They'll never win with this ownership group! That would be the winter of 2009.
Hot Tip: Go to the Archives to the left and look up the very first post of this blog.
With all due respect to your optimism Doc, as I review your 'Depth Chart' posts to date, that is not the stuff of a contender. Signing a big money free agent at this point would be a BIG mistake. The Giants MUST work to stock the system with young, athletic position players and grab live young arms where they can, while maintaining maximum financial flexibility.
ReplyDeleteThe time will come to dive into the high end free agent market, but it is not now. I think Seth went overboard with negativity, but I do think the organization is pretty close to "in shambles."
Agree with avoiding "big money free agent" -- Giants have tried that! Also. although Machado is GREAT on the field, his antics and demeanor don't fit SF well. Harper has real fielding deficiencies and it isn't getting better, he is much more valuable to an AL team that can DH him down the road -- or even NOW.
DeleteOverpaying a guy for 2-3 years (if the budget can stand it) would not hurt anyone other than the Owners, but it IS their money so it's easy for us to spend!
They have to DO SOMETHING "bold" or there will be a lot of empty seats at AT&T -- after 18 years, the novelty of the park as a "destination" in itself has kinda worn off. Paying $100+ to watch the Giants score 0, 1, or 2 runs (63 times) and 3 runs (27 times) is not a crowd pleaser -- and of those 90 games (!), they lost 69 of them. 21-69. They're 52-20 when they score 4 or more!
Answer is easy -- score more runs! The solution is NOT doing nothing, they need to bolster the OF.
If they trade good prospects for that, they are prolonging the problem. They have money: spend it or lose money on empty seats!
Ryder Jones played some OF (right and left) in Sacramento, picking up an assist and an error in 38 chances. He stole some bases there also (1 for 1 in SF).
ReplyDeleteObviously a strong 3B arm -- is there an irreconcilable difference between IF and OF?
Jones appeared in 4 games for the Giants in early September, then:
He "is just the latest in a slew of recent season-ending injuries for the Giants. Since July 29, Pablo Sandoval (torn right hamstring), Johnny Cueto (Tommy John Surgery), Buster Posey (torn labrum right hip) and Steven Duggar (torn labrum left shoulder) have all had their 2018 campaigns shut down early due to injury." SFBay.ca 9/10/18
So went the season...
MLBTR
ReplyDeleteLatest Update — Oct. 20
Per Fox Sports’ Jon Morosi (Twitter link), Giants VP of Player Development and former MLB third baseman David Bell is the now the favorite to be offered the job.
Latest Update — Oct. 17
Ausmus and Girardi are also still under consideration, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). Both are slated for additional interviews, MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon adds on Twitter. It seems they’ll join Bell to make up a group of three finalists, per Jon Heyman of Fancred (Twitter link).
Losing David Bell would be a major mistake by Giants' management. If he wants to manage and is willing to take on a rebuild, kick Bruce Bochy upstairs ( he can play cards with Dave Righetti or go fishing with him) and give the management job to David Bell. I'd rather see him in the position of Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations, but if he wants to manage let him.
DeleteMLBTR can turn on a dime:
DeleteLatest Update — Oct. 20
Schulman now tweets that Bell “apparently” isn’t a candidate to become the Giants’ head of baseball ops.
At least one and maybe a few teams are pursuing Bell as a potential managerial candidate monitoring his situation in San Francisco.
Schulman speculates that the Giants will speak with Astros’ Assistant GM Mike Elias for their head of baseball ops opening now that Houston has been eliminated from the playoffs. Fancred’s Jon Heyman had suggested previously that Elias might be a name the Giants would consider if moving towards a more analytically-inclined candidate.
Maybe time to kick Bochy upstairs -- there ARE health issues aren't there.
So Pete, what do you know about David Bell that makes you say he is indispensable to the Giants organization?
DeleteNo one is indispensable. I believe that David Bell brings youth, a totally different perspective than the "old" Giants management group, leadership and an analytical mind to the table. There is a reason that after being interviewed he is the front runner for a couple of openings. The Giants saw it after interviewing him last year and now other clubs are also realizing his talents.
ReplyDeleteCincy just signed Bell for 3 yrs with an option for 4
ReplyDeleteJust saw that. Reds got a good baseball man.
Delete