Included in Major League Baseball’s proposal to the Players Union on Wednesday was the universal designated hitter for not just this (abbreviated) season but next year as well. After 2021 the collective-bargaining agreement expires, and thus the National League could be adopting the DH forever.
If some Bay Area purists’ hearts are sinking, the Giants’ brains are working. Who could fill that role this season?
“It might be a way for us to get at-bats for some of the positive stories that emerged in spring training,” Farhan Zaidi said on the Giants’ “Chalk Talk @ Home” on Wednesday. “I think we’re going to stay in-house.”
In a couple of sentences, Zaidi pumped up a camp phenom like Darin Ruf and likely eliminated Yasiel Puig from the conversation. A late April report stated the Giants and the outfielder Madison Bumgarner loathes were close to a pact. If that were ever the case, it no longer is.
Instead, there may be more opportunity for Ruf, a 33-year-old fresh off three seasons in South Korea who returned apparently to send baseballs deep into the Scottsdale night. The left fielder/first baseman slashed .429/.469/1.000 in 14 spring games before the pandemic took hold and camps were let out.
Ruf was not the only option Zaidi named, but the minor league signing was the first.
“With some of the performances we were getting in spring training, we were wondering how we were going to get at-bats for everybody. This may create opportunity,” Zaidi said on the web series. “Take a guy like Darin Ruf, whose primary position is first base, and we obviously have Brandon Belt over there. Maybe this opens up more at-bats for him. We talked about Hunter Pence, who’s going to fight his way out to the field and into the lineup every day, but realistically he’s a guy whose workload we have to manage. Maybe having that DH spot allows him to get into the lineup more. Pablo [Sandoval], same thing.”
Unnamed by Zaidi was another camp story who could fight his way into the conversation. As a righty third baseman behind the righty Evan Longoria, Zach Green would have a difficult time finding at-bats in a normal National League season. But the 25-year-old former third-round pick, who debuted with the Giants last year after seven seasons in the Phillies organization, displayed rare power in Arizona, slashing .438/.500/1.063 with three home runs in 11 games.
More notes out of the Chalk Talk:
— Amateur scouting director Michael Holmes signaled no draft pick officially has signed a deal yet, but the Giants are confident they will be able to keep all seven picks. Traveling amid the coronavirus could be a factor as the team tries to ensure the physicals are cleared.
“I don’t anticipate anything going wrong,” Holmes said.
— Likewise, Holmes said they have not signed any undrafted free agents. The Giants have agreed to deals with Illinois pitcher Ty Weber and NC Central outfielder Carter Williams.
— Zaidi was encouraged by how the team’s rotation was shaping up during spring training. Assuming a season gets underway, it may only loosely be a rotation.
“We may not even have a five-man rotation. We may have tandem guys, we may have to do some unconventional things with a pitching staff to get through nine innings a day early on in the season,” said Zaidi, who was happy with the work of Johnny Cueto, Jeff Samardzija, Kevin Gausman, Drew Smyly and Logan Webb in February and March. “The other thing we’re going to have to factor in is it’s going to be a sprint; we’re not going to have as many off days on the schedule as we usually do. That may factor into the pitching staff as well.”
On the offensive side, playing a 60- or 70-game season with expanded rosters could provide more options for a team obsessed with them.
“We might see more matching up. If you have more roster spots, you may see more guys that might be in specialized roles and kind of platoon,” Zaidi said. “We obviously had Darin Ruf go off in spring training, that’s another right-handed bat we can put in there against tough lefties in our division and around the league. That was one thing we did look at: There’s going to be a lot of left-handed starters, left-handed pitching in the NL West, and we may be playing the NL West a lot from the sounds of it.”
