Braves Hire Pete Putila As Assistant GM
The Braves hired Pete Putila in an assistant general manger role, as initially reported by ESPN’s Jorge Castillo (X link). Putila will be focusing on operating Atlanta’s international scouting department, and he’ll join Jason Pare (whose purview is research & development) and Ben Sestanovich (player development) as the third AGM under president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos.
Putila spent the previous two seasons as the Giants’ GM, working as the chief lieutenant in the baseball ops department under PBO Farhan Zaidi. However, Zaidi was fired at season’s end, and new president of baseball operations Buster Posey announced that Putila would be replaced as general manager and given a new role in the organization. It perhaps isn’t surprising that Putila was looking for a fresh start himself in the wake of the Giants’ front office overhaul, thus leading to this new role in Atlanta.
Beginning his baseball career as an intern in Houston’s front office in 2011, Putila spent 12 seasons with the Astros, rising up the ranks to an eventual assistant GM title in 2019. Even after the Astros shook up their front office in the wake of the sign-stealing scandal, Putila remained in his role under new general manager James Click, and stayed in Houston until the Giants came calling in October 2022. It wasn’t the first time Putila had drawn interest from other teams, as the Pirates and the Giants themselves had previously considered Putila as a candidate for past front office vacancies.
Robbie Ray Declines Opt-Out Clause In Giants Contract
Left-hander Robbie Ray has declined the opt-out clause in his contract, meaning that he’ll remain with the Giants for both the 2025 and 2026 seasons. ESPN’s Jeff Passan (X link) was the first to report the news. The five-year, $115MM pact Ray signed with the Mariners prior to the 2022 season was slightly backloaded, and thus Ray will earn $25MM in each of the 2025 and 2026 seasons.
It’s not terribly surprising that Ray is taking the proverbial bird in the hand here. He underwent ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, commonly known as Tommy John surgery, and a flexor tendon repair in May of 2023. While recovering from that operation, the Mariners traded him to the Giants.
Ray was able to get back on the mound with San Francisco in 2024, but made seven starts with an unimpressive 4.70 earned run average before spending the month of September on the injured list due to a left hamstring strain.
Pitchers with injury question marks can still get paid but Ray would be hard-pressed to find more than $50MM on the open market. Carlos Rodón had plenty of injury absences in his early career but was able to secure a two-year, $44MM deal from the Giants going into 2022. However, Rodón had just made 24 starts for the White Sox in 2021 with a 2.37 ERA and was going into his age-29 season. Ray, on the other hand, is now 33 years old and has made eight starts over the past two years with a 5.03 ERA.
Taking all that into consideration, Ray’s best financial move was to keep this guarantee. He’ll return to the Giants next year and hopefully get back on track. While it’s probably unrealistic to expect him to get back to his Cy Young winning form from 2021, getting even part of the way back there would be nice. The year that he earned that hardware, he made 32 starts for the Blue Jays with a 2.84 ERA, 32.1% strikeout rate and 6.7% walk rate.
One Giant starter is departing, as Blake Snell has opted out of his deal. Next year’s rotation in San Francisco projects to include Ray, Logan Webb and Kyle Harrison. Perhaps Jordan Hicks will get another shot at starting or maybe he’ll be back in the bullpen. Guys like Landen Roupp, Keaton Winn, Tristan Beck, Hayden Birdsong and others would also be in the mix.
If the club looks to bolster that group, the free agent market will be headlined by guys like Snell, Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, Jack Flaherty and plenty of others. The trade market should feature Garrett Crochet, Sonny Gray and more.
Wilmer Flores Exercises Player Option To Remain With Giants
Wilmer Flores has exercised his $3.5MM player option for the 2025 season, the Giants announced. Flores signed a three-year, $16.5MM extension with the Giants in September 2022 that allowed him to opt out of the 2025 season, and the club would’ve then had an $8.5MM club option to decide on if Flores did opt out.
Of course, this all became a moot point due to an injury-marred 2024 season for the veteran infielder. Flores was bothered by knee problems all year, resulting in a pair of trips to the injured list and a season-ending Tenex procedure in early August. Flores concluded his 12th Major League season with an ugly .206/.277/.318 slash line over 242 plate appearances, and a sub-replacement level -0.7 fWAR in 71 games.
It made Flores’ decision to exercise his option a pretty easy call, and the $3.5MM salary is low enough that it wouldn’t be a surprise if San Francisco chose to move on from the 33-year-old entirely in the form of a release. A trade also isn’t out of the question if another team views Flores as a bounce-back candidate, or the Giants themselves might see Flores as a useful player to keep around if they feel he’ll return to form when healthy.
After all, it was just a season ago that Flores hit .284/.355/.509 with 23 homers for San Francisco during 454 PA during the 2023 campaign. Flores’ ability to play first, second, and third base and his traditionally strong numbers against left-handed pitching made him a valuable member of the Giants’ platoon mix prior to this past season. The Giants have been rumored to be in the mix for a bigger upgrade at first base, but if such help isn’t acquired, the team could fall back on a Flores/LaMonte Wade Jr. platoon at the cold corner.
Blake Snell Opts Out Of Deal With Giants
Left-hander Blake Snell has exercised the opt-out provision in his contract and is now a free agent. Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic was among those to relay the news on X.
The news is not at all surprising. Snell was a free agent a year ago and didn’t find the contract he was seeking, despite the fact that he was coming off a Cy Young campaign in 2023.
He eventually signed with the Giants on a two-year pact with a $62MM guarantee. That came in the form of a $15MM salary and $17MM signing bonus for 2024, with a $30MM salary for 2025 if Snell stayed.
The opt-out after the first year was clearly there to give Snell a chance to take another shot at free agency if he could stay healthy and engineer another strong season in 2024.
For a while, it seemed like that wasn’t going to come to pass. Perhaps due to the fact that he didn’t sign until the middle of March and had a delayed spring training, he stumbled out of the gate in 2024 and also suffered a few injuries. At the end of June, he was on the injured list for the second time, the first one labeled as a left adductor strain and the second as a left groin strain. He had a 9.51 earned run average in the six starts he was able to make.
But he came back shortly after that and was completely dominant the rest of the way. He posted a 1.23 ERA in his final 14 starts of the year. His 10% walk rate was a tad high but he struck out 38.1% of batters faced.
Snell has had a few injury absences over the years but has continually demonstrated himself to be one of the best pitchers on the planet when on the mound. From 2018 until the present day, he has a 3.03 ERA and 32.1% strikeout rate, both of which are top ten numbers among qualified starters for that stretch. Among pitchers with at least 250 innings pitched over the past two years, only Tarik Skubal has a lower ERA than Snell’s 2.57 mark. Snell’s 32.7% strikeout rate in that time is also second best, a hair below Tyler Glasnow‘s 32.8% rate.
Given that elite performance, it was widely expected that Snell would return to free agency in the hopes of a finding a more robust market this time around. He will be one of the top starting pitchers available alongside Corbin Burnes, Max Fried and Jack Flaherty. Snell is leaving $30MM on the table but should be able to blow past that with a nine-figure deal of some kind.
Giants Outright Donovan Walton
The Giants outrighted infielder Donovan Walton off their 40-man roster, tweets Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area. The utilityman has multiple career outrights and has the right to elect free agency.
San Francisco called Walton up as a stopgap utility player in September. He appeared in nine games, hitting .136 with one homer. The left-handed hitter has been a depth option in San Francisco for three seasons. The Giants initially acquired Walton in a small trade with Seattle in May 2022. They’ve shuttled him through waivers and continued to bring him back on minor league contracts over that stretch.
A former 5th-round pick by the Mariners, Walton has 70 MLB appearances over parts of five seasons. He’s a .174/.227/.305 hitter over 205 career plate appearances. Walton had a nice year in Triple-A Sacramento, running a .306/.380/.441 slash with nearly as many walks as strikeouts over 99 games. He has a solid offensive track record in parts of four Triple-A campaigns. Walton can play throughout the infield and should find another minor league contract if he elects free agency.
Rangers To Hire Justin Viele As Hitting Coach
The Rangers plan to hire Giants co-hitting coach Justin Viele as their new hitting coach, reports Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic first reported that Viele “appeared headed” to the Rangers even though he had a year remaining on his contract and had been invited back for the 2025 season.
Viele, 34 later this month, will step in for veteran hitting coach Tim Hyers, who was recently hired away by the Braves. He’s been on the Giants’ coaching staff since the 2020 season and spent several years as a college coach and a minor league coach with the Orioles and Dodgers organizations prior to his time in San Francisco. Viele and Rangers bench coach/offensive coordinator Donnie Eckers were both on the Giants’ coaching staff in 2020-21. A former infielder at Santa Clara University, Viele had a brief two-year minor league career after being drafted by the Orioles back in 2013.
There will be other changes coming to the coaching staffs both in Texas and San Francisco. The Rangers recently bid farewell to associate manager Will Venable, who was hired by the White Sox as their new skipper just yesterday. They’ll need to replace him.
Meanwhile, Baggarly added that Giants assistant hitting coach Pedro Guerrero has interviewed for a position with the Marlins, who recently gutted their entire staff. There’s no indication yet that he’ll be hired, but he’s not yet been eliminated from consideration, either. The Giants enlisted three hitting coaches this past season: Viele, Guerrero and former big league slugger Pat Burrell. With Viele departing and Guerrero potentially following, it stands to reason that San Francisco will look to bring in at least one new hitting coach to help shoulder the workload.
Giants To Name Zack Minasian General Manager
The Giants are planning to name Zack Minasian their new general manager on Friday, reports Bob Nightengale of USA Today. He will work under new president of baseball operations Buster Posey.
Minasian, the brother of Angels GM Perry Minasian, has been the Giants’ vice president of professional scouting since 2022 and a member of the front office since 2019.
Prior to coming to the Giants, Minasian spent 14 years working with the Brewers. He held various titles in that time, mostly in the scouting realm, before getting plucked out of Milwaukee and landing in San Francisco.
The Giants are undergoing a significant front office overhaul. Posey was tapped to replace Farhan Zaidi last month. Amid reporting on that change, it was also noted that general manager Pete Putila would be given a new role and replaced with a new GM.
Various names were floated as candidates, including Athletics assistant GM Billy Owens, Giants assistant GM Jeremy Shelley, Astros special advisor De Jon Watson and others, but the Giants will promote from within by giving Minasian the gig.
Presumably, Posey and Minasian already have some familiarity with each other. Posey was on the field for the Giants as recently as 2021 and later moved into a new role, buying a minority ownership stake and getting a seat on the club’s board of directors.
Regardless of whatever pre-existing relationship they had, their future partnership figures to be important for the franchise. Most baseball decision makers come from a background in scouting or analytics and are already familiar with the day-to-day role of running a baseball club. But Posey’s path is fairly unusual so he might be leaning on his second-in-command a bit more than other front office leaders, at least until he learns the ropes.
Scott Sharp Withdraws Name From Giants’ GM Search
As the Giants continue their search for a new GM to take over for Pete Putila and serve as Buster Posey‘s second-in-command following his installation as president of baseball operations, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports that one name under consideration has withdrawn himself from the mix for the job: Royals assistant GM Scott Sharp, who Rosenthal notes is removing himself from the pool of candidates due to family considerations.
Sharp, 51, currently serves as a senior vice president and assistant GM for Kansas City. The longtime Royals exec got his start in the club as a the club’s assistant director of player development in 2006 and since then has steadily climbed the organizational ladder, also serving as the director of minor league operations and director of player development in Kansas City before eventually becoming assistant GM in 2015. Prior to his time with the Royals, Sharp served as a scout for the Pirates, Dodgers, and Rangers organizations.
That strong background in player development is likely the reason the Giants had interest in Sharp for their GM role. As Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle noted this past week, Posey has made it clear that he’s looking for a candidate with an extensive scouting background for the GM role. That’s led the Giants to pursue plenty of candidates with resumes similar to the one Sharp brings to the table, including Athletics assistant GM Billy Owens, former Dodgers VP of amateur scouting Logan White, and former Nationals director of player development De Jon Watson.
Posey’s desire for a GM with a strong background in scouting is sensible given his own relative inexperience on the front office side of the baseball world; the 37-year-old is just three seasons removed from his playing career and since then has served on the club’s board of directors after purchasing a minority share in the club two years ago. While he’s had a hand in the club’s operations since then, working to recruit free agents and even taking on a significant role in the recent extension negotiations with third baseman Matt Chapman, it’s unclear how much of a hand Posey had in the day-to-day operations of the Giants prior to his ascent to the president of baseball operations gig. With that being said, Slusser indicates that experience in contract negotiations and arbitration hearings isn’t necessary for Posey’s GM given assistant GM Jeremy Shelley’s experience in that role.
Turning back to Sharp, it seems as though the longtime Royals exec may only be interested in making a change if he would be stepping into an opportunity to lead an organization. Rosenthal’s report suggests that Sharp has interest in leading baseball operations for an organization at some point in the future, though it’s unclear whether or not the fact that he would answer to Posey was a factor in his decision to withdraw his name from consideration for the Giants’ GM job. For the time being, however, it seems that Sharp is content to remain with the Royals on the heels of a surprising 86-win campaign that saw the club return to the postseason for the first time since their 2015 World Series championship.
Giants Promote J.P. Martinez To Pitching Coach
October 18: San Francisco officially announced Martinez’s hiring as pitching coach on Friday afternoon.
October 15: The Giants are promoting J.P. Martinez to the role of pitching coach, as reported by Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. The news comes on the heels of the club’s previous pitching coach, Bryan Price, stepping down from his role with the club earlier today.
Martinez joined the Giants during the 2020-21 offseason as assistant pitching coach, replacing Erik Katz on the staff of then-manager Gabe Kapler. Prior to joining San Francisco, Martinez got his start in professional baseball when he was drafted in the ninth round of the 2004 draft by the Twins. Though he never cracked the major leagues, he spent four seasons pitching in the Twins organization and a fifth with the Orioles organization before retiring from his playing career in 2008. Martinez eventually returned to the Twins organization in 2015 as a pitching coach at the club’s Florida complex and spent six seasons with the club in various coaching roles through the minor leagues before departing for San Francisco.
Upon joining the Giants, Martinez worked under former pitching coach Andrew Bailey and former director of pitching Brian Bannister. Of that trio, only Martinez remained with the organization in 2024 following Kapler’s firing and the hiring of Bob Melvin as manager. Melvin brought in Price to act as the club’s primary pitching coach, but with Price now set to step down the Giants appear poised to promote Martinez in his place. The move offers some continuity to Giants hurlers after a season where the club’s pitching staff posted strong underlying metrics despite middling performance. While the club’s collective 4.10 ERA wasn’t especially impressive, Giants pitcher posted a 3.80 FIP and a 3.82 SIERA, both of which were top-seven figures in the majors this year.
Looking at individual performances, the Giants enjoyed solid performances from young pitchers such as Hayden Birdsong, Tristan Beck, Kyle Harrison, and Landen Roupp this year. Each of those pitchers figures to be asked to shoulder more significant workloads in 2025 thanks to the impending departure of Blake Snell. The loss of Snell, who dominated with a 1.23 ERA and 1.77 FIP in his final 14 starts with San Francisco, will leave the Giants more reliant on veterans Robbie Ray and Jordan Hicks headed into 2025 despite questions regarding the durability of those hurlers in rotation roles.
Of course, it’s certainly possible that the Giants pursue pitching help to further bolster Martinez’s staff this winter, whether that comes in the form of a reunion with Snell or the acquisition of a lower-profile arm or two to help supplement the staff in his absence like Luis Severino or Andrew Heaney. For now, however, the club’s top priority appears to be completing their GM search and locking down a #2 in the front office to serve as a partner for newly-minted president of baseball operations Buster Posey.
Latest On Marlins’ Managerial Search
There hasn’t been a lot of concrete information about the Marlins’ managerial search, but one formal candidate has now been identified, as Isaac Azout of Fish On First (X link) reports that Tigers bench coach George Lombard will interview about the position this week.
It is the second time in as many days that Lombard has been linked to a managerial opening, as the White Sox also reportedly have interest in speaking with the 49-year-old. Since the Tigers’ surprising playoff run only just ended last Saturday, it makes sense that Lombard is only now becoming available for interviews.
Lombard has some distant past ties to the Miami organization, as he played in the Marlins’ farm system back in 2008 but didn’t see any time with the club at the MLB level. His playing career ran from 1994-2009, and included 144 Major League games with four different teams from 1998-2006. Lombard played in 13 games with the Rays in 2006, though this predated the time that Marlins president of baseball operations Peter Bendix spent in the Tampa front office.
Lombard’s only managerial experience came in the form of two seasons (2011-12) in rookie ball, running the Red Sox Gulf Coast League affiliate. Lombard spent six seasons overall working for Boston as a manager, coach, and coordinator in the minors, then briefly worked in a minor league coordinator role for the Braves in 2015 before the big leagues came calling.
After just a couple of months with Atlanta, Lombard was hired as the Dodgers’ first base coach, a role he held from 2016-20. The first two of Lombard’s seasons in Los Angeles overlaps with Gabe Kapler‘s stint as the Dodgers’ director of player development, which creates an interesting link to the Marlins since Kapler is now Miami’s assistant general manager.
Lombard won a World Series ring with L.A. in 2020 and was then hired by the Tigers as their bench coach during the 2020-21 offseason. The responsibilities of a bench coach vary from team to team, but the Detroit News’ Chris McCosky writes that Lombard’s chief duties include offensive game-planning, as well as coaching baserunning and outfield play.
The bench coach hire came after the Tigers also interviewed Lombard for their own managerial vacancy at the time, which was filled by A.J. Hinch. Lombard had previously been on the Pirates’ radar in their managerial search a year prior (before Derek Shelton was hired), and the Red Sox also reportedly had some interest in speaking with Lombard before Alex Cora was re-hired as manager in November 2020.
If hired as the Marlins’ next skipper, Lombard will be tasked with helping turn around a team in the midst of an extensive rebuild both on and off the field. The Marlins made a wide range of firings after the season, letting go of not just Skip Schumaker‘s coaching staff but also the team’s conditioning and training crew and the clubhouse attendant staff. Presumably the new manager would have a lot of leeway in hand-picking people to fill these roles, with Bendix and Kapler obviously also having plenty of input.
Speaking of Kapler, Azout also notes that the Marlins have some interest in speaking with Giants assistant coach Alyssa Nakken about the managerial role. Nakken has been working with San Francisco for over a decade, and her five-year stint on the coaching staff began after Kapler was hired as the Giants’ manager prior to the 2020 season. Her role on the staff bears some similarity to Lombard’s skillset, as Nakken’s duties also included outfield instruction and baserunning.
Nakken became the first woman known to ever receive a proper interview for a Major League managerial position when she spoke to the Giants about their vacancy last October. Obviously history would be made if the Marlins or any other team hired her to run their dugout, though Miami is particularly noteworthy since the organization was also the first to hire a woman (Kim Ng) as general manager. The 34-year-old Nakken would also become the youngest current big league manager.
Apart from Lombard and Nakken, Guardians bench coach Craig Albernaz and former Marlins bench coach Luis Urueta have also been mentioned as candidates under consideration as Miami’s next manager. Former Marlins pitcher Anibal Sanchez has also reached out to the club about the position, but it isn’t known if the Marlins reciprocated that interest.