Andrew Baggarly

Kuiper & Andrew Baggarly on Giants Needs, Moves, and MLB Offseason Storylines YouTube video by The Glen Kuiper Show

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Giants not inclined to spend what it takes to sign Tatsuya Imai: Sources A detailed look at why the Giants aren't looking to sign the 27-year-old Japanese righty or any of the other top starters on the market.

Interesting stuff via @andrewbaggarly.bsky.social -- it was always tough to see the Giants getting too involved in a big bidding war for Imai (especially with Boras attached) www.nytimes.com/athletic/685...

Cody Ponce is going to Toronto on a 3-year, $30 million deal that crushed industry estimates, via @ken-rosenthal.bsky.social . Giants were involved but market got beyond them. Jays moved quickly to replace Chris Bassitt and Max Scherzer with Dylan Cease and Ponce. Will one or both be SF-bound now? 🤔

Giants notes: Updates on 40-man additions, WBC participation and coaching hires The Giants did not add to their roster before Tuesday's deadline.

Here's what I wrote yesterday (forgot to share a link earlier): www.nytimes.com/athletic/681...

I'd been hearing that Tony Vitello was trying to bring his Tennessee pitching coach, Frank Anderson, with him to San Francisco. Now Baseball America is reporting that it's going to happen. Justin Meccage and Anderson (father of former A's LHP Brett Anderson) will lead the Giants pitching staff.

Ok you got me, I posted that for an audience of one.

The most likely players the Giants could lose are pitchers Spencer Miles, who had a good AFL, and hard-throwing but oft-injured pitcher Gerelmi Maldonado. Maybe someone could use a LHP like Jack Choate, whom the Giants drafted out of Assumption University. But I don't want to assume too much.

The Giants didn't shield any eligible players from the Rule 5 draft by adding them to the 40-man prior to the reserve list deadline. The Giants are at 40 but had several DFA candidates. The bigger issue: former 1st rounders like Will Bednar, Reggie Crawford and Hunter Bishop haven't panned out.

My colleague Dan Hayes is reporting that the Twins are hiring Mark Hallberg to be their bench coach. Buster Posey had mentioned on Tuesday that several clubs were talking to Hallberg, his former college roommate, who had been a base coach under Gabe Kapler and Bob Melvin in SF.

The Giants are hiring Quentin Eberhardt as their new director of performance, according to Mike Wilson of the Knoxville News Sentinel. Eberhardt was the director of baseball sports performance at Tennessee and previously worked for the Cubs.

Terrific insights from our four MVP voters on why they went Judge or Raleigh. There really isn't a "right" answer. I just wish two Judge voters had flipped to Cal so they could've finished as co-MVPs. That would have been the most satisfying outcome, imo!
www.nytimes.com/athletic/679...

Buster Posey: Giants will spend, but improvement must come from within Good vibes are good. They can be the final piece. They are also difficult to maintain when you don't have enough talent.

As mentioned in last night’s story, and as our Mitch Bannon confirms, Toronto Blue Jays assistant hitting coach (and former minor league coordinator) Hunter Mense is joining Tony Vitello’s staff in San Francisco. www.nytimes.com/athletic/679...

Never know. They could make him associate manager, or something, and hire another bench coach. All depends on how big they want the staff to be.

Ex-Giants manager Bruce Bochy finalizing deal to return to San Francisco as special assistant Bochy, who won three of his four World Series titles managing the Giants, will be back in San Francisco, where he managed for 13 seasons.

Future HOF manager Bruce Bochy tells me he's content with taking the uniform off and rejoining the Giants in an advisory role. It took just 90 minutes at a Nashville restaurant with Tony Vitello to convince Bochy that Buster Posey made a smart hire to manage. www.nytimes.com/athletic/678...

Hearing that former Padres manager and Twins bench coach Jayce Tingler has agreed to join Tony Vitello's staff in San Francisco. Tingler and Vitello were college teammates at Missouri and have remained close friends, so this is a very predictable outcome.

The Giants have officially declined their $4m option on Tom Murphy. Just a totally unforced error of a signing by Farhan Zaidi. Murphy gets a 250k buyout.

Loving the conversation that's come out of Game 7 especially on the topic of IKF's baserunning. Really great, fun, thoughtful, and (mostly) respectful discussion. As Justin Turner+others have pointed out, a runner at 3B has a different level of aggressiveness when it's a force vs. tag play at home.

🤔🤔🤔

It's such a privilege and thrill to cover Game 7 of the World Series. I'll always be grateful that I got to experience it. And I'm grateful for the Wayback Machine, since unfortunately, most of my work in 2012-14 for Comcast is no longer archived on their site. web.archive.org/web/20141102...

Logan Webb on Tony Vitello: "I'm super excited. I know the guys are super excited. I think it's going to be a healthy energy boost to our team and our clubhouse."

Tony Vitello will wear No.23.

Tony Vitello: "It is a dream come true but it is a very recent dream. As much as I'd love to sit up here and promise things and pound my fist on the desk, really all I want to do is to do a good job."

Buster Posey on Tony Vitello: "Tony's a teacher, he's a motivator, a tireless worker and somebody who knows how to build culture." Said he will impact more than the clubhouse but also the community and organization.

Talk about a perfect potential addition to Tony Vitello's staff. The Mets had the worst average sprint speed in MLB but created the second most baserunning runs (behind Milwaukee) and Richardson was a huge part of that. It's an area that's an imperative for the Giants (minus-6, 28th) to improve.

Kent will be this year's McGriff & sail in. Maybe Schilling too, since hate speech apparently (regrettably) doesn't mean what it used to mean. It'll be far easier for the committee to coalesce behind a "clean" candidate than to parse the relative merits (or demerits) of those w/steroid connections.

The Fake News Media Is Attempting To Link Tony Vitello to the Open San Francisco Giants Managerial Job Despite the Fact It Doesn't Make a Lick of Sense The Athletic — Here’s one out-of-the-box name who fits the high-motor description: Tony Vitello, who transformed the University of Tennessee from a bottom-feeder in the Southeastern Conference into pe...

I guess only time will tell. www.barstoolsports.com/blog/3553886...

Drew Gilbert on what the Giants can expect from Tony Vitello: ‘He knows how to compete’ The Giants made an unprecedented hire of a college coach to try to end a four-year postseason drought.

Drew Gilbert is just a little bit fired up (!!) about Tony Vitello managing the San Francisco Giants. Gilbert also can appreciate more than anyone just how much Vitello is leaving behind in Knoxville. Story: www.nytimes.com/athletic/674...

Drew Gilbert, as you might imagine, is just a little bit fired up today after his college coach became his major league manager (although he'll have to get used to not calling him "Coach Vitello" anymore):