Talking about the Giants outfield
Do you have ideas for things I can write about? Then please tell me! Because I sometimes don't.
On Tuesday, valued reader Travis Bickle — probably his real name — commented on my Fine, let’s wade into the stupid San Francisco Discourse article, expanding on the conclusion to lament the inability of the Giants farm system to produce offensive stars, and then asked this:
This leads me to a request....can you please write a piece about what the heck is going on with the outfield? Today the Giants signed another AAAA outfielder, and I'm just so confused. We have so many meh corner outfielders. And how are Ramos or Matos or any other outfield prospect not going to see these signings as a slight? How are they going to get a chance to prove themselves? Help me understand what Farhan is doing. I think he may have a "flexibility/depth" disorder.
I thought this was a perfectly fine idea, then realized I didn’t have anything to write about today, and upgraded it to great idea.
So in order to avoid writing about Yoshinobu Yamamoto for the fifth time in the last month, growing increasingly desperate and bitter as the stark truth that he does not want to sign with the Giants becomes more and more undeniable with each passing day give my readers what they want, here it is: a guide to what exactly the hell is going on with the Giants outfield.
I don’t know.
I mean, it’s plainly evident that the Giants have too many outfielders on their 40-man roster. They currently have nine players whose only position is outfielder, and that doesn’t even include the infielders who are Versatile and can play there too. Sorry, Thairo Estrada, Tyler Fitzgerald, Lamonte Wade Jr, Brett Wisely, and Blake Sabol. We simply don’t have time to discuss you as outfielders today, no matter how much outfield you may or may not have played last year.
So, of the outfielders currently on the 40-man, let’s separate them into groups, so we can figure out exactly where each of them stands in the organization.
Starting every day
Jung Hoo Lee
Hey, that was easy! Eight to go!
Probably in a platoon
Mike Yastrzemski
Austin Slater
Sure, either of these guys could get traded before the season starts, but that doesn’t feel super likely. I mean, Slater’s probably more likely to go than Yastrzemski (lefty mashers will always have a place in baseball), but the Giants aren’t likely to get an offer that compels them. They’re both nice pieces, clearly major league players at the moment, and that’s significantly above average for this organization at the moment.
Trade bait, but they won’t actually get traded
Michael Conorto
Mitch Haniger
The Giants would love to get rid of either of these contracts. Love it. The mere thought of it makes them absolutely ecstatic. But…who would want them? Sure, someone might trade a worse contract to get one of these guys, but…why? If you’re the Giants, you don’t want to swap a bad contract for a worse one. Besides, either of these guys could start hitting next year and make us all forget about 2023. Are you really gonna risk missing out on that solely because it probably won’t happen?
The minors, I guess
TJ Hopkins
Luis Matos
Wade Meckler
I don’t know anything about TJ Hopkins and I don’t intend to find out until I have some reason to believe he’s anything more than a way to fill an open space on the 40-man. If TJ Hopkins’ family is reading, I would like to add that TJ is a full person with a wide variety of interests, each more valid than the last, and claiming he’s nothing more than a professional disappointment is a ridiculous thing to do, for which I wholeheartedly apologize.
Still don’t know anything about him, though.
Matos and Meckler were different varieties of calling up the hot hand and seeing how he does. Matos had been one of the Giants’ top prospects in 2021, then he severely underperformed in 2022, and then he came roaring back in 2023. The Giants were hard up for hitters, so they called him up to the majors, where his bat was…subpar. He didn’t strike out a whole lot, but he also didn’t hit for a high average or a lot of power, so he didn’t do anything special.
Meckler crushed every minor league level he faced on his way up to the majors, where he was…more subpar than Matos. Meckler struck out a ton, had no power, and looked generally overmatched. You have to appreciate the message that calling up Meckler sent to the Giants minor league system — if you hit, you get promoted, end of story — but at this point it’s hard to make the argument that anything positive came out of it. Now the team is using a 40-man spot on someone who doesn’t seem to have the strength yet to be an effective major league hitter. 40-man spots are precious, and that’s really not a good use of one.
The Giants hate him and would like him out of the organization as soon as possible
Heliot Ramos
Look, I can’t back that up with any evidence other than what we’ve all seen over the past year. The Giants have gone out of their way to not give Heliot Ramos a real chance at the major league level. The Occam’s razor most likely explanation for this is that they don’t think he will be a productive major league player, but also think he has potential value to other teams that prevents them from DFAing him. A change-of-scenery trade seems likely, just like it does with Joey Bart, who used to be 1-2 on Giants prospect lists with Ramos.
So what does it mean that the Giants went out and made a minor trade for TJ Hopkins? Not much, if we’re being honest. He’s just a depth piece, piled on top of other depth pieces. If he ends up being a world-beater for the River Cats next year, fantastic, maybe he’ll be the new Yaz. But what are the odds he even makes it to April still on the 40-man roster? Not great, if we’re being honest.
To me, the main thing we’re seeing here is that the Giants are just throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. I don’t mean that any of the individual players are shit, but as an overall strategy, it really seems to be, “Let’s see if any of these seven things work. They might!” I mean, they didn’t, but they might.
Even Lee, as excited as we all are about him, really isn’t as many steps removed from that desperation strategy as we’d all prefer. I don’t want to make it seem like I’m super down on him — I cannot stress enough how little research I have done on him and how much I am, sight unseen, trusting people who say nice things about him — but there is a chance that this doesn’t work. Anyone who has not proven himself in the majors is by definition a risk, and that certainly exists for Lee. In Ha-Seong Kim’s first year in the US, he hit .202/.270/.352. He’s certainly an excellent player now, but there was an adjustment period.
Every player in this organization who isn’t yet an established major leaguer knows that his position is tenuous. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it’s bad. You can make the argument that iron sharpens iron, or you can make the argument that sometimes iron needs somebody to fuckin’ believe in it or else it’ll go “I must be shitty iron because otherwise someone would have shown me I’m not.” Matos struggled last year in the majors, and when he gets another chance, it needs to be a real shot, and not the Heliot Ramos Three At Bats Thursday, Then One Pinch Hit AB Sunday, Then Back To The Minors On Wednesday Special.
Maybe there’s a future star in the agglomeration of minor league outfielders waiting for their turn. Maybe Matos takes the next step this year, or Meckler turns into the next Rod Carew, or Hopkins does whatever the thing is he’s good at that made the Giants interested and I will not learn what until I’m convinced he actually might stick around for multiple weeks.
As always, the best path for the Giants is internal improvement. They went out and got a big free agent, but now they need Yaz or Conforto or Haniger to hit like he did a few years ago. The best way to answer all these questions is to reveal that the solution was in the dugout the whole time. In 2023, the Giants had the third worst outfield by fWAR in the majors. Signing Lee is a good first step to not repeating that in 2024, but there are other steps that they need to take.
Side note: unless there’s some huge news next week, I’m not going to write. So have a happy holiday season and I’ll see you in 2024.
Mele Kalikimaka, Maestro!
Wow! Thanks, Doug!
Throwing shit at the wall is exactly right. That's what this feels like. Hope that Conforto and Haniger actually perform like they were expected to, I guess. Also feels like the Giants are not so high on the outfield prospects. And that's what bugs me the most. Because I don't blame the current regime for not signing masher FAs. There are lots of reasons mashers wouldn't want to play in SF and Farhan has no control over most of them. But I do blame the current regime for not developing position players to be excited about. Especially outfielders. When is this team ever going to develop star outfielders instead of chasing them in free agency in vain?