Considering who was available and what the Giants were willing to give up, Tyler Austin is a solid fit for the Giants. That’s probably all you need to know. They needed someone who could hit lefties, but their options were limited. It’s not like they were going to swap Joey Bart for a major league-ready right-handed outfield prospect on Baseball America’s top-100 list, so this hole was always going to be filled with a minor transaction. This fits. This makes sense. Incremental upgrades are still upgrades.
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But it’s disorienting to follow a team that’s always looking to turn their C-minus-minus-minus players into C-minus-minus players. Swapping Connor Joe out for Austin might make sense from a strictly baseball perspective, and I’m sure you can get a plurality of scouts and front-office types around the league to approve of this deal. That doesn’t make you feel better about following this team right now, though.
That’s because it’s impossible to look at all of this early-season improvisation and be convinced that there was ever a plan for the 2019 Giants outfield. Which is baffling, considering that the outfield has been one of the worst in baseball for two straight seasons.
As a card-carrying Farhan Zaidi supporter, I’m generally trusting. If he thinks Player X might be the next Chris Taylor, by all means, get Player X. Scour the minor-league free-agent lists for hidden gems. Take risks. I’m in. The Giants are in a funky spot where they aren’t really contending, but they don’t want to commit to a full rebuild, either. A watchable team is still the goal, but that doesn’t mean they wanted to spend money on someone like Carlos González or Adam Jones. Those are players who would have improved the roster somewhat, perhaps, but it’s better to get young-ish players who might help the team in 2019 and conceivably be around in 2022.
That’s a tricky juggling act and easier said than done. But I’ll buy in with whatever experiment Zaidi has in mind. When the Giants announced that Michael Reed and Connor Joe were starting in the outfield on Opening Day, I couldn’t get this Simpsons scene out of my head:
Sure, it was something of a crisis that the Giants were starting complete unknowns, but I was focusing more on the opportunity. If Zaidi saw something in Reed that made him pounce so aggressively, I’d listen. Those Triple-A stats were pretty sweet last year, after all. And if Zaidi’s time with the Dodgers organization helped convince him that Joe — a former Dodgers farmhand — could play in the majors, sure, let’s try it out. If you’re convinced, I’m convinced.
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I figured there was something special about Reed and/or Joe, some overlooked and underappreciated skills that justified the confidence placed in them. I thought there was a plan, man. I thought there was a plan.
Instead, it sure looks like Zaidi was just throwing some spaghetti against the wall and hoping a noodle or two would stick.
If Zaidi and the Giants really saw something in either outfielder, they wouldn’t have been discarded after 24 combined plate appearances. There would have been more of a wait-and-see approach, a doubling-down. There would have been a sense of “I acquired this guy for a reason. Let’s be patient.”
Instead, it looks like they were acquired because they were incrementally better than the in-house options. I’ll guess that Joe was something like a 1 percent improvement over Austin Slater, according to the metrics. And I’ll guess that Reed was a 1 percent improvement over Drew Ferguson or Cameron Maybin, with Kevin Pillar representing a 1 percent improvement over Reed. The incremental upgrades were there, so they took them.
That’s it, that’s the organizational philosophy. You can’t get 100 percent better without 100 separate 1 percent improvements. Get that embroidered on a throw pillow and put it in the break room.
This is how you get a Triple-A roster with seven outfielders and a roster crunch that has to be driving River Cats manager Dave Brundage mad. Hey, the incremental upgrades were there. So they took them. They’ll sort through it all later, don’t worry.
Which all brings us back to Austin. Again, he’ll fit the Giants roster better than Joe did. He hit more home runs in 244 major-league at-bats last year than anyone on the Giants did in a full season of plate appearances. He has the skills and lefty-mashing profile the team was looking for and he’s likelier to exhibit those skills than the player he is replacing. It’s an incremental upgrade, and that phrase shouldn’t be an insult. If you take an airplane view of the organization, I believe there is more talent on April 8, 2019, than there was on Nov. 1, 2018. If the goal is to acquire better players, the Giants have done it.
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Just incrementally so. Painfully, hilariously and incrementally so.
You would think that it would be oxymoronic to make incremental improvements at a dizzying pace, but here we are.
The strategy still might work. Zaidi will keep churning and cycling through players. The Giants will keep trading 11 cents for 12 cents whenever they have the opportunity and eventually they could have a whole dollar. That’s not sarcasm! It’s an honest evaluation of a strategy.
That doesn’t mean it’s a great look, though. That doesn’t mean that it’s anything but weird to ditch the Opening Day outfield after 10 games. That doesn’t mean that Giants fans — who have been desperate for outfield improvements for years now — should applaud each and every transaction and trust the process.
It just means that we’re in for a long, slow uphill climb. Giants fans were hoping for Bryce Harper just a month ago and they got Kevin Pillar and Tyler Austin instead.
If you don’t like it, don’t worry. Just wait a few days.
(Photo: Victor Decolongon/Getty Images)