The Giants got rid of a bunch of guys who never played for them in the majors
Also two other guys! It's like the season never ended!
On Tuesday, the Giants added prospects Tristan Beck, Jose Cruz, Keaton Winn, Marco Luciano, and Luis Matos to the roster, along with Brett Wisely, who came over in a trade with the Rays. In order to make room for them, the Giants DFA’d Sam Delaplane, Drew Strotman, Dom Nunez, Meibrys Viloria, Cotton Welker, Jason Vosler, and Jarlin Garcia.
How many times have we seen the Farhan Giants do something like this? Did we think that they would stop just because there aren’t any games being played right now? Did anyone really think that Strotman, Nunez, and Viloria were safe just because the team picked them up this month? Did anyone really think Delaplane would survive the offseason on the 40-man, or remember Welker was around? No, of course not. To the team, they were just fungible commodities on the fringes of the 40-man, to be replaced by (hopefully) less fungible commodities.
We should pause here to spare a thought for Vosler and Garcia. Vosler had an excellent season in AAA in 2021, and was less successful in 2022, but he had a 127 wRC+ over 111 major league plate appearances, which is both a solid audition and a good way to remember that 111 plate appearances is not a large sample.
Garcia, meanwhile, had been with the Giants for three years, since the Marlins just plum let him go instead of paying him money. He was very good in 2020 and 2021, but an up-and-down 2022 cost him his spot in San Francisco. Still, two good years and one bad one is more than you could expect from a free lefty, and he was a big part of the team’s success in 2021.
But all those players are gone now, or at least gone off the 40-man roster, only for a few to stay in Sacramento in a purgatory that can only be described as an incredibly minor competitive advantage that must be pursued even if it has a ruinous human cost. It’s time to answer the vital question: Who is the next piece of 40-man flotsam?
This question has suddenly gotten harder to answer than it was just a week ago. The most obvious candidates to be DFA’d were listed above as guys who were already DFA’d on Tuesday, and it’s not like the team is going to immediately get rid of any of the five players just put on the roster. One of Farhan’s stated goals several years ago was to get the 40-man roster to a point where it would hurt to DFA someone off of it in order to put someone else on. As Roger said earlier this year in a quote I am not going to find, that wasn’t the case in 2022. It suddenly is the case again, which is good for the team.
But it is also bad for certain members of the team. We are all expecting the Giants to make some kind of move in free agency, which will require a 40-man spot. More, if they go wild and acquire multiple players in order to improve on their 81-81 record. Somewhat safe 40-man spots are now suddenly very unsafe. And what if the Mariners DFA Flord Basgram next week? Would you have the Giants NOT pick him up? And VIOLATE their sacred oath????
No, the team will need at least some fungibility at the end of the roster. Here are the guys who I think are the most likely to embody that fungibility, from least likely to be the first one DFA’d to most likely.
Heliot Ramos
There was a part of me that considered putting Sean Hjelle on this list, despite his height and familiarity with the sport of baseball. But I think the more disappointing prospect would be the one to go, even if it’s more likely he gets traded than outright cut. I mean, someone has to be willing to take a chance on Ramos, right? Maybe it’ll even be the Giants! He just has to be better at everything.
Austin Wynns
I don’t think the team wants to get rid of Wynns, who they seem to think highly enough of, especially after his hot streak to end the year. But if an opportunity comes up for a better backup catcher, they could very easily jettison Wynns in order to improve that part of the roster. It’s a more specific situation than anyone else’s on this list, but it could happen.
Sam Long
It was a coup of smartguyness to get Long on the roster in the first place, and during his Giants career, he’s been…inconsistent, to put it nicely. To put it less nicely, he’s been bad in the majors. The team clearly did not trust him to be a starter this year either, instead planning on bullpen games where Long would go 3 innings as a bulk guy instead of stretching him out when it became clear there would be a rotation vacancy for a while. You don’t get that many chances in the majors to be bad, and Long is running very low.
Luis Gonzalez
He was exciting for a while, wasn’t he? And then…he wasn’t. If there’s one type of player that Farhan will get rid of, it’s once-exciting youngish guys whose promise has worn off. Farhan unceremoniously dumped Dereck Rodriguez, who was successful much longer than Gonzalez, and with Gonzalez’s struggles over the second half of the season (a .579 OPS and no, he did not make it up with defense and baserunning), you have to think that he could quite easily be removed from the roster.
Donovan Walton
He was never exciting, was he? From the second he showed up to replace an injured Brandon Crawford at shortstop, every Giants fan noticed the same thing: Hey, this guy’s not good at anything! He was bad in the field, worse at the plate, and within a week of his being called up, fans were saying his name like they said “Bocock” in 2008. At least he only cost the team Prelander Berroa, who is currently looking very promising in the Mariners organization. That cost help Walton stick around longer than he otherwise would, but it also has a chance to be one of the Giants’ worst trades this centuty.
Tommy La Stella
Tommy La Stella is an American professional baseball infielder for the San Francisco Giants of Major League Baseball.
Tommy LaStellar to you, Mister!
Accurate in every respect, particularly the sacred oath part.😊