Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
The Giants are not being guided by nostalgia, and making the right baseball moves is marching them toward the playoffs.
The victims of this vision, which allows little space for sentimentality, will be difficult for many fans to take.
A few weeks after the Giants designated Hunter Pence for assignment, Pablo Sandoval met the same fate Thursday, the Giants parting ways with the Panda a day after they signed Justin Smoak, essentially his replacement.
This will be Sandoval’s second split from the organization, having gone to the Red Sox after the 2014 World Series, before flopping in Boston and finding his way back to San Francisco in 2017. He’s been a productive player and a beloved clubhouse feature, but his bat never came around this year.
Sandoval was signed as a utility option who could do damage against righties. While he showed some encouraging peripherals, his power was never evident, homering just once in 90 plate appearances in which he slashed .220/.278/.268.
Smoak, a 33-year-old who was DFA’d by Milwaukee but a slugging All-Star for Toronto as recently as 2017, is also a switch-hitting first baseman who hits better lefty, so Sandoval’s goodbye does not come as a surprise. He is expected to be added to the roster soon.
It will mark the end of a difficult 2020 campaign with the Giants for Sandoval, who recently revealed his family contracted COVID-19, his wife needing to go to the emergency room multiple times in Miami as he monitored his loved ones from afar. It is unclear whether this will be the end of Sandoval’s career, but it looks to be the end of his tenure in San Francisco.