Sixty games into the 2017 regular season, not much has gone according to plan for a San Francisco Giants team that finds itself 13 games out of first place, and 11 games back in the National League wild-card hunt.
But for as troubling of a season as the Giants have suffered through, new reliever Sam Dyson has had it worse.
A 9-17 start in the month of April put Bruce Bochy’s ball club in an early hole, and while the Giants still haven’t proven they’ll be able to climb out of it, Dyson’s opportunity to work out of the ditch he dug himself into was cut short.
A season after finishing third in the American League with 38 saves, Dyson was removed from the Texas Rangers’ closer role after blowing his first three save opportunities of the season. A sixth-year veteran with a career 3.54 earned run average, Dyson’s appearances this season were catastrophic for a Rangers’ team that now sits 14.5 games behind the first place Houston Astros in the AL West.
In 17 games this season, Dyson pitched 16 and 2/3 innings, surrendered 31 hits and 12 walks while compiling a 10.80 ERA, the worst mark of the veteran right-hander’s career. Prior to 2017, Dyson had never allowed more than five home runs in a single season. By May 31, 2017, the Tampa, Florida native had already given up six.
The closing salvo for Dyson in a Rangers’ jersey came on the final day of May, when he allowed a pair of 10th inning home runs against the Rays in a 7-5 loss that dropped Dyson’s record to 1-6 this season.
Two days after the brutal collapse, Dyson was designated for assignment by the Rangers, who intended to find a suitable trade partner.
Four days after Dyson was removed from the Rangers’ 25-man roster, the Giants acquired him for a player to be named later or cash considerations. Texas didn’t exactly ask for a ransom, but no general manager can when he’s unloading a reliever responsible for nearly 20 percent of his team’s losses.
Still, the fact Dyson ended up in orange and black took the baseball world by surprise on Tuesday evening, as the Giants weren’t expected to enter the trade market as buyers, especially for a bullpen piece.
On Wednesday morning, Giants’ general manager Bobby Evans appeared on Murph and Mac and offered an explanation for the franchise’s decision to pursue Dyson, even as the team finds itself in the depths of the National League.
“Just from our scouts seeing him (Dyson) over the last several years, not only last year and not only this past year in the WBC (World Baseball Classic) where he threw extremely well, stuff-wise with a plus-fastball and heavy sink, he’s a ground ball pitcher who’s given up six home runs this year,” Evans said. “In a small ballpark in Texas and an infield ground ball guy in our ballpark isn’t a bad thing but a guy who does make a mistake up doesn’t necessarily result in home runs in our ballpark so hopefully there’s an opportunity for us to deepen our pen this year.”
Though the move to acquire Dyson came at a surprising juncture, Evans deserves credit for executing a low-risk trade that could potentially yield the Giants’ bullpen a significant reward.
Dyson’s track record suggests he’s more than capable of serving as a dependable back-end of the bullpen piece, and as the Giants learned during their second half collapse last season, a team can never have enough pitchers with experience slamming the door shut at the end of games.
The Giants’ three World Series titles in the last decade have all been aided by bullpen arms who didn’t come into their own until they arrived in San Francisco, and Evans is hoping Dyson is the next man to reinvent himself inside a pitcher’s paradise, AT&T Park.
Dyson surely wouldn’t be the first to do so, as the quartet of Javier Lopez, Santiago Casilla, Jeremy Affeldt and Sergio Romo was largely unheralded until they hit the scene in San Francisco. Now, all four own three rings.
As Evans reminded fans Wednesday morning, Affeldt was a converted starter, Lopez was an up-and-down journeyman, Casilla joined the Giants after being released and Romo was a 28th round draft pick.
“In the case of our core four, Affeldt had been a failed starter, had converted to the bullpen, had not been particularly effective and was starting to show promise there and he came here at a point in his career when, ‘I’m ready to commit to the bullpen.” Evans said. “And that’s an eight-year Major League veteran, Jeremy Affeldt. Lopez had been a journeyman to a certain extent, had been at a number of different clubs, had been let go, at the time he came to us, had four-plus years of Major League experience spread over six or seven major league seasons and he had come into a place that Bochy was able to utilize him in a particular role that allowed him to be successful.”
Piecing together a bullpen is not an easy task, but one the Giants were nonetheless able to tackle successfully during their three World Series runs. In 2016, San Francisco saw what could happen when things go south, and a club that began the first half of the year poised to make another postseason run fell flat on its face thanks in large part to late-inning woes.
If Dyson resurrects himself in San Francisco, will he lead a second half revival? Not exactly, because a team hitting .233 has much bigger issues to worry about.
However, the 29-year-old has proven he can pitch at a high level in the past, and there’s hope from within the Giants’ organization that he can ascend to that level in the future. With the current state of Dyson’s contract (he’s headed for year two of arbitration this offseason), Evans believes the Giants can become a comfortable landing spot for a player who could carve out a future with the team beyond this season.
Dyson’s possible resurgence by the bay is still very much a hope for both the player and the team, but if it fails, just remember this: The Giants are 24-36, and with the way the season has unfolded, they truly have nothing to lose.
“There’s some control years ahead if he pitches well but if not we’ll have to move on,” Evans said. “But our hope is that he stabilizes himself here and gets himself in a much better spot. He had such recent success, it’s hard to overlook that despite the struggles this season, and the struggles have been real.”
Listen to Murph and Mac’s full interview with Giants general manager Bobby Evans below. To hear Evans’ comments on Sam Dyson, skip ahead to the 14:07 mark.