Bullpen Catcher/Rehab Development Assistant

Department: Player Development
Reports to: Rehab Coordinator
Duration: January 2023 – December 2023
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Status: Part-time/ Hourly (Non-Exempt)

Position Summary:
Assist the San Francisco Giants Player Development department through on and off the field activities. This position will include coverage of Spring Training, Extended Spring Training, Arizona Complex League, and various off-season camps. The main focus of this position lies in the rehabilitation and physical performance of our players at the Minor League Spring Training facility. Assisting both our medical and video departments creates a unique experience for this role.

Position Responsibilities:

• Handling rehabilitation bullpens along with pitcher’s and fielder’s catch play
• Ability to throw batting practice, feed machines, and other various cage work
• Ability to hit fungos
• Assist with technology set-up such as cameras for bullpens and live batting practice
• Ability to set up Trackman and other various technology equipment
• Cut video from bullpens and live batting practice sessions

Skills and Qualifications:

• High level catching experience is preferred
• Strong work ethic with a passion for baseball
• Work non-traditional hours (nights, weekends, and holidays)
• Ability to learn about technology and video
• Ability to speak Spanish is a plus
• Contribute to team culture with a positive

At the Giants, we believe we put our best work forward when our employees bring together ideas that are diverse in thought. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, medical condition or disability, genetic condition, marital status, domestic partnership status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status and any other protected class under federal, state or local law. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. In addition, we will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you have a disability or special need, we would like to know how we can better accommodate you.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

Player Development Assistant (Part-Time)

Department: Player Development
Reports to: Coordinator, Minor League Operations
Duration: January 2023 – December 2023
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Status: Part-time/ Hourly (Non-Exempt)

Position Summary:
Assist the San Francisco Giants Baseball Operations department and provide comprehensive administrative support to all functions of Player Development. This position will include coverage of Spring Training, Extended Spring Training, Arizona Complex League, and various off-season camps. We value candidates who have a passion and understanding of the game of baseball while also being detail- oriented.

Position Responsibilities:

• Coordinate travel logistics, hotel reservations, and appointments for various events
• Assist in compiling and updating schedules, rosters, and databases for Player Development
• Regular communication with staff regarding daily needs/scheduling
• Assist with player paperwork and documents
• Assist with company credit card reconciliation
• Assist on tasks/projects as needed
• Man lobby desk; helping guests with questions and needs
• Provide support to the clubhouse staff with mailing duties and distribution
• Provide transportation for players or staff as needed
• Maintain all facility spaces/needs year-round

Skills and Qualifications:

• Ability to speak Spanish is a plus
• Experience using SQL is a plus
• Proficiency with Microsoft Excel is preferred
• Strong work ethic with initiative and attention to detail
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to handle private information in a professional manner
• Work non-traditional hours (nights, weekends, and holidays)
• Ability to communicate effectively and work with all members of the organization (players, coaches, staff, and various affiliate front office/staff members)
• Contribute to team culture with a positive attitude

At the Giants, we believe we put our best work forward when our employees bring together ideas that are diverse in thought. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, medical condition or disability, genetic condition, marital status, domestic partnership status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status and any other protected class under federal, state or local law. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. In addition, we will provide reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you have a disability or special need, we would like to know how we can better accommodate you.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the San Francisco Giants.

NEW YORK — During the regular season, the Yankees went 27–2 in games in which their two towering sluggers, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, both homered. The tried-and-true recipe worked once again in the fifth and deciding game of the Division Series against the Guardians, with Stanton smacking a three-run homer in the first inning off starter Aaron Civale, keying an early departure, and Judge adding a solo blast in the second off reliever Sam Hentges. The long balls gave starter Nestor Cortes, who was working on three days of rest, an early cushion, and he cruised through five innings, allowing just just one run before yielding to the bullpen, which locked down a 5–1 victory.

“Incredible,” Cortes said in describing Stanton’s homer. “I knew from that moment on, all I had to do was throw strikes and be able to get us as deep as possible…. I didn’t know how far I was going to go. I didn’t know what my pitch count was. It was basically how I looked out there. And for him to give us that three-run lead in the first from the get-go to was huge for me and calmed me down to go out there and do what I do.”

Pushed to the brink of elimination when their bullpen collapsed in the ninth inning of Game 3, the Yankees will now move on to face the Astros in the American League Championship Series, which begins Wednesday in Houston. This will be the fourth time in eight seasons that the two teams have met in October; the Astros won the 2015 Wild Card Game at Yankee Stadium and beat the Yankees in a seven-game ALCS in ’17 and in a six-game ALCS in ’19.

The Yankees, who hit twice as many homers as the Guardians during the regular season (a league-leading 254 to a 14th-ranked 127), out-homered them nine to three in the series, with Judge and Stanton each going deep twice and Harrison Bader doing so three times. Game 5 marked the fourth time Judge and Stanton both homered in the same postseason game, a total tied for second behind Carlos Correa and George Springer, both of whom have since departed Houston.

Rafael Devers/J.D. Martinez
Carlos Correa/Jose Altuve
Max Muncy/Joc Pederson
George Springer/Jose Altuve
Manny Ramirez/David Ortiz
Lance Berkman/Carlos Beltran
Jim Thome/Kenny Lofton

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) October 18, 2022

The Yankees’ homers went a long way figuratively (if not always literally) in a low-offense series. The Guardians collected 44 hits to the Yankees’ 28, but power and patience (a 17–9 edge in walks) produced a .643 OPS (.182/.273/.370), which outdid the Guardians’ .626 (.247/.289/.337), and they outscored Cleveland by a combined score of 20–14. While the Guardians collected 12 hits with runners in scoring position to the Yankees’ five, New York handily outproduced them there as well via a .926 OPS (.227/.296/.636) and 11 RBIs to Cleveland’s .535 (.255/.280/.255) with 10 RBIs. As my former Baseball Prospectus colleague Joe Sheehan likes to say, “Ball go far, team go far.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ah yes, the postseason. As Jay Jaffe noted yesterday, it’s nothing like the regular season. Here, managers have to grind out every edge possible. Continuing a series that I started last year, I’ll be assigning managerial grades for each vanquished team. They’ll cover on-field managerial decisions: chiefly, lineup construction, pinch hitting, and pitcher usage.

My goal is to rank each manager in terms of process, not results. If you bring in your best pitcher to face their best hitter in a huge spot, that’s a good decision regardless of outcome. Try a triple steal with the bases loaded only to have the other team make four throwing errors to score three runs? I’m probably going to call that a blunder even though it worked out. Managers do plenty of other things – getting team buy-in for new strategies and unconventional bullpen usage behind closed doors is one I find particularly valuable – but as I have no insight into how that’s accomplished or how each manager differs, I can’t exactly assign grades for that.

Another thing I’m trying to avoid? Relying too much on “leaning on your trusted veterans.” That’s never really been a strategy I love without knowing the underlying data, but mentioning it lets me drop this delightful statistic: “proven veterans” Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Charlie Morton each have a 13.50 ERA this postseason. That’s not in aggregate; each of them has that exact mark. The playoffs are about overpowering your opponent in big spots. Which pitchers and hitters teams use to do so is entirely up to them, but if the justification for a move is “but he’s a veteran,” I’m going to judge that decision harshly. Let’s get to it. Read the rest of this entry »

They ran roughshod over the league for six months thanks to an elite offense, great pitching, and exceptional defense, posting a win total that hadn’t been seen in decades. Yet a stretch of a few bad days in October sent them home, consigning them to the status of historical footnote and cautionary tale. Somebody else would go on to win the World Series.

Such was the fate of the 2001 Mariners, though everything above applies to this year’s Dodgers as well, who won 111 games — the most by any team since those Mariners, and the most by any NL team since the 1909 Pirates — but were bounced out of the playoffs on Saturday night. A Padres team from whom they had taken 14 out of 19 games during the regular season beat them three games to one in the Division Series because they got the clutch hits they needed while the Dodgers didn’t. The combination of an 0-for-20 streak with runners in scoring position that ran from the third inning of Game 1 to the third inning of Game 4 — after which they began another hitless-with-RISP streak — and some puzzling bullpen choices by manager Dave Roberts doomed them.

There’s been plenty of that going ’round. The Padres, who won 89 games this year, were facing the Dodgers only because they first beat the 101-win Mets in the best-of-three Wild Card Series. Earlier on Saturday, the defending champion Braves, who claimed the NL East title with 101 wins this year and like the Dodgers played at a better-than-.700 clip from June through September, were ousted by the Phillies. On Saturday evening, the 99-win Yankees let a two-run lead in the ninth slip away against the 92-win Guardians, pushing them to the brink of elimination, though they rebounded on Sunday night, pushing the series to a decisive Game 5 in New York.

Upsets in short postseason series are practically as old as postseason series themselves. In 1906, in the third modern World Series, the 93-win White Sox, a/k/a “The Hitless Wonders,” took down their crosstown rivals, the 116-win Cubs, four games to two. In 1954, the 97-win Giants beat the 111-win Indians in the World Series. In 1987, the 85-win Twins bumped off the 98-win Tigers and then the 95-win Cardinals. Last year, the 89-win Braves felled the 106-win Dodgers in the NLCS, then the 95-win Astros in the World Series.

Such unexpected wins are a cornerstone of baseball history. As MLB.com’s Anthony Castrovince noted, in terms of the gap in winning percentage between the underdogs and the favorites, the Padres trail only the aforementioned 1906 White Sox in the annals, with a 136-point gap (.549 to .685) compared to the Chicagoans’ 147-point gap (.616 to .763). In third place is the 122-point gap from the 2001 ALCS between the Yankees and Mariners (.594 to .716), and in fourth is the 107-point gap from last year’s NLCS between the Braves and Dodgers (.547 to .654). The 86-point gaps between the Nationals and Astros in the 2019 World Series and between the Braves and Phillies in this year’s Division Series are tied for seventh. By that measure, seven of the top 11 upsets have happened in this millennium. Read the rest of this entry »

SEATTLE – My train begins to fill with Mariners fans. Most are wearing jerseys, but others are outfitted in more home-made looking fare. A young woman sports a dress covered in the team’s logo; its skirt is puffed slightly by teal tulle, with navy bows on her shoulders holding the whole thing upright. Further down the car is a man in a 1995 Division Series shirt. His snowy goatee suggests that unlike the sweatshirt I own of similar vintage, his wasn’t a thrift store find; I wonder if the one he’s wearing smells musty like mine first did. Much of the chatter is about the day finally being here, and how long they’ve all waited, how many disappointments they’ve registered in the years since 2001. I’m surprised by how little I hear about Seattle’s chances today, as if no one dares to entertain the possibility of a tomorrow with baseball, or one potentially without it.

A few stops later, a member of the University of Washington marching band steps off the train; upon seeing his regalia, a couple near me wonders if the football game, which kicks off around 2:30 PM, will cause trouble for their ride back home from SODO. “These cars can get so crowded, you know.”

As I approach the media entrance, lines snake around the ballpark, and the coffee cups and puffy eyes make clear that some of these folks have been here a while. The gates don’t open for another hour and a half, but after almost 21 years, what’s a little more waiting? Read the rest of this entry »

Did anybody out there have this one? None of us did. While it’s not altogether surprising that either the Padres or the Phillies, two very good teams, made it this deep into the postseason, it’s incredible that both of them have, considering who they had to go through to get here. While a handful of the FanGraphs staff members picked the Padres to beat the Mets in the Wild Card Series, none of us picked them to beat the Dodgers, and even though the vast majority of us thought the Phillies would dispatch the Cardinals, only two of us picked them to beat Atlanta.

This seems foolish in hindsight, especially as it pertains to the Padres. They have a dangerous heart of the order led by MVP candidate Manny Machado and young star Juan Soto, who is starting to heat up. Neither Max Scherzer nor Spencer Strider seemed 100% in their respective postseason outings (key details that allow for some amount of site-wide absolution), making the Padres the lone NL postseason team with three totally healthy premium starting pitchers in Yu Darvish, Blake Snell, and Joe Musgrove. Their bridge to Josh Hader — Robert Suarez and Luis García in high-leverage spots, Tim Hill as a lefty specialist and Steven Wilson as a mid-90s/slider middle inning rock — might be the best relief corps of the remaining playoff teams, depending on whether you value depth (Houston’s bullpen takes the cake in this department) or peak individual nastiness ceiling (give me the Padres or Guardians). Despite Fernando Tatis Jr.’s suspension and a difficult playoff draw, San Diego has now bested the two teams that spent most of the calendar atop the National League and now enjoys home field advantage in a League Championship Series.

The Phillies are also playing with house money. If you had listened to Philadelphia sports talk radio in August (I was visiting home and fell off the wagon), you’d have thought the Phillies were an awful team rather than a good one that’s simply somewhat incomplete. Even though they (along with the Padres) kind of backed into the playoffs, the depth of their lineup and their two elite starters were obviously enough to make them dangerous in October, and in two playoff series those traits were sufficient to overcome a middling bullpen (which may or may not be without veteran David Robertson again in the NLCS) and bad team defense. With the NLCS set to get underway on Tuesday, we’re no more than a week and a half away from one of these two clubs punching a World Series ticket. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, on the brink of an upset, Gerrit Cole put the Yankees and their shaky bullpen on his back. The righty went seven strong, sparing the Yankees the Dodgers’ and Braves’ fate for at least another day. Despite showing slightly diminished fastball velocity (he was down 0.8 mph for the second start in a row) and despite a recent reliance on offspeed pitches, Cole’s heater was crucial to his success. While his one major blemish, a solo shot off the bat of Josh Naylor, came on the pitch, its plate discipline statistics were on par with those of his breaking balls:

For his part, Cal Quantrill kept the Guardians in the game after giving up three runs through the first two frames. He settled down, at one point retiring nine straight Yankees. But the Guardians could only muster two runs on six hits, failing to bail Quantrill out against Cole for the second time this week. Read the rest of this entry »

Finally, a postseason game that went into extra innings. Everyone was waiting for it to happen. After all, that sort of thing hadn’t occurred since… a week ago. In retrospect, that “marathon” Guardians-Rays game was pretty zippy. Just 15 innings? Only 394 pitches? On Saturday night, the Astros and Mariners cordially invited the Guardians and Rays to hold their beer. Then another. Then perhaps six more.

How about an 18-inning game, tied for the longest in postseason history? How about 498 pitches? How about a record 44 strikeouts? The teams combined for 18 hits across those 18 frames. Christian Vázquez came in as a pinch hitter in the seventh and batted five times. Luis Garcia came on in relief and very nearly notched a quality start. The Mariners didn’t allow their first walk until the 16th (though they did hit four batters). Read the rest of this entry »

It had been leading up to this all day. After the Phillies routed the heavily favored Braves, after the Astros clinched their ALCS ticket with a go-ahead home run by Jeremy Peña in the 18th inning, and after Oscar Gonzalez walked up to the SpongeBob SquarePants theme and walked off the Yankees, of course it was the Padres who authored the closing spectacle. Down 3–0 in the seventh of Game 4, they rallied for five runs and are headed to the NLCS, their first in 24 years.

The Dodgers, meanwhile, have been saddled with one of their most humiliating losses in recent memory. A juggernaut in the regular season, none of their 111-win momentum carried over into this elimination game, or the entire series for that matter. For those who enjoy it, Los Angeles’ rapid implosion is a refreshing splash of schadenfreude; the 116-win 2001 Mariners at least made it past the Division Series, but the 2022 Dodgers will live in infamy for having won one measly playoff game.

Their collapse is made all the more heartbreaking by the auspicious start that preceded it. Watching the Dodgers had been an excruciating experience this series, punctuated by brief moments of hope to be deflated soon after. They were 0-for-their-last-20 with runners in scoring position, if that makes sense. But finally, Los Angeles broke through in the third inning. Mookie Betts drew a lead-off walk, Trea Turner doubled, and so did Freddie Freeman to drive in two runs:

For the first time in what felt like an interminable while, the top of the Dodgers’ order resembled the well-oiled, run-producing machine that flattened its opponents. Before it could kick into overdrive, however, Joe Musgrove settled down, getting the two additional outs needed to shut the door.

Speaking of Musgrove, he featured his four-seam fastball 44% of the time, which, considering his regular-season rate of 24%, was uncharacteristic. But it also made perfect sense. The one misconception about the Dodgers, likely popularized by this graphic, is that they are a superb fastball-hitting team. Rather, they are a superb fastball-taking team; their chase-averse tendencies are responsible for a collectively high run value. When attempting to make contact, though, the Dodgers have been objectively terrible. The optimal strategy against them, then, is to throw fastballs for strikes. That’s basically what Musgrove did, even though he sometimes strayed too far to his glove side:

As a result, Musgrove largely cruised through the game. The only other moment of danger he encountered came in the sixth, when fatigue seemed to set in, resulting in a walk followed by a single. But as the internet loves to proclaim, Musgrove got that dog in him. He struck out Chris Taylor looking for the second out, then Gavin Lux swinging on a perfectly-located high fastball for the third. Read the rest of this entry »

Gerrit Cole is your prototypical right-handed power pitcher. With an upper 90s fastball and upper 80s slider, he is consistently among a few at the top of the strikeout leaderboard; unsurprisingly, he led all of baseball in strikeouts this season with 257. Given his stature and that season mark, you’d expect he would also be somewhere near the top of the WAR leaderboard. Well, not quite, largely in part because Cole also led all of baseball in home runs allowed with 33, the most in his career.

As a primary fastball pitcher who lives in the middle to upper part of the zone, Cole is bound to give up home runs. His approach is and, as long as he still has velocity, will be: here’s my fastball, try to hit it. In early August, I wrote about how his mechanics can sometimes fluctuate from inning to inning through the course of a game, and how in turn the shape and locations of his pitches can get distorted. I didn’t get too in the weeds of how his fastball shape declined this year, but Michael Ajeto of Baseball Prospectus dove deep into Cole’s fastball shape just a few weeks ago. In his piece, he explained the various contributing factors: a higher release point due to a slight change in his lead leg block/plant; decreased spin despite career-high velocity; and a near-career-low vertical approach angle (VAA) of -4.6 degrees. Ajeto also pointed out that it might be a good idea for Cole to up the usage of his slider, the pitch with the highest RV/100 in his arsenal.

Cole, however, went in a slightly different direction at the end of the year:

Focus on the last two points on that graph, when Cole’s curveball usage shot up to its highest usage rate of the 2022 season. Similarly, in his ALDS Game 1 start against the Guardians, he threw the pitch 26% of the time, yielding eight whiffs on 11 swings; that whiff rate (73%) is his highest in a single game this year for either of his breaking balls when throwing the pitch at least 10% of the time. It’s something Guardians hitters did not plan for, either, as it hasn’t been in Cole’s bag for the last couple of years.

In ALDS Game 1 especially, the key for Cole was command and consistency in placing the ball at the bottom or under the zone. Add that to the two regular-season starts when he upped the curve usage, and you can see how impressive his control has been:

Aside from two hits, including a home run on a pitch right down the middle, Cole has buried the pitch under the zone time and time again — pink, pink, and more pink! The success has come as a semi-surprise; as Ajeto noted, Cole could have simply just thrown his slider more. But the curveball has brought a level of surprise to at-bats that Cole hasn’t had given his aggressive approach. Read the rest of this entry »