The San Francisco Giants are kicking off the second \u201chalf\u201d of the season tonight, and they\u2019re doing so with a slightly altered roster. Just as they did when they entered the All-Star break, the Giants are returning from it with three catchers \u2026 just not the same three.<\/p>\n
A few hours before Friday night\u2019s game against the Seattle Mariners, the Giants announced that Daniel Susac had been activated off of the 10-Day Injured List. He takes the place of veteran Eric Haase, who has been designated for assignment.<\/p>\n
Susac returns after an injury sustained in late June. He had a three-game rehab stint with AAA Sacramento before the All-Star break and it went swimmingly, as he hit 4-11 with a home run, a double, and a walk. The Giants are hoping that \u2014 and a clean bill of health \u2014 can help him bust out of his slump. Susac hit 5-37 with 10 strikeouts in the 13 games leading up to his IL stint, lowing his season OPS to .640 and his wRC+ to 80.<\/p>\n
While it seemed like the Giants were pivoting to Susac being the starting catcher when they traded Patrick Bailey, that may no longer be the case. Despite Susac\u2019s return, he\u2019s not in the lineup for Friday\u2019s game, as Drew Cavanaugh \u2014 he started the year in AA \u2014 earned that honor. Cavanaugh\u2019s offensive numbers (7-32, no extra-base hits, and nine strikeouts) are poor, but it\u2019s a small sample size and he\u2019s had decent quality at-bats). In addition to Susac and Cavanaugh, fellow rookie Jes\u00fas Rodr\u00edguez \u2014 who, like the other two, entered the year with no MLB experience \u2014 is also on the roster.<\/p>\n
As for Haase, he departs after providing a steady veteran presence for a while. He\u2019d been struggling quite a bit lately, including with some very poor defense. Since June 5, Haase had hit just 1-35 with 17 strikeouts. The Giants can work out a small trade should other teams be interested in Haase\u2019s services while he\u2019s in DFA limbo and, if not, they can try to re-sign him to the Minors. With Bailey traded, Haase and Logan Porter DFA\u2019d, and Susac, Cavanaugh, and Rodr\u00edguez all promoted, the Giants have next to no catching depth in AAA. The only catchers on Sacramento\u2019s roster are Thomas Gavello and Zach Morgan, a pair of late-round draft picks with sub-75 wRC+s.<\/p>\n
Still, it\u2019s exciting for a team as bad as the Giants to be pivoting more and more to youth, rather than giving meaningful playing time to veterans who won\u2019t be on the roster next year. Although, with Haase\u2019s DFA\u2019ing, the Giants now have just 38 players on their 40-man roster, which is very odd and doesn\u2019t seem like the best management of assets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco Giants are kicking off the second \u201chalf\u201d of the season tonight, and they\u2019re doing so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,381366,378250,85],"class_list":["post-807379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco-giants-news","tag-san-francisco-giants-roster","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}