An Old Friend Returns
Black Shoes Beede is back in the Bay to try his luck again. Maybe San Dawg’s favorite player who never was?
he walked right into this one…
I get that Tatis is an idiot but how can you employ a team of people who are also just as stupid as you are?
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Here’s another one for SD/Kings fans: saw story about Oregon Ducks coach Dana Altman recruiting Andrej Stojakovic (son of Peja) a 6′ 6″ senior at Sac HS power Jesuit of Carmichael for whom he averaged 25 and 9 boards as junior last year. Has already visited Stanford and UCLA.
he just teed off the 1st at Cottonwood, doubt he sees this till later
Give credit to golfers I know, willing to travel fair distance to play at different courses and get a round in.
Kap said Bart might start game this weekend.
I can believe Tatis was unhappy with how well he was healing and took something he shouldn’t have. And whomever gave it to him told him it could effectively be masked and hidden from testers. Yet another lapse in judgement by very posh guy from very poor country.
Meanwhile Padres winning steadily without him.
Disagree Willie. Read the article that Flavor posted. Particularly the part about what he said in response to being questioned about his motorcycle accident that caused his wrist injury (i.e., “which one?”). Not only is he a liar, as the article asserts, but moreover, he’s an “idiot” as noted by Flav.
oh sure, but coming from wealthy family with baseball history to begin with and being local hero in San Pedro de Macoris DR, used to being given latitude for sketchy behavior, hence “posh guy in very poor country.”
Pops made almost $18 mil in his 9-10 year playing career. Had to go long way in homeland.
Tatis is just an arrogant punk ever since he joined the league,he sure ass isn’t as wise at all compared to Soto and their the same ages.Motorcycle injuries off-season, (hmm Jeff Kent) probably lied about all his shenanigans the last few years.I question even his 2019 season with his 43 HR’s 15%XBH rate even better then Ohtani that year, in Petco Park not known as a HR park.His steroid use could even go back to then masking it somehow?
We all know the dudes talented but who gives a shit if he’s a downright LIAR 🤥 like all the other Steroid Juicer guys including Bonds. GM Preiller I was all in when he laid down the Gauntlet with Tatis saying the TRUST factor will be hard to repair along with his Naive attitude that clearly needs to improve..
Steroids weren’t illegal during most of Bonds playing days. And he never tested positive. Not that it matters much.
The league preaches how clean it now is, but this is utter bullshit. Anyone testing positive now is as stupid as fuck. Up to and including Logan Webb.
Well, did you see the Padres ‘crack’ medical staff take Profar off the field after his concussion? He only passed out twice while they didn’t bother to hold on to him, and it took 20 minutes to get the cart out there.
It was a comedy of errors. That team is run like a mom n pop single A team.
Tatis is just using the Republican playbook. Say it enough and you will believe it. No love lost here. I never take Pittsburg for granted they seem to come alive when they play us.
Hi Flappers.. A friend sent me this. Its from Baseball Prospectus. Enjoy!
….It’s the middle of August, which means that just about every team knows where it stands. About a third of the league is all but guaranteed to make the playoffs. Another half-dozen-or-so teams are vying for the last remaining wild card spots. Another third of the league is either no longer trying to win this season or was never planning on doing so. One thirtieth of the league is the Rockies, of course, who don’t “compete” or “rebuild” or “plan” so much as they exist for reasons unknowable to any save God and Dick Monfort.
And then we have the San Francisco Giants: A team that does not fit into any of those tiers or buckets. At 54-57, they find themselves 7.5 games out of a wild card spot and 6.5 games behind the NL’s seventh-best team at present, the Brewers. Entering play Thursday, PECOTA gave them just a 4% chance to make the postseason. Though no one outside of the Bay Area expected the team to repeat their 107-win performance from a season ago, it’s still a disappointment, if not a shock, that the Giants are likely to be on the outside looking in once October hits.
While having 100-plus win seasons one year followed by seasons of disappointing finishes is usually a Red Sox thing, the Giants following suit is interesting because of just how fluid their future appears. Few teams in the league figure to undergo quite as much roster change as San Francisco over the next 18-to-24 months, and few have as many options as to how they can try and build their next championship-level core.
The level of turnover the Giants are about to see comes with some advantages, to be sure. But it also means they have a whole lot of work to do if they want to build a team that can routinely compete with the Dodgers, rather than sort of lucking into it when their entire geriatric roster turns back the clock at once. Here’s what Farhan Zaidi and Co. are up against over the next two-year stretch that will likely define their tenures:
Most of Their Best Players Are About to be Free Agents
The Giants currently roster six players who’ve posted a DRC+ north of 100 and three of them are likely to be free agents at the end of the season. Wilmer Flores, the team’s overall best hitter, has the chance to truly cash in on the open market for the first time in his career as he preps for his age-31 season. All-Star Joc Pederson has proved a prescient offseason signing but should be in line for a payday that exceeds the one-year, $6 million pact he inked last winter. Evan Longoria’s $13 million team option for 2022 seems unlikely to be exercised. If you want to dig deeper, Brandon Belt would be next up on the list with a DRC+ of 97, but he too is slated to walk at season’s end.
That leaves Thairo Estrada, LaMonte Wade Jr., and Austin Slater as the only Giants who are both holding their weight in the lineup and guaranteed to be under contract beyond this season. You can include Mike Yastrzemski and his 97 DRC+, too, if you’re feeling generous.
San Francisco has more pieces to build around on the mound, but will likely need to re-bid for Carlos Rodón’s services assuming the lefty stays healthy for the remainder of the year. Rodón is all but certain to decline his $22.5 million vested player option as he paces for the best season of his career. Relievers Domonic Leone and Jose Alvarez are the only noteworthy arms likely to join him on the open market… until after next season, at least.
In some cases the Giants brass will likely be happy to see certain players come off the books, but no quick fixes appear to lie ahead, because…
They Have No True Core to Build Around
It’s not as though the Giants are simply losing a few older players who can be replaced to support an existing core: they’re going to more or less be starting from scratch. The only core players (if we use that label liberally) who’ll be 27 or younger next season are Logan Webb, Estrada, Luis Gonzalez, Camilo Doval, and Joey Bart, who may or may not be playing his way out of a long-term role. Slater is already 29, Yastrzemski is already 31, and Anthony DeSclafani is a year older than him.
Plus, aside from Webb, Yaz, and perhaps Doval, who from that list strikes you as a no-doubt first-division starter? The only player from the group listed above who’s on pace to surpass 2 WARP this season is Webb. Neither Gonzalez nor Estrada have a full season’s worth of plate appearances demonstrating that their bats are real, and Slater is best used as a platoon bat.
And it’s not just the top of the rotation and the infield that the Giants may have to reload in short order: it’s nearly the whole damn team. Post-2023, the Giants are slated to lose Alex Wood to free agency, have a $10 million team option for Alex Cobb, and will see Jake Junis, Jarlin Garcia, and John Brebbia all become eligible for free agency. On the offensive side, Brandon Crawford and Tommy La Stella are slated to become free agents then, too.
One imagines Webb stumbling into the locker room in April 2024 and doing his best Fresh Prince Empty House Meme before being asked to learn 15-or-so new names. And many of those names will have to come from outside of the organization, because…
Their Farm System Has (Modestly) Struggled
San Francisco entered the year with our second highest ranked farm team, so some reinforcements are likely on the way. That said, several notable prospects have been stuck in neutral or taken a step back this season.
Luis Matos has floundered offensively in High-A and reportedly had his swing tweaked mid-year. Jairo Pomares is striking out in over a third of his at-bats in Eugene, albeit while hitting for more power. Will Bednar is issuing too many walks and homers in Low-A. Bart has been one of the worst-hitting everyday catchers in the big leagues. And Heliot Ramos, once a top prospect in his own right, has looked badly overmatched in both Triple-A and a brief cup of coffee in San Francisco.
There are exceptions, of course. Kyle Harrison has taken a step forward, ranking 16th on our prospect team’s mid-season top-50 list. Ryan Murphy, Casey Schmitt, and Mason Black have progressed. And the system’s crown jewel, top-10 overall prospect Marco Luciano, is crushing the ball in High-A, putting a 2024 ETA firmly on the table.
The Giants don’t have a bad farm team by any stretch of the imagination, but they also don’t boast one rife with obvious candidates to adequately fill holes in the next 18 months. That means Zaidi and his front office will have to make some interesting decisions to help bridge the gap between the last vestiges of this outgoing Giants core and the potential new one that could coalesce in the future.
So… What Comes Next?
The flip side of all these pending departures, of course, is that the Giants should have plenty of cash to spend over the next two winters. If they don’t re-sign any of their current players, they should gain nearly $73 million in financial flexibility this off-season, and another $40 or so million the year after that.
But Zaidi and his team will need to spend intelligently, because they have a stunning number of long-term holes to fill. To wit, here are the players the Giants know they can count on (to one degree or another) after next season:
C
Joey Bart
SP1
Logan Webb
1B
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
SP2
Anthony DeSclafani
2B
Thairo Estrada
SP3
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
3B
J.D. Davis
SP4
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
SS
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ … Marco Luciano, maybe?
SP5
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
LF
Austin Slater
RP
Camilo Doval
CF
Mike Yastrzemski
RP
Tyler Rogers
RF
Luis Gonzalez
RP
Zack Littell
DH
Lamonte Wade Jr.
RP
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Some of those spots will undoubtedly be filled through the minors by the time 2024 rolls around, but many will not. Since taking over in the winter of 2018, Zaidi has proven reluctant to commit to lengthy contracts to free agents: in fact, he’s yet to ink a player to a deal longer than three years. Though the Giants find themselves linked to most prominent free agents at a near-Metsian frequency, the biggest splash he’s made in free agency in terms of average annual value was for Rodón.
As we enter an offseason in which players like Aaron Judge, Carlos Correa, Trea Turner, and Xander Bogaerts may become free agents—not to mention pitchers like Jacob deGrom, Justin Verlander, and of course Rodón—the Giants will undoubtedly be linked to many of them. But should we expect Zaidi to actually pull the trigger on the type of mega-contract most of these players will likely require?
That feels unlikely. Though Zaidi is on record saying not to rule out big-money contracts in the future, handing over $250-plus million to Correa, Judge, or Turner feels a bridge too far. The odds seem better that Zaidi could try to lure a deGrom or a Verlander to San Francisco on three-year, high-AAV pacts, but it takes two to tango, and at present the Giants may not seem as favorable a team to sign with as some of the sport’s biggest bidders.
In essence, then, Zaidi has three choices. He can break his old habits and splurge in free agency to keep the Giants relevant right now; he can play the long game and more or less cede the next two seasons to the Dodgers and Padres as he waits for his prospects to (hopefully) hit; or, he can try to thread the needle by inking veterans to short-money deals, staying nominally competitive without locking himself into an expensive future.
Door number three feels like the one he’s most likely to walk through, and we saw in 2021 that at times that approach can work. But if Zaidi wants to oversee an era of sustained success in baseball’s toughest division, his low-risk, many-bites-at-the-apple approach to free agency needs to be complemented by the formation of a strong core: one that doesn’t exist yet and is unlikely to emerge from the minors in short order.
Where that core will come from, if it manifests at all, will make for one of the most interesting team-building experiments in recent years. Zaidi and Co. deserve all the praise in the world for trying to keep the Giants competitive while forming a nucleus rather than tearing it all down, as we‘ve seen so many other clubs uncreatively and unsuccessfully do. But it’s unlikely that an endless stream of two-year, mid-level contracts is going to cut it long-term.
At some point, Zaidi is going to have to push some of his chips into the middle of the table if he wants to compete with the behemoth in L.A. and the up-and-comers in San Diego. How he chooses to do so could define the next half-decade of NL baseball.
Thanks, Sportsdude.
Are we as fucked as it appears?
Good stuff SD . . . Yeah, “door #3” seems like the most likely scenario for at least next season.
I’m gonna say yes djloo!
Yep. Door 3 is what they have been doing for the last couple seasons.
And will continue for 2023 and 24.
Next 3 series Pirates, Diamondbacks, Rockies Tigers 8-3
Then Twins, SD, Philly 6-3
14-3 and Giants back in the race. 30-20 overall with Brewers 26-27 and Philly 22-27 and we finish in a 3 way tie for last WC spot. lets GO!!
1. LaMonte Wade Jr. (L) DH
2. Joc Pederson (L) LF
3. J.D. Davis (R) 3B
4. Mike Yastrzemski (L) CF
5. Brandon Crawford (L) SS
6. Thairo Estrada (R) 2B
7. Tommy La Stella (L) 1B
8. Luis Gonzalez (L) RF
9. Austin Wynns (R) C
P: Logan Webb (R)
San dawg shot a 78 today, first.time he’s broken 80. Today was a good day.
Sign Rodon and you can move Webb down to #2 on that list, etc. Worried about your D? Strike out more hitters, which is what Rodon has done better rate than Webb. More quality SPs you have less wear and tear on pen guys. Other than Harrison, isn’t anyone else near ready to step in at top of rotation.
Was Melky invited to the reunion?
wow longest shot in field Vegas Magic under Abel Cedillo runs down odds on favorite to win Grade 2 Sorrento in 9th at Del Mar.
Paid $31.40 to win, $42 across the board.
After all his years of suckitude and injury with them, if Beede isn’t lit up like a bonfire by the Giants, it will be an embarrassment….
“It’s gotta be da shoes!”.
Wade Jr. 3rd HR in a week, good to see.
fouled off couple off speed pitches then whacked fastball on 8th pitch of AB on a line out the yard
The continual suckage of Tyler Beede will live on in infamy!
Zito sounds like a mature Pauly Shore…
Beede was the runt of that fairly long run of Vanderbilt pitching stars. Bums knew Buehler, even with TJ looming, was good. Beede, fat chance. Giants tried Vandy again with Reynolds. Look how that turned out. Infuriating. But play it as it lays, right?
11 ground balls/8 Ks for Webb, having great night.
I’m not a fan of in-game interviews, but the interviews with members of the ’12 team were OK.
The biggest reveal of the day was in the pregame show, learning that Affeldt tore a muscle in one of his thumbs getting out of the way of a foul ball in the dugout during the final game of the playoff series vs. Cincy. Affeldt wryly noted it was another of his “awesome injuries.”
All in all, a very good day of Giants baseball.
You ever wonder what broadcaster or sportswriter started a particular cliche? Probably mostly forgotten folks now.
A starting pitcher pitched a “gem.”
The outfielder’s arm is a “cannon.”
A meaningless play at the end is “academic.” Academic? Really?
Thankfully we no longer hear than an injured player is “hobbled” by the injury.
Kuiper is driving MEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeee absolutely fuckin nuts with this habit. It’s almost every play now…
I get a kick out of the phrase “hit batsman.” Batsman. Why not just “hit batter”? But, no, hit batsman still rears its ugly outdated head.
“I say, Hortense, did you see the hit batsman? Now, let’s get in the horseless carriage and make our way to the talking picture show.”
My strategy off to a good start!