There R Giants #21: Sammy Long

SFGiants @SFGiants

Welcome to The Show, Sammy Long. #SFGiants

We’re into the There R Giants Top 50. Over the winter months, I’ll write a post on each of the fifty players in my rankings, leading us back to the much-needed spring. Our list of previously covered players is getting a little long, so from here on out I’m moving the links for the full list down the bottom of the post.

There may not have been a more exciting camp story last spring than Sammy Long (oh, for the day’s of spring camp stories!) That excitement ticked up from “palpable” to “feverish” when he vaulted almost overnight from Double A to the majors, with the briefest of stops to establish what was almost surely an all time record in Triple A. It seemed the pitching version of Mike Yastrzemski had joined the Giants’ incredible reclamations.

But that early June debut was the peak of “Sammy Mania,” and his journey the rest of the season was somewhat confusing and contradictory, with glimpses of potential mixed in with mixed signals as to his ultimate role with the team. We know the Giants are using extremely advanced data on players in order to put them into situations in which they’re likely to succeed — some of the most advanced data in baseball, in fact. So how they chose to view and use Long must mean something about the underlying data they were seeing in his performance. But what exactly should we infer from that? And what should we make now of the local kid’s future as a Giant? These are some puzzling questions, indeed! Let’s go forth and see what we can learn!

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Have a debut, rook! Sammy Long: 4 IP, H, ER, 7 K