The Giants announced a series of minor league contracts with invitations to Major League Spring Training today, with right-handers Dominic Leone, Silvino Bracho and Rico Garcia among them. Lefty Anthony Banda, whom the Giants outrighted at season’s end, is also back on a minors pact. Others invited to camp include right-handers Melvin Adon, Daniel Alvarez, Yunior Marte, Raffi Vizcaino and Sam Wolff, as well as lefty Sam Long and infielder/outfielder Jason Krizan.
Of the group, Leone comes with far and away the most big league experience. The 29-year-old reliever has appeared in parts of seven MLB seasons, pitching to a combined 4.09 ERA with 9.6 K/9 against 3.7 BB/9 over the course of 253 innings out of the bullpen. Leone’s peak season came with the Blue Jays in 2017, when he racked up a career-high 70 1/3 innings and struck out a hearty 29 percent of the batters he faced (10.4 K/9).
Following that strong effort, Leone was traded to the Cardinals alongside righty Conner Greene in the deal that sent Randal Grichuk to Toronto. Things didn’t pan out in St. Louis for Leone, who limped through a pair of injury-plagued seasons and ultimately record a 5.15 ERA and 4.77 FIP in 64 2/3 frames as a Cardinal. Although he’s been inconsistent, Leone makes for a sensible enough flier by a Giants club looking high and low for bullpen depth after seeing several key relievers depart in recent years.
Others in the group with MLB experience include former Bracho, a former D-backs reliever, Garcia and Banda. Garcia tossed 10 innings with the Giants in 2019 but has generally been hit hard between his brief time between San Francisco and Colorado. Banda was at one point considered to be one of the game’s top overall pitching prospects but has since had his career derailed by injuries, including Tommy John surgery. He was with the Giants org late in the season but did not pitch in a big league game.
Bracho, 28, was up and down with Arizona from 2015-17 but looked to turn a corner in 2018 when he pitched 31 innings with a 3.19 ERA/3.26 FIP and a 34-to-12 K/BB ratio. However, he missed the entire 2019 season due to Tommy John surgery and had his 2020 return slowed this summer when he tested positive for Covid-19. Bracho did make it back to toss an inning with the D-backs, but he hasn’t had a full, healthy season since 2018. With three-plus big years of MLB service, he’s technically controllable through at least the 2023 campaign if he can crack the MLB roster and seize a spot in the San Francisco bullpen.
Alvarez looks like a nice adf
*add
WORLD SERIES BOUND!!
Yea you tell em!
Troll
The Giants are making their moves, everybody stand back this could get ugly! As a matter of fact it’s already ugly, but it’s gonna get uglier & uglier AND UGLIER!
@NY sounds more like you describing your reflection in the mirror for the last decade.
How long has it been since you guys won a post season series? Lol
They’ve won a WORLD Series more recently than the Yankees. In fact, the Giants have been one of the two most successful clubs this century.
He was referring to the twins. Not the giants.
@NYstateof mind
Are you 27rings with a new name? Seems like it because you are the only supposed NYY fan who trashes SF. And it always goes badly for you. You embarrass yourself and all NYY fans. Why don’t you see that? And stop. Just stop.
You’ll give teams like the Giants and Red Sox crap for not having superfarms, and both currently being in rebuilds, but the reality is teams that establish dynasty’s do so at a cost, and there’s a reason those two teams are the two most successful of our generation.
Even being in a rebuild the Giants aren’t a team to underestimate. They are silent but deadly
NYstateofmind 2:
So, in other words, you don’t know much about baseball beyond the most superficial. Being a GM or PoBO, is about much more than landing a big fish like Bauer or Realmuto. What Zaidi is doing is what he should be doing, and in fact what every GM/PoBO should be, and is doing.
The only difference here is the quantity of signings announced. But every GM/PoBO over the course of the off-season will make similar signings.
Well as “ugly” as you say it is, their low cost additions pan out. Watch out! By the end of the decade the Giants will be serious contenders
Man going back and reading the thread from the Grich trade is weird. Nice to see the jays won on that trade
by process of elimination
Won the trade but the contract seems to have quickly sapped any value
The Giants are going to hit on at least one of these relievers. I know they are.
They are doing a pretty good job keeping the train moving on there rebuild. I think you’re right though.
With our track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if more than one end up working
The unmentioned Adon might be the best of the lot despite concerns about control and weight.
the true wild card of the group. he’ll either be terrible or amazing for him based on his track record.
If the Giants added one proven reliever on 2-3 year deal, then with this large group of ST invitees, one or more may just hit, our BP would be solid again. Then FZ need more starting pitching. If he used the same model as he’s just done for relievers, and in my opinion, added one 2nd tier proven starter, we’d be set for 2021. Then next off-season will be interesting with all the vets coming off the books (except Longo, ugh). I like the process.
Yea I wish longo would come off first. Look at Crawford big time picking up(not to say he was a good hitter) in 2020, and Posey will resign, guaranteed, longo needs to go! GET HIM OUT
Dominant Dominic!
Giants are so short of talent on the pitching side that it makes all the sense in the world to take as many flyers on guys like Wisler and the above. Farhan doing right thing jumping in now on these types of guys
Well they consistently make pitchers better than they were before coming to SF so…
Where is the restructuring of the minors information from today ?
Zaidi needs to assemble the misfit toys into a bullpen and even several rotation slots for the next couple of years to accommodate a recent lack of pitching prospects from their system who could be ready by ’22-23, a trend he himself has continued with the most recent draft. Amongst all these pieces will be next season’s Pomeranz, who will be flipped at the deadline for more parts.
But at some point, perhaps with the ’21 draft, he needs to focus on pitching that can be ready sometime in ’23, otherwise the rotation will be in constant churn.
Very unlikely. Bart barely made it up 2 years later, and even as a Giants(and especially Bart) fan, he shouldn’t have. I would say let’s keep doing this, and draft some young pitchers with high ceilings who can contend and chip in to some successful runs soon
Looks like Zaidi skipped the first couple chapters of the Theo Epstein handbook. Scrap what you have left at the winter meetings and then sign retreads that can be traded at the deadline. To still think Posey, Belt, Crawford and anyone born before 1994 are on this roster is a joke. .
what do you expect him to do? the guys all fall of the roster at the end of the year – you don’t save or gain anything by just releasing contracts.
This a quite the haul of minor league signings. There are probably a couple of gems in this group who will end up throwing meaningful innings for the Giants this year. I can’t wait to see what SF does starting next year when some of these big veteran contracts start coming off the books. They are definitely heading in the right direction, but they have a long way to go before they are competitive in the NL West.
Dorothy_Mantooth:
Maybe this is picking nits, but I think you mean before they are competitive against the Dodgers and Padres. They were 12 and 8 against the Rox and D’backs. In fact, the Padres are the only team that dominated the Giants. They were 4 and 6 against the WS champs.
Given that the 11 blown saves account for over a third of the team’s losses, improvements to the bullpen, as well as the rotation, seems like a shorter trip to competitiveness than you project.
I always thought Bracho had some decent potential if he could both stay healthy and show consistency. The Giants have made some great relief pitching pickups over the past couple days. Wisler in particular was a great snag.
Rooting for Jason “Moonlight” Krizan. Going into his age 32 season and still no MLB ABs. Give him at least one!
How would you like to be described as one of the “several others”?
As the one guy usually says, “lol, the Giants”
Part of the bullpen disaster in 2020 had to do with the goofball manager. Kapler’s a disaster with many aspects of being a manager but handling of the bullpen is his absolute worst fault. Goody Gabe cost the team a playoff spot.
I would have to agree. Kapler could have done a much better job managing all of the Giants’ players, especially pitching.
it’s going to be an ugly 2021 for the Gints…especially off the field, i.e. no one in the stands since the tech bros all left town. the corporate boxes will be empty, as will most of the regular seats….