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By Jeff Todd | at
Email a copy of 'Offseason In Review: San Francisco Giants' to a friend
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Brixton
I’ll give them a B. Only because they spent 251M on 3 players who all have question marks.
chri
Although I think the Shark deal was awful, I still think this team is the favorite to win the West at the moment.
Too many questions for the Dodgers (in terms of rotation and injury issues) and the D-Backs traded all their depth away and their roster isn’t great outside of Greinke, Goldy, Pollock and Miller
bigguccisosa300
Rickey Romero sighting !
bigpapi4ever
Cueto is an albatross contract waiting to happen. Giants are usually smart, surprised they went there.
Brixton
Wait, wait wait.
You praise Dombrowski for Price but say Cueto is an albatross in the making?
JoeyPankake
Not anymore likely to be an albatross than any big contract given to a pitcher on the wrong side of 30. Best case scenario is he pitches great for 2 years and opts out. Sometimes you just gotta make a splash in free agency to try and stay competitive. Cost of doing business when you don’t have a Urias or the like coming through the pipeline.
hopper15
Not if he opts out after 2 years which more than likely will happen barring TJS.
JoeyPankake
Matt Cain and Jake Peavy’s performance, or lack there of, will be what makes or breaks the team this year.
ammiel
I give the Giants a B. Only because there were better options available. To give them a grade A instead of signing Samardzija it had to be Price or Zimmerman, and instead of Span a Cespedes or Heyward. Definately I think these starting three at the top end of the rotation- MadBum, Cueto and Shark are in the elite top end of the rotations throughout all of baseball, so it is a very good offseason. I also feel Aoki could have been kept on as cover particularly for the injury prone Pence and Pagan.
JoeyPankake
In 9 years in the majors, Pence has played more than 155 games every season besides his rookie year and last year because of being hit by a pitch. Calling him injury prone could not be further from the truth.
ammiel
every player in the big leagues is judged to a fairly high degree on their performance in the recent past. Pence missed 100 games last year, he has to re-prove to his team, the fans and himself that he can play healthily at this level again, like everyone else.
JoeyPankake
Implying that one is injury prone because something happened that was completely out of his control is not what the term means. Someone who has a history of injuries is injury prone. Hunter Pence is literally the opposite of injury prone. Angel Pagan is the definition of injury prone.
dstuart
Injury prone Pence? Had to prove himself to his team? Your stupid is showing bro.
ourgiants25
I would give the team an A+ if I could. A month ago I would have given them a B because it seemed like they made a couple nice additions to fill holes, and were probably division favorites, but watching some of the young players dominate spring despite the perennial underrating of the Giants system, I have to give them an A.
If Peavy pitches a great half season like the last 2 years, that’s fine because Heston and Blackburn can fill in the other half. Blach, Mejia, and especially Stratton also look more than capable of filling out the back end right now if necessary. When Pagan makes his 2 month annual trip to the DL, Mac Williamson and or Jarret Parker can fill in with a bang! Gorkys Hernandez looks good in limited action, and is a former top 100 prospect that might have had his development stunted by being traded to 5 different organizations. He looks like a possible solid OBP/speed guy with the skill to play good CF defense. A good asset if Span is hurt. Of course Blanco is already one of the best 4th OFs in the game and can play CF as well. Kelby Tomlinson put up starter numbers last year and will be the backup to Panik, Crawford, and Duffy. If Kyle Blanks plays, he’s very likely to put up HUGE numbers as he has throughout his career. If Blanks is hurt, as usual, the team probably doesn’t even need any production out of him.
Then there is the bullpen. The bullpen was a little weak last year in part because of overuse. Having Samardzija and Cueto will help eat more innings even if the team is cautious with Cueto. Samardzija has averaged over 210 IP the last 3 years! Even if there are issues with the bullpen, the Giants system has several incredible arms ready, including the hardest throwing RHP in the game in Ray Black.
I also want to say that Samardzija will be great (mid 2’s to low 3’s ERA) ! Samardzija DOESN’T have to be great, but he will be because he’s whatever the pitching equivalent is of a 5-tool player. He throws hard (94 MPH AVG), has great control, has 4 plus-pitches, and really has no holes in his game which is why his down performance last year was so confounding. There are several hypothetical reasons why he pitched poorly, and you can bet the Giants have singled all of those out and are working on them with him. A sizeable bounce back from him was probably inevitable though. You can’t teach the level of physicality a Puig or Stanton or Samardzija has, but you can teach guys with those physical tools to play better. Hence Arrieta and Kluber are now Cy Young winners after years of poor results. Samardzija was close before to being great, just one season removed, and will take that next step with SF.
There are no guarantees of anything, but the team has so many young players that are close that they didn’t necessarily need to go bigger than they did to feel pretty comfortable. I think the team deserves an A!
Rolfus
Stunned that you overlooked/discounted Tomlinson’s team-saving performance in 2015. He is good enough to be starting at SS for a number of other clubs.
Philliesfan4life
I like the giants team for this year, but I think they fall just short of the post season, unless they win the division. If they are fighting for a wild card spot , I don’t think they make it because of how good the nl central is now.
mrnatewalter
I don’t think the NL Central will be as good in 2016 as it was in 2015.
The Cardinals lost a lot of talent and got older. Holliday is old and was injured a lot last year. Molina finally showed some serious wear and tear. 1B is a complete crap shoot. As is SS until Peralta comes back. Luckily, their rotation is going to be very difficult to compete against.
The Pirates also don’t seem as good. That rotation is average, at best after Cole and Liriano (and I’m not a guy who believes Ray Searage can cure ALL pitching woes). Offensively, the Pirates will be fine and will be tough to pitch to.
The Cubs will win that division by 10+ games. I just don’t think the Central is as strong as it seemed.
In fact, if anything, I might say the NL West has taken that crown this offseason, between the moves the Diamondbacks made (not considering what they gave up, they added some really good players to that team), the Dodgers, despite having tons of question marks, should still be a contending team.