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Giants Outright Enderson Franco

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The Giants placed right-hander Tyler Beede on the 45-day injured list and outrighted fellow righty Enderson Franco to Triple-A Sacramento on Monday, per Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area.

[RELATED: Giants Announce Initial Player Pool]

The IR placement for Beede was a procedural move, as he won’t play this season after he underwent Tommy John surgery back in March. Beede won’t make his return until next spring or summer as a result of the operation. The 26-year-old, once a high-end prospect, was vying for a spot in San Francisco’s rotation before his injury and the coronavirus shutdown.

Franco, formerly a minor leaguer with the Astros, Rays, Marlins and Braves, signed with the Giants as a free agent prior to the 2019 campaign and went on to throw 113 innings of 5.97 ERA/5.91 FIP ball with Sacramento. The 27-year-old was more successful during his major league debut, albeit over a mere 5 1/3 frames, as he gave up two earned runs on four hits and one walk (four strikeouts) in San Francisco.

Giants’ Hunter Bishop Tests Positive For Coronavirus

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Giants outfielder Hunter Bishop has become the first member of the team to test positive for COVID-19, Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area reports. Bishop is exhibiting “mild symptoms” and “was not in contact with any of our players and staff subsequent to when he believes he was infected,” president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi announced.

The plan was for Bishop to be part of the Giants’ initial player pool, but they left him off as a result of this positive test. Bishop will be back under consideration if he returns to full strength, per Pavlovic, though it will be at least a couple weeks before he can join the team in camp. Manager Gabe Kapler said Bishop will “do nothing for the next 14 days.” He’ll also have to test negative for the virus twice before he’s eligible to participate.

The 22-year-old Bishop, whom the Giants drafted 10th overall in 2019, registered strong production during his first season in the organization. In 146 plate appearances divided between the rookie and Low-A levels, Bishop slashed .229/.438/.429 with five home runs, and though he did strike out 39 times, he also drew 38 walks. MLB.com ranks Bishop as the game’s 71st overall prospect, while FanGraphs credits him for his “rare physical tools.”

Giants Announce Initial Player Pool

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The Giants on Monday announced their initial player pool for the 2020 season. Pools can contain up to 60 players, and only players in a team’s pool will be eligible to participate in summer training camp or regular/postseason games. Teams are free to change the makeup of the pools as they see fit, but once a team’s pool reaches 60 players, a player must be removed (released, traded, waived, etc.) in order to make a new addition. That player becomes ineligible to return to that same team in 2020.

Not all players within a team’s pool are ticketed for MLB playing time, of course. Most teams will include well-regarded but still far-off prospects as a means of getting them training reps with no intention of running them onto a major league diamond this season. A comprehensive review of 2020’s unique set of rules can be found here.

Here are the 51 players in the Giants’ initial pool (* indicates player not on 40-man roster)…

Right-Handed Pitchers

Left-Handed Pitchers

Catchers

Infielders

Outfielders

Giants Release, Re-Sign Four Players

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As a procedural move, the Giants have released Pablo Sandoval, Trevor Cahill, Yolmer Sanchez, and Billy Hamilton, reports Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle. Not to worry, though: all four are expected to re-sign with the team on new minor league contracts and join the Giants for renewed Spring Training.

Evidently, these roster moves are simply technicalities and won’t affect the players’ standing with the club. The precise motivation for reworking the quartet’s contracts is unclear, but speculatively may be related to opt-out clauses in the minor league deals to which they were previously signed.

Giants Release Tyson Ross, Nick Vincent

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The Giants have released former MLB hurlers Tyson Ross and Nick Vincent, KNBR’s Mark Sanchez reports on Twitter. Also cut loose was utilityman Jamie Westbrook.

Ross and Vincent are each 33-year-old righties who had inked minor-league deals in the offseason. The former is best known for his days in the Padres rotation. The latter, a reliever, was also once an effective hurler in San Diego as well as with the Mariners.

Though he struggled in limited big league action last year, and has never recovered from serious shoulder injuries, Ross has a lifetime 4.04 ERA in ten MLB campaigns. He didn’t have much hope of cracking the starting staff, but was perhaps a multi-inning relief candidate. Ross struggled in his three outings in camp before the pandemic paused the action.

As for Vincent, he struggled with the long ball during a stint with the Giants last year. But he turned in a strong 14-inning run to end the season — 1.93 ERA with 17:4 K/BB — with a Phillies team that was managed by new Giants skipper Gabe Kapler. Vincent had coughed up three homers and seven earned runs in four Spring Training frames.

Westbrook has yet to appear in the majors, having reached minor league free agency after seven seasons in the Diamondbacks system. He turned in 514 plate appearances of .281/.358/.451 hitting in the upper minors last year, but obviously didn’t show enough in camp for the Giants to keep him in their 60-man player pool.

Giants’ Zaidi Expects Fewer Transactions In 2020

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Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi tells Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic that he anticipates a reduced volume of player transactions during the 2020 season, both for his club and around the game. (Zaidi also thrashed the hideous recent remarks of a Scottsdale city council member in the chat, which is well worth a read in full.)

Zaidi’s most notable transactional strategy to this point in his tenure has been the constant working of the waiver wire. The Giants’ immense roster churn has resulted in the discovery of a few gems and helped the team build in some depth that suits Zaidi’s vision.

That approach also seems a tenuous one in the midst of a pandemic. Zaidi acknowledged as much, calling it a “fair concern” that bringing in new players too often might increase the risk of disease transmission. He predicted that, “under the circumstances, I think you’ll see fewer transactions around baseball — certainly transactions in which you’re bringing in guys from outside the organization.”

It certainly will be interesting to see how this holds up under the pressures of a campaign — particularly one in which there’ll be a much shorter horizon for finding success due to the compressed schedule. Pitching health is a particular concern given the short ramp-up period. That seems also to be the primary potential source for roster movement.

Of course, most teams turn over their 40-man roster far less often than the Giants did last year. Zaidi indicates he doesn’t expect to continue that frantic pace, coronavirus or not. It seems last year’s blitz was more a one-off farm reshaping than an ongoing strategy.

Per Zaidi: “I think we’ve got a group of players that could get us through the season. I don’t think there will be as much motivation to look outside the organization because we like our depth.” The Giants “felt really good about the group of guys we had in camp,” he says.

No doubt the Giants will still be quick to act if and when they see a chance to achieve significant value through the waiver wire. But it appears that the bar will be raised a bit in 2020.

West Health Notes: A’s, D-backs, Mariners, Giants, Rangers

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Players who are at high risk of contracting the coronavirus have the right to opt out of participating this season, but they’d still receive full pay and service time. Athletics reliever Jake Diekman, who has ulcerative colitis and who had his colon removed in 2017, is one of those players. Diekman, however, informed Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle that he has no interest in opting out of the campaign – at least, not yet. “I’ve never thought once about opting out,” said the southpaw, though he added: “Say two or three guys on the team get it, we’ve all been around each other. I don’t know if I’d opt out in the middle of the season, but it definitely worries you.” Slusser also spoke with A’s utility player Chad Pinder, whose wife is expecting a baby in September, about the season. Pinder said, in part: “We have to do it right — or it just might not work. But there is a risk to this.”

  • An unnamed player on the Diamondbacks tested positive for the coronavirus in Arizona within the last month, general manager Mike Hazen said Wednesday (via Bob Nightengale of USA Today). That player was not using their facility, though, Hazen added. It’s unclear how his recovery has gone.
  • The Mariners have “had a few players test positive” for the virus, general manager Jerry Dipoto said Wednesday (via Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times). Fortunately, Dipoto went on to reveal that “they’re asymptomatic, and they feel great.”
  • More on the Mariners, who are uncertain whether outfielder Mitch Haniger will be ready for the resumption of spring training, according to GM Jerry Dipoto (via Divish). The past year has been an injury-filled nightmare for Haniger, who only played in 63 games in 2019 and then underwent two offseason surgeries – one a core procedure, the other a dissectomy. In better news for the Mariners, reliever Austin Adams – who underwent surgery on a torn ACL last fall – is set for camp. The 29-year-old Adams may have broken out for the Mariners last season with 32 innings of 3.94 ERA ball and a whopping 14.91 K/9.
  • Giants corner infielder Pablo Sandoval and lefties Tony Watson and Tyler Anderson will all be good to go for camp’s return, Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle tweets (1, 2). Catcher Aramis Garcia could be ready to come back in mid- to late August, meanwhile, and reliever Reyes Moronta may be set by then or in September. Sandoval had Tommy John surgery on his right elbow last September; Watson dealt with shoulder issues before spring training shut down; Anderson underwent a procedure on his left knee last summer; Garcia’s still recovering from February hip surgery; and Moronta’s on the mend from the right shoulder surgery he had in September.
  • Rangers left-hander Joely Rodriguez is back to throwing after suffering a lat strain in April, but he won’t be ready for the start of the season, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News reports. Rodriguez should return at some point during the campaign, though. Texas lured Rodriguez back to the majors on a a two-year, $5.5MM contract in free agency after the former Phillie thrived in Japan from 2018-19.

Latest On Yasiel Puig

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8:25pm: The Giants expect to be contenders to sign Puig when the league lifts its transaction freeze Friday, Jim Bowden of The Athletic tweets. They were connected to Puig on multiple occasions over the winter.

11:01am: Prior to their deal with former Cubs shortstop Addison Russell, the Kiwoom Heroes of the Korea Baseball Organization spoke to outfielder Yasiel Puig about a potential deal for the 2020 season, Heroes GM Kim Chi-hyun tells Jee-ho of the Yonhap News Agency (Twitter link). Ultimately, Puig’s preference was to take another shot at latching on with a Major League team once play resumes.

As entertaining as it might’ve been to see what type of numbers Puig could post in the KBO (to say nothing of the bat flips he might unleash), it’s not much of a surprise that he prefers to wait to see what type of interest he might garner on a big league deal at this point. Puig doesn’t appear to have been thrilled with the offers he received over the winter and surely won’t find a better deal now amid enormous revenue losses throughout MLB, but there’s plenty of reason to think he might yet find his way onto a roster.

Not only are teams are expected to expand active rosters to 30 players — plus a taxi squad of up to perhaps 20 players — but the universal DH is expected to be implemented for the 2020 season. That’s not to say that Puig is a poor fielder or prime DH candidate. To the contrary, he graded out as an average right fielder in 2019 and has a track record of above average performances. But the added bat to each lineup of the 15 NL clubs still makes it easier for any of them to justify signing him, whether to serve as a primary DH, to push a lesser defensive outfielder into a DH role or simply to add him to a corner outfield/DH rotation. The truncated 60-game schedule might give some clubs hope of fielding a competitive club under an “anything can happen” mentality.

Financially speaking, Puig it doesn’t seem likely that Puig would field particularly lucrative offers once the transaction freeze is lifted. That said, he might still stand to earn more than he would’ve in the KBO, where the maximum salary for a first-year foreign player is $1MM (and where he’d be playing on a prorated deal  as well, since the season is already underway). Plus, in order to sign with the Heroes or any other KBO team, he’d have had to complete a mandatory 14-day quarantine upon arriving in South Korea. At this point, assuming MLB is actually able to begin play on July 24-26 as hoped, the timeline for Puig to get into an MLB game and the timeline to get into a KBO game might not be all that different.

Giants Have Trimmed Long-Term Payroll Obligations

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2020 salary terms still need to be sorted out. But what about what’s owed to players beyond that point? The near-term economic picture remains questionable at best. That’ll make teams all the more cautious with guaranteed future salaries.

Every organization has some amount of future cash committed to players, all of it done before the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe. There are several different ways to look at salaries; for instance, for purposes of calculating the luxury tax, the average annual value is the touchstone, with up-front bonuses spread over the life of the deal. For this exercise, we’ll focus on actual cash outlays that still have yet to be paid.

We’ll run through every team, with a big assist from the Cot’s Baseball Contracts database. Prior entries can be found here. Next up is the Giants:

*Includes buyouts on club options over Evan Longoria, Johnny Cueto, Buster Posey, and Wilmer Flores

*Reflects remaining portion of Evan Longoria salary owed by Rays

*Includes remaining signing bonus obligation to Johnny Cueto

(click to expand/view detail list)

Giants Close Spring Facility Over COVID Concerns

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The Giants are the latest MLB team to shutter a Spring Training facility due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus. Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic reports on Twitter that the organization is taking the precaution while awaiting test results.

It’s important to understand that there’s no confirmed infection from a person associated with the team. But “one person who had been in the facility and one family member exhibited mild symptoms,” per president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi.

Hopefully, the tests on those two individuals will come back negative. The team has also recommended testing for anyone else that had been through the facility. Regardless of the outcome, the fact that these steps were required serves to highlight the magnitude of the challenges still facing Major League Baseball.

We heard earlier today about worrisome developments at spring facilities in Florida, a state that has seen a notable uptick in infections. But the virus is tearing through Arizona, the locus of the other half of the league’s primary training sites, at an even faster rate.

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