Aptos resident Mitch Haniger, an outfielder and designated hitter for the Seattle Mariners, gets ready for batting practice on Saturday at RingCentral Coliseum in Oakland. (Brandon Vallance - Santa Cruz Sentinel)
SAN DIEGO — In their first major move of the offseason, the Giants didn’t sign the guy everyone wanted, but they did improve their roster by adding a respected veteran with local ties who will bring a much-needed everyday presence to their lineup.
Mitch Haniger, at $43.5 million over three years, is a good first move. But it can’t — and, by all accounts, won’t — be the Giants’ last. In the wake of Aaron Judge’s decision to remain in New York, the Giants are still involved in the market for starting and relief pitching, one more outfielder and, perhaps, one of the three remaining shortstops on the board.
How does Haniger, the soon-to-be 32 alumnus of Archbishop Mitty (San Jose), fit into their plans?
President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi explained from the Giants’ suite at the Manchester Grand Hyatt.
An everyday presence
One Giants player last season logged at least 500 at-bats: Wilmer Flores. Due in part to injuries and part roster construction, Zaidi has said he believes the Giants were too platoon-heavy last season, even if the formula produced more runs per game than league average (4.42, 11th).
“For us, (we’re) looking to have a more consistent lineup next year as we talked about,” Zaidi said Tuesday evening.
Haniger, they believe, will be an everyday presence in the middle of the lineup. In his two best seasons, he played 314 of a possible 324 games, and he has practically even splits against right-handed pitchers (.795 career OPS) and lefties (.853). He also joins Austin Slater as the only right-handed hitter in an otherwise entirely left-handed outfield.
“We’re kind of looking to balance the handedness of our lineup,” Zaidi said. “A lot of times it’s just easier to be an everyday player as a right-handed bat, whereas from the left side, there’s more of a likelihood that you may have to wind up having to platoon part of it.”
Here’s the thing: those two seasons, when Haniger missed a combined 10 games, came three years apart, with three surgeries in between. After a breakout season in 2018, with career-highs in home runs (26), RBIs (93) and numerous other offensive categories, he missed 99 games in 2019 and missed all of the shortened 2020 season. In 2021, he topped both those totals, with 39 homers and 100 RBIs, but followed it by missing more than half of Seattle’s game last season.
Zaidi described Haniger’s injury history as “flukish,” and he might be on to something. In 2019, Haniger fouled a ball off and ruptured a testicle — really — that required emergency surgery. It took months, according to this Seattle Times story, for doctors to then diagnose a sports hernia and herniated disc, which had originally been chalked up to side effects from the original injury, but also required surgery and cost him the remainder of 2019 and all of 2020. Last year, he sprained his ankle sprinting out of the batter’s box and missed 10 weeks; he lost another 11 games with COVID-19.
“When you talk about health, you’re not just looking at how many injuries a guy has had — some of it is bad luck — but what kind of workload can a guy handle over a full season,” Zaidi said. “We look at his 2018 season and his 2021 season, he has the ability to play a lot.”
In six major-league seasons, Haniger has logged 3,803 innings in right field, or 3,729 more than he has played in the other corner. But if the Giants add a traditional center fielder, Haniger most logically slots into left field, allowing Mike Yastrzemski to roam the tricky right field at Oracle Park. While his defensive metrics are mixed, Haniger isn’t a liability in either corner and would likely play right in lineups with Joc Pederson, Luis Gonzalez or LaMonte Wade Jr. in left.
Right-handed power
Zaidi listed off the attributes that appealed to the Giants: his defense, his clubhouse presence, his durability,
But one thing came first.
“Obviously the power,” Zaidi said. “The fact that he hit 39 home runs a year ago, he brings that kind of power to the lineup everyday. … He has right handed power and is a really good all-around player with a good reputation.”
The Giants, of course, haven’t had a 30-home run hitter since Barry Bonds. (Haniger could be their 16th different Opening Day left fielder since Bonds retired in 2007, though last year’s, Pederson, will still be on the roster.)
Haniger’s power would play at Oracle Park: his 39-homer 2021 would have been a 43-homer campaign if he had played all his games on the shores of McCovey Cove, according to Baseball Savant (the same number as if he had played all his games at Seattle’s home stadium, T-Mobile Park).
Depending on how the offseason plays out, Haniger could slot in anywhere from second to sixth in the Giants’ lineup.
Word from a major-league source familiar with his time in Seattle: “He’ll be the hardest worker in the clubhouse.”
Another local player
While Haniger spent five seasons in Seattle, ingrained enough as a team and community leader to pen an open letter to their fanbase after falling short of the playoffs in 2021, he kept a home in Santa Cruz, not far from where he was born, in Mountain View.
That made his visit to Oracle Park one of the simpler free-agent pitches, logistically, at least.
But between Haniger (Mountain View), Pederson (Palo Alto), J.D. Davis (Elk Grove), Logan Webb (Rocklin) and Scott Alexander (Santa Rosa), the Giants are amassing quite the contingent of local players.
It’s not their only strategy, but it’s not nothing, either.
“I just think we believe – it’s not just like a marketing gimmick – players like being comfortable,” Zaidi said. “It helps them succeed and perform well. We’ve seen it time and time again. These guys are all good players, wherever they play. We just think playing for us can help them get to another level because of that comfort level.”
They will leave San Diego, however, without the Northern Californian they wanted most.
Originally published at Evan Webeck