Aaron Sanchez completes SF Giants’ rotation, which is deeper
After entering the offseason with a clear plan to rebuild their rotation with veteran starting pitchers, the San Francisco Giants’ staff makeover appears complete.
It took until the fifth day of spring workouts for the puzzle pieces to fit together, but the team finally announced the addition of 2016 All-Star Aaron Sanchez, who agreed to a one-year, $4 million deal earlier this week.
“He was 92-to-94 (miles per hour) in October and was able to spin the breaking ball well which has always been kind of a signature skill for him,” Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said. “So from that point on we stayed in contact throughout the offseason.”
To clear a roster spot for Sanchez, 28, the club made a surprise decision to designate reliever Trevor Gott for assignment. Gott spent the early portion of the 2020 season as the Giants’ closer and was tendered a 2021 contract in December, when the team agreed to pay him a $700,000 salary for the upcoming season.
“We have a pretty deep pitching group right now with some of the (non-roster invitees) we’ve brought in and guys on the roster so certainly would have preferred a situation where we didn’t have to make a move off of the roster, but that was just a position of depth,” Zaidi said.
It’s possible Gott could return to the Giants if he goes unclaimed on waivers, but it was going to be difficult for the right-hander to find a home in the team’s bullpen this season because he’s out of minor league options.
The Giants have several right-handed pitchers with major league experience in spring camp who will vie to replace Gott, but few of the team’s offseason additions come with the same level of upside Sanchez offers.
It’s been 11 years since Sanchez was a first round draft pick out of Barstow High and more than four years since he finished seventh in American League Cy Young voting, but Giants manager Gabe Kapler still remembers Sanchez’s dominance.
“It would be hard to argue he wasn’t a top 20 starter in all of baseball, maybe better than that,” Kapler said. “Certainly thought of as a guy with great athleticism and stuff.”
The former Blue Jays and Astros right-hander missed the entire 2020 season while recovering from a 2019 surgery to repair a torn capsule in his throwing shoulder, but nearly signed with the Giants last August when they were interested in bringing him to the team’s Sacramento alternate site.
Zaidi checked in on Sanchez again in October and monitored his progress throughout the offseason, but after the right-hander’s fastball velocity ticked up to 97-to-98 miles per hour in a bullpen in Miami last week, the Giants decided to make him a formal offer.
Providing Sanchez with the opportunity to start games helped sway him to sign with San Francisco.
“That’s a huge reason why I inked the deal here,” Sanchez said.”Even in my years prior, I’ve been banged up a little bit and if you look then, I still made 27 starts in 2019 not being healthy. I’ve been around, I know what it takes to perform through 162 games. I know what kind of workload needs to be done to manage that.”
Sanchez can earn up to $2.5 million in performance bonuses depending on the number of starts he makes and now that he’s as healthy as he’s been in five seasons, the right-hander is eager to solidify his spot in the Giants’ rotation.
“Now that I’ve revamped my delivery through this rehab, I’ve come back a little bit more crisp,” Sanchez said.
With Sanchez in the fold, the Giants’ projected rotation includes righties Johnny Cueto, Kevin Gausman and Anthony DeSclafani and left-hander Alex Wood.
The rotation is largely set, but the next steps are more complicated. How will the Giants cover all of their innings and how can they guard against the possibility not all of the aforementioned pitchers meet or exceed expectations?
Gausman was the only member of that group to finish the 2020 season with an ERA under 4.00, so the Giants are betting their coaching infrastructure and ability to use analytics to help pitchers find success will help the veterans get back on track.
If one or two of the pitchers can’t regain the form they showed earlier in their careers, the Giants are building depth behind the front lines that features prospects such as Logan Webb and Sean Hjelle and minor league free agents such as Shun Yamaguchi and Nick Tropeano.
In an ideal world, at least two or three of the Giants’ top projected starters would be able to throw 170-to-180 innings last year. After Cueto, Gausman, DeSclafani, Wood and Sanchez combined to throw fewer than 170 innings in 2020, the Giants’ front office understands reality may not match up with expectations.
“We’re going to need at least seven, eight, nine starting pitchers to get through the season,” Zaidi said. “And obviously with younger guys with options it’s a little bit easier to have them start in the minor leagues if everyone else is healthy and effective. But we’re trying to focus on what are reasonable workloads to get out of these guys over a full season.”
Under normal circumstances, Sanchez’s signing may appear to block a pitcher such as Webb from making significant contributions. With “the all hands on deck” approach required by stretching from 60 to 162 games, everyone in the organization knows that won’t be the case.
“If you’re Logan Webb, he’s not going to be denied an opportunity to start baseball games for us because we signed Aaron Sanchez,” Kapler said.
Beede hangs onto roster spot
The Giants could have given Gott a longer look this spring by transferring right-hander Tyler Beede (Tommy John surgery) to the 60-day injured list, but Zaidi felt it was too soon to block the path for Beede to pitch during the first two months of the season.
Beede, another candidate to start games for the Giants this year, underwent surgery last March and threw his third bullpen of the spring on Saturday. The Giants are encouraged by his progress and haven’t ruled out the possibility he’ll face hitters during spring training.
In a medical update provided by the team prior to spring training, the Giants said Beede is on track to pitch in games during May.
The Giants also could have preserved Gott’s place on the 40-man roster by transferring outfield prospect Alexander Canario (shoulder surgery) to the 60-day injured list, but Zaidi said doing so would have been “complicated” because Canario does not have major league service time.
Canario underwent shoulder surgery to repair a torn labrum in November and the organization has not provided a firm timetable for his recovery.
