Rule 5 Decisions: ....and the Rest!
Plus the latest Front Office news
Photo Credit: Mick Anders | Richmond Flying Squirrels
For the next couple of weeks we’ll be examining the major cases of Rule 5 protection candidates, to see who the Giants might choose to add to the 40-man roster this year. The Rule 5 protection deadline this year is November 19. So far in the Rule 5 Decisions series, we’ve looked at:
BREAKING: Before I get to today’s post, the Giants dropped yet another surprise announcement yesterday evening when they announced that Randy Winn was being elevated to a new position of Vice President of Player Development, essentially becoming a new boss for Senior Director of Player Development, Kyle Haines. Winn has been working in the organization as a Pro Scout under now-GM Zack Minasian. Andy Baggarly made an important point on Bluesky that I entirely agree with — Haines has long seemed to be spread pretty thin with a million things on his plate at any given time (and sleep rarely being one of them). Getting him some support seems like a very good thing.
At the same time, as with the hiring of Buster Posey, this is another former player with limited experience being asked to step into a complex position. For some, including my Twitter friend GPT, and probably my most recent podcast guest, Eno Sarris, this is all starting to feel a little too much like, in GPT’s words, a “nostalgiarchy” (which I must admit is a brilliant turn of phrase, and I wish I’d thought of it myself!). The concern is that a bunch of luddites are going to try to push the Giants back in time to a time when baseball men thought with their guts and fall into a Rockies-like irrelevance.
That could certainly be where things are going! But I think that this is a fascinating experiment that bears watching and following with an open mind. I don’t think there’s any doubt that Posey’s vision is a player-focused one. Where Farhan Zaidi often seemed intent on putting players in the service of data and technology, Posey clearly wants to put data and technology in the service of players.
Now, is that trying to put a genie back into a bottle that will never again hold it? Perhaps! Are babies being sacrificed with bath water here? Could be! Does that exit sign up ahead on the freeway read “Crash and Burn?” I can’t read without my glasses!
Or will — as I suspect is Posey’s intention — a new and better sense of synergy and collaboration be fostered as a result of tipping this particular balance of power? That seems to be setting up as the primary storyline for the next few years for this franchise.
I’m open minded. This is now Posey’s shop, and he clearly has a vision for what he wants — and I’ve never known anybody to describe Posey as anything but exceptionally bright, intensely driven, and deeply caring. So it’s hard for me to believe he’s trying to bully the organization he cares so deeply about into some sort of brain-dead Luddite Revolution. There are some caution signs at play here, but it’s worth remembering that a generation ago, baseball began going through a real disruption….and that disruption has helped create better, more powerful, and much more skilled players than the naysayers could ever have anticipated. Maybe what we’re seeing now is a new disruption. Perhaps it is oversteering, as Eno talked about on this week’s podcast, perhaps there’s a fine-tuning going on. But one thing I have said repeatedly that I dislike about the current state of the game is the sameness that has overtaken it — lineups no longer feature a variety of body types or skillsets, and teams no longer go at each other with different organizational philosophies. Everybody is trying to win the same game in exactly the same day.
This would appear to be something new and different. Change is hard, painful, often disruptive, and hard to get right. But its often for the good.
As both Eno and I agreed, when everybody has a voice in the room and people in an organization believe that their ideas and innovations will be heard and fairly evaluated, good things will result. If this is a collective shutting of the organization’s mind, then the path will likely be unpleasant.
For me, I’m not writing any epitaphs — this tale is barely on chapter one, and it has a long way to unfurl before we get to the ending.
So congratulations to Good Giant Randy Winn, and may his collaboration with Haines and Minasian and Posey be a fruitful one. So let it be written, so let it be done.
We now return to today’s regularly scheduled (and previously written) post:
With the deadline for Rule 5 protection coming up early next week, it’s time to hurry on through to the end of this series with the traditional Gilligan’s Island-style wrap up of the rest of the interesting names. These are the folks who are still intriguing prospects of at least organizational depth variety who still have an opportunity to get to the big leagues at some point in the future, though, in my opinion, unlikely candidates for the roster at this point in time. Of course, we have seen “…and the rest” type players actually added to the roster in years past (well, one at least), so my explanations need always be taken with a grain of salt. I’m just some joker on the internet after all, as informed on the thought processes as I try to make myself.
So today we ride the whirlwind and turn our settings to “rapid fire” mode. Next week, we’ll know the reality. All set? Let’s go….
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