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Giants Rumors

Giants Extend Matt Chapman

By Nick Deeds | September 5, 2024 at 6:56am CDT

The Giants made a major splash overnight, announcing that they’ve extended the contract of third baseman Matt Chapman. The deal guarantees Chapman $151MM over six years and runs from 2025 to 2030, with a $25MM annual salary and a $1MM signing bonus paid out in 2025. According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, Chapman’s deal contains a no-trade clause.

Chapman, 31, signed with the Giants on a three-year deal worth $54MM with opt outs after each season over the offseason when his market didn’t develop to expected levels last winter. In the months since then, it’s become apparent that the first of those opt-out opportunities would be exercised as the infielder has largely quelled his doubters with his best season in half a decade. His first season in a Giants uniform has seen him post a strong .247/.343/.445 slash line, good for a 118 wRC+, in 136 games. In addition to a strong season at the plate, he’s also put together his most impressive defensive season in years with +7 OAA and +13 DRS, his best showing in either metric since 2021.

With Chapman poised to return to free agency in search of a bigger contract elsewhere, the Giants have now made sure that he’ll remain with the club for the foreseeable future. The third baseman’s deal figures to keep him in San Francisco through the end of his age-37 season, and matches the six-year, $150MM prediction we at MLBTR made regarding Chapman’s contract ahead of the 2023-24 offseason almost exactly. The contract is representative of the potential upside that players who take opt-out laden deals can find if their initial foray into free agency doesn’t go according to plan; Chapman now figures to ultimately walk away from his time with the Giants having pocketed $169MM over seven years, though of course this outcome required not only a healthy season from the 31-year-old but his best season overall since 2019.

By staying in San Francisco long-term, Chapman ensures that he will spend the majority of his playing career in the Bay Area. The longtime Athletic was selected 25th overall by Oakland in the 2014 draft and made his debut with the club back in 2017.  He’d ultimately spend the first five seasons of his career in an A’s uniform, earning three Gold Glove awards, finishing in the top 10 of AL MVP voting twice, and making his first and so far only career All-Star game during that time. When the A’s began a total rebuild following the 2021 season, however, he was shipped to Toronto just before the 2022 campaign began and spend two years in Toronto. Now that Chapman is on a long-term deal with the Bay Area’s other MLB team, one of the stars of the Athletics’ final playoff team in Oakland will outlast the team itself in the community as the club stands poised to relocate following the 2024 campaign.

As for the Giants, the deal represents the second largest financial outlay in the club’s history and is dwarfed only by Buster Posey’s $166.5MM guarantee in his early-career extension with the team. By keeping Chapman in the fold, San Francisco locks up a potential cornerstone after failing in multiple well-documented pursuits of star players in recent years, ranging from Bryce Harper and Giancarlo Stanton to more recent pursuits of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. While Chapman doesn’t have the star power of any of those players, he’s a reliable defender and source of power at third base who offers a solid floor of 3 WAR on an annual basis, with upside much higher than that when he’s at his best.

Of course, it’s worth noting that Chapman’s reliability could decline on both sides of the ball as he enters his mid 30’s, a particularly notable caveat given the fact that he’ll play next season at 32 years old. At the same time, the deal makes Chapman the latest long-term piece put into place by a Giants club that has seemed somewhat listless in recent years as they search for an identity and struggle to contend in the era following the departures of Posey, Brandon Belt, and Brandon Crawford. Alongside Chapman, the club has Logan Webb and Kyle Harrison locked into the rotation, Jung Hoo Lee and Heliot Ramos in the outfield, and Patrick Bailey behind the plate through at least the end of the 2028 campaign. That’s a core of talent that could compete for a playoff spot in the coming years if properly supplemented, which is a clear step in the right direction for a franchise that appears to be trending towards its third consecutive sub-.500 finish this year.

Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.

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Newsstand San Francisco Giants Transactions Matt Chapman

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Darin Ruf Joins University Of Nebraska Omaha Coaching Staff

By Steve Adams | September 4, 2024 at 12:58pm CDT

Former big league first baseman/outfielder Darin Ruf has joined the University of Nebraska Omaha baseball program as an assistant coach, the school announced Wednesday. There’s been no formal announcement of retirement for the 38-year-old Ruf, but this certainly seems to indicate he’s turning the page on his playing days and moving onto the next phase of his baseball journey.

“We are thrilled to have Darin join our baseball family,” Mavericks head coach Evan Porter said in a statement within today’s announcement. “Darin’s incredible track record speaks for itself, but his character and work ethic are perhaps more impressive. I’ve been fortunate to know Darin for the past 20 years, his respect for the game and for the people around him is admirable. I couldn’t be more excited to work with Darin, he is a tremendous addition to our program.”

A 20th-round pick out of Omaha’s Creighton University back in 2009, Ruf reached the majors with the Phillies in 2012 and went on to enjoy a nine-year career in the major leagues in addition to an excellent three-year run with the Samsung Lions of the Korea Baseball Organization (2017-19).

Ruf’s debut campaign with the Phils was brief but showed clear potential for a meaningful big league career. He appeared in 12 games as a September call-up and popped three homers while batting .333/.351/.727 in 37 trips to the plate. The following season saw Ruf tally 293 plate appearances while hitting .247/.348/.458 with 14 round-trippers. He’d ultimately spend parts of five seasons with the Phillies, from 2012-16, batting a combined .240/.314/.433 while serving as a part-time first baseman and corner outfielder who could provide some right-handed thump off the bench.

From there, Ruf’s next stop was overseas. He not only found success with the KBO’s Lions — he took the entire league by storm. Ruf smacked 38 homers in his first Korean season and wound up posting a massive .313/.404/.564 batting line in 1756 plate appearances as a Lion. He belted 86 homers, 105 doubles and six triples during his run in the KBO, with overall offense about 45% better than league-average, by measure of wRC+.

Ruf returned stateside for the 2020 season, taking a minor league deal with the Giants that proved to be an outstanding deal for San Francisco. He cracked the Giants’ opening day roster in the shortened 2020 campaign, his age-33 season, and in 100 plate appearances turned in a .276/.370./517 slash that made him an easy call to keep for the Giants to tender him a contract in arbitration in the 2020-21 offseason. Ruf’s 2021 output was even better than that small-sample 2020 showing; in 312 plate appearances he hit .271/.385/.519 with 16 homers.

That sudden resurgence in the majors prompted the Giants to ink Ruf to a two-year, $6.25MM contract. His bat took a step back in the first season of the deal, but Ruf was still hitting at a slightly better-than-average level when the Mets acquired him at that summer’s trade deadline. His bat cratered following the move to Queens, however, and New York designated Ruf for assignment just before Opening Day 2023. He was released in early April, signed a minor league deal to return to the Giants, and split the 2023 season between San Francisco and Milwaukee, seeing brief playing time at both stops.

It now seems likely that’ll be the final stage of Ruf’s playing career. If he’s indeed shifting his focus to a coaching track, he’ll conclude his time in the majors with a career .239/.329/.427 batting line, 351 hits, 67 homers, 69 doubles, three triples, six steals, 198 runs scored and 205 runs driven in. Between MLB and the KBO, he cracked more than 150 homers and piled up more than 800 hits — all while earning more than $9MM in the majors and more than $4MM in South Korea.

The Omaha native will now help mold a younger generation of players while returning to his hometown. Ruf expressed excitement and gratitude in a statement of his own within today’s announcement:

“I am thrilled to be joining Evan’s staff in Omaha. I have been blessed with amazing coaches throughout my career and I am honored Evan has given me the opportunity to give back and work with these student athletes. I look forward to working with them on the field to become the best ball players they can be and off the field as they continue to develop into great people for the community of Omaha.”

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Korea Baseball Organization New York Mets Philadelphia Phillies San Francisco Giants Darin Ruf Retirement

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Giants Playing Marco Luciano At Second Base

By Anthony Franco | September 3, 2024 at 8:46pm CDT

The Giants recalled Marco Luciano and Luis Matos from Triple-A Sacramento this afternoon. San Francisco optioned Blake Sabol and Casey Schmitt in corresponding moves. Luciano is in tonight’s lineup at second base against Arizona’s Ryne Nelson. It seems that’ll be a frequent occurrence this month.

Manager Bob Melvin told reporters this evening that the Giants will play Luciano regularly at the keystone for the season’s final few weeks (relayed on X by Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area). Tonight’s start there will be the 22-year-old’s first second base action in the big leagues.

Luciano is no stranger to the middle infield. He has started 19 MLB games at shortstop over the last two years. He has nearly 2500 shortstop innings in the minors. Luciano has made 27 appearances at second base in his minor league career, all but six of which have come this season with Sacramento.

Despite his ample shortstop experience, the rookie infielder struggled at the position earlier in the year. He was charged with five errors in only 60 innings. Luciano’s fielding percentage sat at a dismal .865, and while that almost certainly would’ve risen in a larger sample, the frequency of the mistakes led the Giants to quickly decide that he wasn’t ready for everyday shortstop work. San Francisco flirted with playing him at designated hitter after the Jorge Soler deadline trade. That didn’t last long either, and he has all of 48 plate appearances over 17 MLB games this year.

The Giants’ playoff hopes have been all but officially ended, so the next few weeks are primarily about evaluation. Luciano’s development is one of the organization’s key storylines. Scouting reports have long touted his raw power, but that has yet to translate against upper level pitching. Luciano has four extra-base hits (three doubles and a triple) in 31 career big league contests. He only has 10 homers with a .250/.380/.380 batting line over 384 plate appearances in the Pacific Coast League this year. A near-17% walk rate has driven a huge on-base mark, but he’s striking out 27% of the time without making much of a power impact.

Luciano is a few days shy of his 23rd birthday, so there’s still plenty of time for him to figure things out. The Giants haven’t given him any kind of consistent run against MLB pitching before now. That said, his pedestrian upper minors production and the ongoing questions about his long-term defensive home leave a lot unsettled.

Acclimating well to second base could at least address the latter question. The Giants are going to need a long-term solution at the position. Thairo Estrada has held the job for the past three-plus years. He has had a very poor ’24 campaign, though, and the Giants outrighted him off the roster last week. Estrada remains in the organization for now, but the Giants will almost certainly move on during the upcoming offseason: either by allowing him to elect minor league free agency or declining to tender him an arbitration contract.

Luciano will need to tighten things up defensively if he’s to stick on the infield at all. Scouts’ questions about his chances of playing shortstop have been more about his hands and lateral mobility than any issues with his arm strength. Four of his five errors at the position were of the fielding variety. That’d be problematic no matter where he is on the dirt, though perhaps moving off the infield’s most demanding spot would allow him to be more comfortable.

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San Francisco Giants Marco Luciano

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Giants Activate Tristan Beck, Recall Blake Sabol

By Nick Deeds | September 2, 2024 at 8:58am CDT

Amid yesterday’s flurry of transactions related to September’s expansion of active rosters from 26 to 28, the Giants recalled catcher Blake Sabol and activated right-hander Tristan Beck from the 60-day injured list to fill the newly created vacancies. No corresponding 40-man move was necessary to activate Beck, and the club’s 40-man roster now stands at 39.

Beck, 28, has spent the entire season on the injured list to this point after suffering an aneurysm in his upper arm back in February. The righty underwent surgery to correct the issue back in early March but was shut down from throwing for the next two months and since then has been slowly working his way back towards a return to the majors. After spending the majority of August on a rehab assignment with Triple-A Sacramento, Beck finally made it back to the majors yesterday.

With that being said, Beck’s current role isn’t the one he was expected to fulfill at the start of the season. The right-hander was expected to be a member of the club’s starting rotation this year at the time of his injury after a solid rookie season in 2023 where he pitched to a 3.92 ERA in 85 innings of work as a multi-inning relief arm and spot starter. Beck’s injury derailed those plans, however, and while he started games in the minors during his rehab assignment last month he maxed out at just 56 pitches.

That won’t be enough for him to join a rotation that currently features Blake Snell, Logan Webb, Kyle Harrison, Hayden Birdsong, and Mason Black, but it should allow him to join righties Landen Roupp and Sean Hjelle as a multi-inning option out of the bullpen down the stretch. If Beck manages to post solid numbers in his return from surgery, it’s even possible that he could work his way back to into the conversation for starts with the Giants by next season, with Snell widely expected to opt out of his deal with San Francisco and vacate a rotation spot by returning to free agency.

As for Sabol, the 26-year-old was thrust into a semi-regular role with the club last year after being selected from the Pirates in the Rule 5 draft. He performed admirably in the role, with a decent .235/.301/.394 slash line that was within spitting distance of league average as he split time between catcher and left field in 110 games for San Francisco. This year, however, Sabol has returned to the minor leagues for the majority of the year with just 11 games in the majors under his belt to this point. Triple-A has been a bit of a struggle for the 26-year-old, as he’s slashed just .241/.339/.373 at the level despite the Pacific Coast League’s inflated offensive environment. Still, the versatile youngster should provide the Giants with some depth in the outfield and behind the plate down the stretch, and a strong performance could earn him more regular playing time headed into 2025.

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San Francisco Giants Transactions Blake Sabol Tristan Beck

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Giants Outright Andrew Knapp

By Steve Adams | August 31, 2024 at 3:04pm CDT

TODAY: Knapp clears waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A, according to Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area (X link).

AUGUST 29: The Giants announced Thursday that they’ve reinstated catcher Patrick Bailey from the 10-day injured list and designated fellow backstop Andrew Knapp for assignment to open roster space.

Knapp signed a big league deal with the Giants just last week, although it seemed clear at the time he’d only be relied upon while Bailey mended from an oblique strain that had sent him to the injured list. The 32-year-old Knapp went 1-for-6 in what was his second stint with the Giants, for whom he also played back in 2022.

With this brief Giants stint, Knapp has now played in parts of seven major league seasons, spending time with the Phillies, Mariners and Pirates in addition to his time in San Francisco. He’s a career .209/.309/.312 hitter in 879 plate appearances as a major leaguer. Knapp spent the bulk of the current season with the Rangers’ Triple-A club, hitting .294/.383/.457 in 81 games and 345 plate appearances. He’s a lifetime .259/.351/.415 hitter in parts of six Triple-A seasons.

Now that he’s been designated for assignment, Knapp will head to waivers and be made available to the other 29 clubs. He’ll likely clear, giving him the right to become a free agent, but a club in need of some catching depth down the stretch could look to bring him aboard on a minor league deal if and when that happens.

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San Francisco Giants Transactions Andrew Knapp Patrick Bailey

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Giants Outright Thairo Estrada, Release Tyler Matzek

By Anthony Franco | August 30, 2024 at 5:08pm CDT

Thairo Estrada and Tyler Matzek both went unclaimed on waivers. The Giants announced they’ve assigned Estrada outright to Triple-A Sacramento while recalling Brett Wisely (X link via Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area). Matzek, who’d been on the 60-day injured list, was placed on unconditional release waivers. Estrada drops off the 40-man roster, which now carries 38 players.

San Francisco reportedly placed Estrada, Matzek and lefty reliever Taylor Rogers on waivers earlier in the week. The Giants did not announce what happened with Rogers’ waiver process. It’s possible that they didn’t officially place Rogers on waivers until a day later than the Estrada and Matzek moves (and are therefore still waiting on a resolution). However, it seems likely that Rogers went unclaimed and the Giants simply elected to hold onto him.

A team is not required to send a player to the minors after he clears waivers. The Giants would have no reason to do so with Rogers. If the Giants tried to demote him, the former All-Star could elect free agency while retaining his $12MM salary for next season. That’d simply amount to cutting Rogers, a productive reliever, without any financial benefit for doing so.

Estrada does not have that luxury. The glove-first second baseman has between three and five years of service. That gives him the right to decline an outright assignment but would require him to forfeit the remainder of his salary to do so. Estrada is playing on a $4.7MM arbitration deal and isn’t likely to give up the more than $800K remaining on that contract. He’ll almost certainly report to Sacramento, while Wisely could get a look as the everyday second baseman at Oracle Park.

The 28-year-old Estrada was an average or better hitter during his first three seasons with the Giants, combining for a .266/.320/.416 slash. He topped 20 stolen bases and drilled 14 homers apiece in 2022 and ’23. He hasn’t been anywhere near that effective this season. He’s hitting .217/.247/.343 across 381 trips to the plate. Among hitters with 300+ plate appearances, only Eddie Rosario and Adam Duvall have a lower on-base percentage.

San Francisco can reselect Estrada onto the 40-man roster through season’s end. He’d technically remain eligible for arbitration if they called him back up, but the waiver process makes clear that the Giants don’t plan to tender him a contract in either case. Whether he returns to the MLB club next month, he’s very likely to be on the open market (either through minor league free agency or a non-tender) during the upcoming offseason.

The Giants acquired Matzek from the Braves as a salary offset in the Jorge Soler deadline deal. He’s playing on a $1.9MM salary that no team was willing to assume. Matzek was on the injured list at the time of the trade and never threw a pitch as a Giant. He missed all of last year recovering from Tommy John surgery. Matzek returned this season before landing back on the IL in May with elbow inflammation.

The 33-year-old southpaw had a tough first month in Atlanta, giving up 11 runs over 10 frames. The Giants sent him to Triple-A on a rehab stint a couple weeks ago. He made five appearances, allowing four runs through 4 2/3 innings. Matzek could be healthy enough to sign elsewhere, though he’d need to do so within the next day to be eligible for postseason play.

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San Francisco Giants Transactions Taylor Rogers Thairo Estrada Tyler Matzek

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Second-Half Snell Is Doing It Again

By Steve Adams | August 30, 2024 at 3:04pm CDT

Over the course of any given calendar year, Major League Baseball is full of oddities. The Dodgers gave the largest pitching contract ever to a starting pitcher who'd never pitched in the majors. The Marlins waved the white flag on their season after about five weeks. Rich Hill signed his eighth career free agent deal with the Red Sox. Heck, Danny Jansen played in the same game for two different teams. All that said, Blake Snell has had one of the strangest calendar years of any player in the game.

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Giants Place Thairo Estrada, Taylor Rogers On Waivers

By Anthony Franco | August 28, 2024 at 11:57pm CDT

The Giants placed second baseman Thairo Estrada and lefty relievers Taylor Rogers and Tyler Matzek on waivers, report Grant Brisbee and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic. They’re the latest veteran players known to hit the waiver wire as fringe contenders attempt to offload some salary.

Estrada, Rogers and Matzek were not designated for assignment. They can continue to play for the Giants pending resolution of the waiver process. If they go unclaimed, San Francisco can (and quite likely will) simply keep them on the roster for the rest of the season. However, waivers are irrevocable. If another team places a claim on anyone, the Giants do not have the ability to rescind the placement.

Of course, the Giants wouldn’t have placed the players on waivers if they weren’t hoping another team made a claim. This is strictly a move to try to shed payroll. Estrada probably stands the best chance of the group to be claimed. He’s playing on a $4.7MM arbitration salary. There’ll be roughly $810K to be paid from tomorrow through the end of the season.

The 28-year-old Estrada is generally well regarded for his defensive acumen. Defensive Runs Saved has never been keen on his performance, but he grades very highly by Statcast’s Outs Above Average. While that hasn’t changed this year, his offense has fallen off a cliff. Estrada was an average or better hitter during his first three seasons with the Giants, combining for a .266/.320/.416 slash. He topped 20 stolen bases and drilled 14 homers apiece in 2022 and ’23.

This season, Estrada has been one of the worst hitters in the game. He sports a .216/.246/.345 line through 374 plate appearances. While that’s partially due to a career-low .245 average on balls in play, Estrada has never walked much or had particularly strong batted ball metrics. Among hitters with 300+ plate appearances, only Eddie Rosario and Adam Duvall have a lower on-base percentage.

That performance makes it likely the Giants will move on from Estrada next offseason even if he sticks on the roster for the remainder of the year. He’d be due a small raise on this year’s salary, likely into the $5-6MM range. The Giants have evidently determined they were going to decline to tender him a contract, so they’ll make him available to other teams a month earlier to see if they can shed the final month of his 2024 salary.

Rogers is having a much better season than Estrada, but he’d be a far costlier pickup. The veteran southpaw is in the second season of a three-year, $33MM free agent deal. It’s a backloaded contract that pays him $12MM this year and next. He’ll be due a little more than $2MM for the final month of the season. A claiming team would also need to absorb his $12MM salary for the ’25 season. That isn’t an outlandish amount for a reliever of Rogers’ caliber but represents a hefty sum to take on via midseason waiver claim.

The 33-year-old Rogers is a former All-Star closer with the Twins. He has remained effective over his two seasons in San Francisco. After turning in a 3.83 earned run average across 51 2/3 innings a year ago, he carries a 2.45 mark in 51 1/3 frames this season. Rogers has fanned an above-average 28.2% of opponents against a solid 7.7% walk rate. He has been generally solid all year yet hasn’t pitched his way into first-year manager Bob Melvin’s circle of trust.

By measure of leverage index, Rogers has been eighth on San Francisco’s bullpen hierarchy (among relievers with at least 10 innings). That hasn’t changed throughout the season despite Rogers’ numbers. It’s understandable the Giants wouldn’t want to pay $12MM next season to a reliever whom Melvin feels is best suited in the middle innings.

Matzek is the most affordable of the trio. Acquired from the Braves as a salary offset in the Jorge Soler deadline deal, he’s playing on a $1.9MM contract. Matzek was on the injured list at the time of the trade and hasn’t thrown a pitch as a Giant. He missed all of last year recovering from Tommy John surgery. Matzek returned this season before landing back on the IL in May with elbow inflammation.

The 33-year-old southpaw had a tough first month in Atlanta, giving up 11 runs over 10 frames. The Giants sent him to Triple-A on a rehab stint a couple weeks ago. He has made five appearances, allowing four runs through 4 2/3 innings. Matzek should be able to return in September, though it’s not clear if a contender is willing to plug him into their bullpen after a five-month layoff.

Matzek is due around $330K for the rest of the year. His deal contains a $5.5MM team option for next season without a buyout. That’s unlikely to be exercised by the Giants or a hypothetical claiming team.

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Newsstand San Francisco Giants Taylor Rogers Thairo Estrada Tyler Matzek

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Giants Outright Jakson Reetz

By Anthony Franco | August 27, 2024 at 8:44pm CDT

The Giants announced that catcher Jakson Reetz went unclaimed on waivers and was sent outright to Triple-A Sacramento. San Francisco took him off the 40-man roster last week as the corresponding move to sign Andrew Knapp. Reetz has cleared waivers a few times in his career and has the right to elect free agency. He stuck with San Francisco after being outrighted in May and could do so again.

Reetz, 28, has spent the season with the Giants, playing mostly in Triple-A. The Giants have selected his contract twice but only gotten him into six big league games. His other major league experience consisted of two contests with the Nationals three years ago. Reetz has three hits (two doubles and a home run) in 17 MLB plate appearances.

A former third-round pick by Washington, Reetz has also played in the Kansas City organization. The righty-hitting catcher owns a .241/.338/.467 line in parts of four Triple-A seasons. He has taken 235 plate appearances with Sacramento, running a .254/.368/.431 slash behind a strong 12.3% walk rate.

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San Francisco Giants Transactions Jakson Reetz

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Giants Place Jordan Hicks On Injured List

By Darragh McDonald | August 27, 2024 at 5:40pm CDT

The Giants announced that they have placed right-hander Jordan Hicks on the 15-day injured list with right shoulder inflammation. Righty Austin Warren was recalled as the corresponding move. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle relayed the details prior to the official announcement (X link one and two).

Hicks was warming up during Friday’s game but didn’t eventually enter the contest. He later said he felt a “zinger” down his arm while getting ready, per Slusser, though he stayed with the club through the weekend. He appeared in Saturday’s game but with diminished velocity. His sinker usually averages between 96 and 97 miles per hour but was around 94 in his most recent outing, per Statcast. It now seems the club has decided to give him some time to rest and heal up.

It’s unclear how long Hicks will be out of action but it’s a blow to the pitching staff regardless. Hicks was in the starting rotation for much of the year but seemed to run out of steam, as his results tapered off as time went on. He had a 3.01 earned run average after his start on June 11, but then posted a 6.83 ERA from June 17 to July 28. He’s been in a bullpen role lately, with six scoreless outings to start the month of August before he allowed one earned run in his Saturday appearance.

Earlier this month, the club put Randy Rodríguez on the injured list. Today, Robbie Ray joined him and now Hicks will hit the shelf as well. The Giants are 66-66 and clinging to life in the National League Wild Card race. They are 5.5 games back of a spot but would need to leapfrog at least three teams while also holding off the clubs just behind them. Doing so will be more challenging now that some key arms have been subtracted from the staff.

Warren, 28, underwent Tommy John surgery in May of last year while with the Angels and that club designated him for assignment in February. Since injured players aren’t allowed to be placed on outright waivers, he was released and signed a major league deal with the Giants. Since he was still working his way back from surgery, the Giants moved him to the 60-day injured list in February when they signed Jorge Soler.

He was reinstated from the 60-day injured list in July, thus retaking his spot on the 40-man roster, but was optioned to the minors. He has thrown 20 Triple-A innings this year with a 4.95 ERA but better peripherals. He has struck out 26.1% of batters faced, walked 6.8% of them and gotten grounders at a 41.2% rate. A .327 batting average on balls in play, 63% strand rate and 17.6% homer to fly ball rate have helped push some extra runs across the board in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League.

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San Francisco Giants Transactions Austin Warren Jordan Hicks

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    Buxton: Still No Plans To Waive No-Trade Clause

    Rob Manfred Downplays Salary Cap Dispute With Bryce Harper

    Tanner Houck To Undergo Tommy John Surgery

    Yankees Release Marcus Stroman

    Cubs Release Ryan Pressly

    Cubs To Host 2027 All-Star Game

    Recent

    Twins Select Genesis Cabrera, Place Alan Roden On 60-Day IL

    Diamondbacks Select Nabil Crismatt

    Reds Designate Jake Fraley For Assignment

    Cardinals Place Victor Scott II On IL, Select Nathan Church

    Marcelo Mayer To Undergo Season-Ending Wrist Surgery

    Phillies Release Cal Stevenson, Activate Aaron Nola

    Orioles Promote Samuel Basallo

    Phillies Place Zack Wheeler On Injured List With Blood Clot

    Braves Outright Davis Daniel

    Kyle Stowers To Miss Several Weeks With Side Strain

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