Making butter, but for rosters
It's a dumb title, yes, but it also gets a D+ for cleverness, and that's a passing grade
It can’t be easy to run a baseball team. You have so many hard decisions to make, so many factors to consider. There’s the constant pressure to perform, and the knowledge that, unless you’re Andrew Friedman, you can make brilliant move after brilliant move — and I mean moves that are objectively right, time and time again — and still not necessarily see any reward.
It’s tough. And then you make the hard decision, the one that you know could haunt you for years at a time, and that only increases the pressure. You take a promising player, who could well have a future as a Major Leaguer, and you say goodbye. Can you imagine the thought that has to go into that? The care? Every one of those decisions could be a landmine, and it would be dereliction of duty to do it lightly.
Unless you’re Farhan Zaidi, in which case you’ll knock out a couple of those every week.
The Giants DFA’d Steele Walker yesterday to pick up Andrew Vasquez, 11 days after they DFA’d Dixon Machado to activate Brandon Crawford off the IL, which was 5 days after they DFA’d Kervin Castro for Ford Proctor, for whom they had already traded Jeremy Walker, which was the day after they traded Raynel Espinal and DFA’d Tobias Myers for Machado, which was 5 days after they DFA’d Angel Rondon when Tommy La Stella came of the IL, which was 8 days after they DFA’d Aaron Fletcher to pick up Alex Young, which was 4 days after they claimed Fletcher, which was the day after they picked up Rondon, which was 4 days after they DFA’d Jake McGee, which was the day after they claimed Colton Welker on waivers and then immediately put him on the 60-day IL, which was the day after they traded cash for Tobias Myers, which was two weeks after they traded Steven Duggar for Willie Calhoun, which was…
That list only goes back to June 23, by the way.
Honestly, what was the point of any of that? Most of those players are already gone, and of the others, only Machado and Young had any impact on the big league roster, or is likely to in the future (with apologies to Ford Proctor). Machado was a pure desperation move, for a team that needed a shortstop, and I’ve already written about why that one was weird.
Young was also a pure desperation move, for a team that needed a lefty reliever, and it’s happened to work out so far. But that doesn’t mean a thing. The Giants have no investment in Alex Young. The second he starts mcgeeing (an acceptable spelling variant is mcgeheeing, by the way), he’s gone.
Because it’s not like the Giants did that much evaluation in Sacramento. Young pitched three innings there over three games, striking out three and walking two. He’d been good in terms of strikeouts and walks this year for Cleveland’s AAA team in Columbus, but he gave up 5 homers in 30 innings too, which (A) is not ideal and (B) would not seem to portend good things for him in the majors. But Young was terrible in the majors last year, and bad in 2020, and as much as we praise Farhan Zaidi for finding overlooked gems, his method for doing that is to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.
I mean, kudos to Alex Young, who has stuck over his first 6 games in San Francisco.
But there is no evaluation process while guys are in Sacramento. There just isn’t enough time to look at them properly. Steele Walker appeared in 5 games as a River Cat. Alex Young appeared in 3. Aaron Fletcher appeared in 6. Angel Rondon appeared in 3. Tobias Myers appeared in 2. There is no process, because any process would take more games than any of them got.
There is just churn. Endless roster churn, because endless roster churn is what this team does now. Endless roster churn for its own sake. Endless roster churn which begets endless roster churn. As noted Friend Of The Newsletter Britt says:
What purpose could there be here? What information could you gain? Is every waiver claim just an admission that the last one was useless? Because that just raises further questions. As noted Friend Of The Newsletter Roger Munter says:
The back of the 40-man roster just isn’t very good. At least, that’s what the Giants think. So they keep turning it over and turning it over, hoping to hit paydirt. It has emphatically not happened this year. It keeps not happening this year, no matter how much the Giants try. But somehow, I think we all know, they won’t be deterred.