It sure looks like the Giants don't believe in Chris Shaw
While we pause in between nuggets of apocalyptic news, let’s take a moment to consider Chris Shaw.
Shaw was drafted in the first round by a Giants front office that looked for guys with power in the hopes of teaching them contact skills. The new Giants front office looks for guys with contact skills in the hopes of teaching them power. Shaw’s best position is first base, where he’s a decent defender, but nothing special, so the team tried to teach him left field, where he looks like a first baseman playing outfield. The new Giants front office prizes versatility in the field.
The Giants sent Shaw to AA Richmond to start the 2019 season, which was something of an insult (“challenge” if you’re being generous), considering that he’d had 782 plate appearances in AAA from 2017-2018 and even got a cup of coffee in the majors at the end of 2018. He hit his way out of Richmond and did well enough in Sacramento to get another call-up last September, where he got one start all month and was buried at the back end of the bench.
This spring, Shaw got 12 at bats in big league camp, didn’t do much with them, and got sent down to minor league camp just a few days before everything shut down. When the Giants initially announced their player pool for the regularish season, it had 51 guys on it and Shaw wasn’t one of them; time has gone by and the pool is up to 59 players (with the last spot presumably reserved for a coronavirus-free Hunter Bishop) and Shaw is still not one of them.
There is, I assume, a way to read all this that isn’t an insult or a statement of just what the Giants think about Chris Shaw. I’m not 100% sure what that way is, but I think it probably exists. I’m also sure that way is wrong.
The Giants front office does not believe in Chris Shaw. They have whispered it and screamed it, written it in zines and on billboards. He’s 26 this year, so he won’t play again until he’s 27. It’s possible — even likely, if the season goes on long enough — that enough Giants will test positive for COVID that he at least makes the satellite roster, but Shaw is not going to see any game action this year.
You can blame COVID for Shaw not getting any playing time this year, but not for the organization having already made up its mind about him. He performed well last year when he got sent back to Sacramento and got that major league call-up, but even though the team was out of the playoff picture, it wasn’t a real opportunity. You could have said that maybe it was just Bruce Bochy who didn’t believe in him, but the rest of the organization has delivered the same message: Not this guy.
None of this is to say that they’re even necessarily wrong. Shaw marginally improved his walk numbers and massively improved his strikeout numbers last year in Sacramento, but neither is still particularly impressive. His extremely limited time in the majors, irrelevant as the small sample is, doesn’t inspire confidence. And his defense is, at best, nothing special.
So don’t think I’m agitating for a starting role for Chris Shaw. But he’s a helpful reminder of the opportunities so many players won’t get, even if the season goes off without acknowledging the many, many hitches that in a rational society would stop it. He would have had some kind of a chance in Sacramento to show that he could keep working, keep hitting. There was a possibility that he would force the issue in AAA, and now there’s no issue to force at all.
In a world where COVID never showed up, you could easily imagine Shaw going off in AAA, getting a call-up, and opening eyes. That’s gone now, and by the time he gets that chance again, he’ll be a year older, a year closer to the day his body can’t do baseball things at a high level. The clock is always ticking for professional athletes, and those that haven’t made it yet can’t afford to lose even one second of time, much less a whole year.
2020 was always going to be a pivotal year for Chris Shaw as a Giant. It still is, really, just not in the way anyone wanted.