During his first offseason leading the Giants, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi aggressively remade the back half of the 40-man roster. Among that spate of transactions was the unheralded acquisition of outfielder Mike Yastrzemski in a spring training swap with the Orioles.
In March 2019, San Francisco picked up Yastrzemski in exchange for right-hander Tyler Herb. Then 28 years old, Yastrzemski was a former 14th-round pick who had yet to play a major league game. To the extent that there was any fanfare surrounding his acquisition, it had much more to do with his relation to Carl Yastrzemski than to his play.
The deal now looks like a masterstroke. Over his first 636 MLB plate appearances, Yastrzemski has put up a fantastic .281/.357/.535 slash (135 wRC+) and hit 31 home runs. He has been worth about five wins above replacement over the equivalent of one full season. The left-handed hitter earned an eighth-place finish in NL MVP voting this past season thanks to a .297/.400/.568 line.
Herb, on the other hand, didn’t reach the majors during his two years in the Baltimore organization. The 28-year-old elected minor-league free agency earlier this month, per Chris Hilburn-Trenkle of Baseball America.
Even if Yastrzemski takes a bit of a step back from his star-level production, he at least looks like an above-average regular. His late-career breakout is another reminder that even the lowest-profile transactions have some chance of being impactful.
Love this guy
Must be hard to be a Orioles fan in recent years.
Very…
Justin turner, bundy and now this guy, yikes.
What does Turner have to do with Zaidi?
Maybe Zaidi was the one responsible for seeing his worth when the Mets didn’t want him. Zaidi held the same position with the Dodgers
Turner was signed by the Dodgers years before Zaidi. It’s comical that so many people credit that guy with the Dodgers success. His title was gm but Friedman calls all the shots. The Dodgers were also a very successful organization years before Zaidi and have only continued to improve since he left.
No one wanted Turner on their 25-man roster. Singling out the Mets or giving Zaidi a pat on the back is kind of silly. Turner became a FA Dec 2, 2013 and did not sign with anyone until February 6. The Dodgers signed him to a minor league deal with an invite to ST.
Zaidi wasn’t even with the Dodgers when they signed Turner.
I think he was pointing out guys who the orioles gave up on who have gone on to turn their careers around. Turner was with the Orioles before the mets. Bundy was with the orioles before he has a solid year in Anaheim this past season.
What does Zaidi have to with Bundy?
It’s pretty clear that Tatsumaki is referencing the Orioles’ inability to identify and develop talent, and that teams with good development abilities tend to poach them.
Don’t forget Jake Arrieta
Chief Two Hands:
You’re misconstruing the facts. Just for the record, Turner was signed before Zaidi was GM. but it was less than year, not years Turner was also signed before Friedman was the POBO. Friedman was hired on 10/14/14, and he hired Zaidi less than a month later. Plus you have no idea about the inner working of the Dodger FO, nor how much input Zaidi had.
Also, they weren’t “very successful” for years before, unless you mean they were moderately successful for 2 years before. Ned Colletti got them to the playoffs in 20113 and ’14, but he was replaced because of his vast overspending. I could have gotten the Dodgers to the PS spending like Coletti did. He cost them $150M in tax penalties.
Clearly, the Dodgers became the elite team they are because of the team of Friedman and Zaidi.
You don’t get to be the talent wasteland the Orioles have been without very special skills in the talent evaluation department.
People don’t often recognize it but it requires certain amount of skill to stick with the poor options, ignore the better ones and maintain focus on the bottom line of the balance sheet while ignoring the importance of near everything else. Not all teams could pull that off but the Orioles manage to wake up every day without a plan to tangibly improve.
O’s have always have had decent talent but for the last 20 years they kept trading it away for short term fixes. That said they’re not losing much sleep over losing Yaz. He’s quite good but also a late bloomer who is already 30.
You don’t follow baseball or the Orioles, it is clear.
moi aussi…
I used to watch him all the time in AAA Norfolk for a few years in a row. Never, ever, woulda guessed he would become what he is now.
Yaz showed flashes with the O’s, he just never got a chance
From 2014 Steve M from MASN
Over 63 games, the grandson of Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski is batting .306 with 14 doubles, a league-leading 10 triples, 10 homers and 44 RBIs. The Orioles’ 14th-round pick in 2013 out of Vanderbilt has an OBP of .365, a .554 slugging percentage and a .919 OPS.
His season has included a 15-game hitting streak, an inside-the-park homer, a game with two bases-loaded triples and a pair of multi-homer games.
You can’t say lil Yaz “showed flashes with the O’s” when he never played a game for them,
The O’s not giving Yaz a major league look during their 115 loss season made zero sense.
Ironically he hit his first major league HR against the O’s. He had a monster series against them if I remember correctly.
I don’t understand how the Blue Jays didn’t draft him. Drafting and signing famous names was their organizational MO.
And the Brewers as well.
GoLand, we forget that the O’s had Joey Rickard, Craig Gentry, Cedric Mullins and Colby Rasmus ahead of Mike Yaztrzemski on the depth chart. How quickly we forget about those four guys, right? Actually, every time i DO remenber them from 2018 I am waking up in a cold sweat from that nightmare.
In fairness, sometimes the change of scenery trade is the fire lit under a players butt. His San Fran stats could not have been predicted based in his AAA stats with the O’s. New hitting coaches, maybe. Just a wake up call maybe
But making 0 sense is what the O’s are all about.
Yaz is 29 late bloomer, this team needs a total overhaul, they may be the worst team in baseball.
Yeah, they were only tied with the Brewers for the 16th playoff spot. Worst team in baseball by far no question….
Not only were they tied with the Brewers, it was a 3-way tie with the Astros, who went to the playoffs on the basis of tie-breakers with the Brewers and Giants.
Sorry but as long as the orioles still exist, the giants will never be the worst team in baseball.
Do you have this thing humans call a “memory?”
slider32:
You’re just trolling. No one would make such an obviously untrue statement unless they were trolling. Certainly no baseball fan would. The trolls have been saying the Giants are the worst team in baseball for 3 years now, and year after year they have been wrong. I think you’d quit making such proclamations out of sheer embarrassment over your lack of baseball knowledge after being proven wrong again and again.
Slider32 is correct. The rest of you sound like a bunch of damn Fools……Anything good in Frisco last year was a result of ‘Covid small sample’ .
Over the course of 162 the Giants would have been terrible.
Connversely, Houston’s bad record is the same ” Covid small sample’. Over the course of 162 , Astros post a winning record
Of course hardgo would agree with with Slider32 – they’re the same guy. Or are you 27rings? It’s hard to keep up with all your accounts.
jerkporkins:
Yeah, I’m guessing hardgo, slider32, 27rings, and DubsDynasty are all the same guy. I don’t normally respond to Dubs or 27rings, but I intentionally responded to slider thinking he might reveal himself, and he did. Now I have 4 names I can totally ignore.
Anyone that calls sf frisco is an idiot
The Frisco Roughriders didn’t play in 2020. Nice try.
27RingsBitches/DubsDynasty/hard90 Needs to Die.
Dubsdyansty must have changed their username again.
Maybe not the worst team, but for sure bottom 3-5. Last season, Teams like The Giants, Marlins benefited from ‘Covid small sample’. That is a fact
Of course their fans, who are notorious dumbbell homers, want to believe what occurred over 60 games last year would have, in fact been the same over 162. They are painfully wrong.
But don’t tell them that! Giants fans have that Trumpian Maga base type group think that ignores all things factual. They resent advanced statistical data, and attack any countering views.
The irony is that Even in a ridiculously short 60 game season, They still couldn’t finish above .500.
Gotta be @27rings
ABStract,tad2b13, can anyone tell me how someone has so much time on their hands, is so bored with their own life, and is so incompetent to create profile after profile after profile to come and talk crap about a baseball team, to fans who know that it is the same fool doing it, and could not care less about the fool’s opinion?
And that is all the time I will waste on the fool.
27RingsBitches/DubsDynasty/hard90 Needs To Die.
I got the impression the OP was referring to the Orioles not the Giants but I could be wrong.
Maybe, but I’m not even sure that’s true
Worst team? Ha…. I want a glass of what you’re drinking.
You must be a huge soccer fan because you know NOTHING about current MLB.
Yaz really never came over the hump after AA in the Baltimore system. i feel like the change of scenery from Norfolk to Sacramento might have done it for him.
BALCO
Mike Yaz in my opinion is a top 5 player in MLB
He wasn’t even top 7 in the NL MVP voting, so I’d say that’s a bit of a stretch.
If the Giants made the postseason, he might have been a top 5.
Might not even be top 5 in that division Betts, Machado, Seager, Tatis, Arenado…
You decide his opinion?
Not how it works, your opinion is simply different than his
uh, no…
Only in hindsight can you truly criticize the trade for being as lopsided as it is, but there were plenty of O’s fans disappointed to see him go without a crack at the majors. No one predicted what we’re seeing today.
Hindsight or not you give a guy like yaz a opportunity on a trash team based on his numbers in the minors it’s just so heartbreaking that it seems my orioles can never catch a break aside of the Infamous
Hindsight or not orioles can’t afford to miss out on players like this based on there past and present and now they can’t even recognize talent you give the guy a shot because your organization is in the feeling out process
Orioles robbed the Giants blind. Herb pitched 3.95 ERA in the tough AA. To good for baseball.
If Mike didn’t end up on the giants maybe he never makes that step forward. Can’t really blame the orioles for shipping him.
Every team is run differently, with different people and coaches having different influences on players development. There are so many factors it’s impossible to predict.
One of the coolest video clips from 2019 was him walking in the outfield at Fenway with his grandfather. Then he hit a crucial home run in one of the games of the series.
Does this story sound like the ones told about Chris Taylor and Max Muncy?
Zaidi is quite the shrewd operator. As a lighthearted example, there’s a reason why he dominated the Dodger FFL leagues while with the Dodgers.
The Giants will be competitive again in large part to Zaidi’s excellence.
Farhan, the first Asian-American GM in MLB struck gold.
Why not trade Yaz now while his value is high?
I’m not high on SF future as some. I think they are poised for a step back in 2021. A return to prominence in 2023 seems reasonable. Whatever return you get for Yaz should emerge by that time.
Because to do so is to wave a white flag when the Giants hovered around the postseason twice in a row. Don’t count FZ out for building another competitive team this year and especially in 2022.
Scott…SF ain’t finishing higher than 3rd and could wind up being 5th in 2021.
Is every SF Giant fan delusional? It’s really bad. This team is mediocre and meddling in the middle. They need some more ammo and Yaz can provide it. Yet you feel Yaz needs to stay in-case San Fran competes for .500??
Zaidi has been given credit for doing little. No GM has built more goodwill for doing close to nothing than him.
I do think you’re right, but do other front offices believe he’s truly the player he is currently? Seems like a no-brainer to us, but if the rest of baseball isn’t bullish on Yastrzemski going forward, is it worth trading him for what you can get? Might as well hope they’re wrong at that point and stick with him.
I do think they could get value for him, that being said.
The challenge teams will have with a guy like Yastrzemski is that there’s not enough of trail to determine what he is.
Is he a .325 BABIP-guy or a .370? Somewhere in between? You almost need to discount, in a way, any numbers prior to his 2019 resurgence, so there’s just not the ability to greatly identify if regression is coming, and if so, how much? How far?
Yaz’ value is certainly high, and he’s been an absolutely brilliant pick-up by the Giants (and a testament to Zaidi’s ability to find diamonds in a pile of rat poop). But until it’s easier to identify what kind of player he is, I think the Giants would have a hard time maximizing his value in a trade.
This, of course, assumes the Giants are interested in trading him.
Yaz value is certainly high. That’s all that needs to be said to put him on the block.
But his value to other teams will be littered with question marks. It’s nearly impossible to project what he’ll do in 2020 because there’s not enough data. Even the really good projection tools like ZiPS have to dig into his minor-league numbers while he was in Baltimore, which isn’t a great idea.
As much as I’d love the Giants to maximize his value, I don’t see how teams will be lining up to give up top value for a guy who is 30 and we have no idea what his 2021 will look like.
They had a really good offensive in 2020, and there’s no reason they can’t repeat that or come close to it. If their pitching comes together, they could sneak into the postseason.
In terms of past 2021, they have one of the better farm systems in baseball in its on the rise. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are playing October baseball with a new young core in 2022 or 2023. By which time Yaz will be 32 and 33. Players can in fact keep producing in their early 30s, especially when they are athletic like Yaz without extensive injury histories like Yaz.
I think most casual fans just remember the Giants not selling Bumgarner etc. at the last two deadlines and assume they must still have a terrible farm system. Instead, they’ve built a fantastic farm system through the draft and by signing international prospects. Oh, and they were able to draft one of their most exciting pitching prospects because they didn’t trade Bum and got a compensation pick since he rejected their qualifying offer. Yaz should be able to lead the next good young Giants team.
I also think you don’t understand how prospects work. When you have a good farm system on the whole, it’s likely that will translate to MLB success. But when you look at individual prospects, they are all huge gambles. If they traded Yaz for a prospect—even a top 100 or top 50 prospect or a few good prospects—it’s more likely than not they wouldn’t pan out. If you doubt me, go back and look at 10 big trades from 5 or 6 years ago. So thinking whatever return they could get for Yaz “should emerge by that time” is ridiculous. It’s even more unlikely they’ll be an MVP candidate like Yaz.
Casual fans ultimately have one very narrow view of what a rebuild should look like: trade everyone for prospects and then tank for high draft picks! But that’s not always how it works. And just because the Giants aren’t holding a firesale and losing 100 games every year doesn’t mean they aren’t doing a good job building for the future. Yaz should be part of that future.
This only adds more to Orioles of how they trade away guys and they perform better else where.
“His late-career breakout is another reminder that even the lowest-profile transactions have some chance of being impactful.”
Which is precisely why rebuilding teams shouldn’t trade prospects for rentals. How bad commenters on MLBTR think the prospect in question is notwithstanding.
Weren’t you just going on and on and on about how dumb Zaidi was for not trading Gausman and Bumgarner for prospects?
Now, teams are dumb for giving up prospects for rentals?
You truly are an enigma.
Man, does the Orioles know how to evaluate talent or what?
Man, do you know how to speak English or what?
how do you get “asstrolls” off this site ?
27rings or whatever he goes by
or do we just feel sorry for the pitiful life he is leading
just asking?
The rest is interesting to read – comments from people who are truly interested in baseball
I wish there were the ability to “hide” profiles, or block them as to not see their trolling posts.
SF ain’t what they used to be. Start acting like the rebuilding club that you are. However good or bad Yaz is doesn’t matter to SF. He’ll age out by the time they are ready to open their next window of opportunity. Do the sensible thing and trade him now. No hard feelings just business.
The Giants have said for 25 years, they don’t dismantle. They want to put a competitive team on the field and develop players at the same time. They won 3 World Championships doing that. So keep dreaming about the Giants dismantling..
13th round of the 1999 amatuer draft 402nd overall has hit 669 homeruns so far
Albert Pujols, very nice. I think I read a book that said some scout in Tampa Bay was pleading for them to take him. They ignored him. After that I think he quit & left baseball. I dont remember the details tho
I remember him the year he was drafted. I wanted the Braves to draft him, he was a good late round pick. Lefty out of Vanderbilt that had the Potential to Hit good enough to BE A PLATOON Player!! I thought at best he might become a below Average Starting Corner OF (of course he could have missed the MLB entirely). He was actually in the same draft as Aaron Judge. I wanted the Braves to take Judge in Round 1 but they took Jason Hursh instead. In all Honesty, If I was the GM I would’ve drafted Judge because Sean Manaea wanted a lot of $$$ & Ryne Stanek had already been drafted. Looking back that Ryne Stanek part makes me laugh even harder than the fact that the Braves thought Jason Hursh (threw 93-96 max 98 Before TJ Surgery & dropped 2mph after) had a ROCKET Arm & was better than Judge. The times have certainly changed since 2013 lol. Btw That’s not a diss on any of those players, except Hursh. They were all good players back then.
Yaz is a great addition to the Giants and is becoming a real leader kind of player in their clubhouse as well. What a steal! His story is something else…
Already 30. Trade him. His value will never be higher.
Aren’t the Giants trying to slowly build a winning team now? Imo they are on the ascension after bottoming out during their rebuild so they should be in the business of retaining these types of players not getting rid.
There was absolutely no doubt in my mind he would be an excellent ball player.
Even when he was struggling to hit in the minors there was “no doubt in your mind?”
I rarely see Yaz take a bad at bat. He’s solid and the Giants would be crazy to trade him—whether or not he’s around for the next championship. And by the way, SF is building slowly to respectability . . .and it must kill the trolls on this site.