He was great a long time ago.
Jon Heyman reports that the San Francisco Giants have signed left-handed hitting utility player Jake Lamb to a minor league deal with invite to Spring Training and a $1 million contract should he be promoted to the majors in 2025.
The 34-year old made a name for himself in the middle of last decade for the Arizona Diamondbacks, when from 2014-2017, he slashed .250/.336/.462 with 69 HR and 241 RBI in 1,752 PA (444 games). He also generated 7.5 wins above replacement, according to Baseball Reference. In 2017, he was named to the NL All-Star Game as a reserve (Buster Posey — now the Giants’ President of Baseball Operations but then the Giants’ catcher — was named to the starting NL lineup).
He has fallen quite far since then. He played in the Pirates’ minor league system (at Triple-A) all of last season, and from 2018-2023 he played for 7 teams (Dbacks, A’s, White Sox, Blue Jays, Dodgers, Mariners, and Angels because he hit just .205/.306/.359 and was worth -0.2 bWAR.
Pirates beat writer Joe Trezza wrote a piece about him last Spring Training and the article contextualizes his falloff in a meaningful way:
A left rotator cuff injury contributed to a disappointing year in 2018, requiring surgery after the season. A quad strain slowed him down the following spring. Then Lamb slashed only .116/.240/.140 without a home run over the first 18 games of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. The D-backs designated him for assignment that September, and while he caught on immediately with the A’s, his tenure in Oakland was short-lived.
[…] He’s played for seven big league teams since 2020, tied for the most of any player.
For Triple-A Indianapolis last year, Lamb didn’t have the performance of a veteran who was being denied an opportunity to flash that former All-Star potential. In 98 games, he hit .264/.350/.393 with 7 home runs and 23 doubles, and he was limited to just playing first base and a little right field, when previously he’d played third base, too (his original position).
It’s a move right out of the Brian Sabean-Bobby Evans playbook, but it’s also tinged with a bit more recent input, too. Jake Lamb’s agency? CAA Sports. Senior Advisor to Buster Posey Jeff Berry’s former agency? CAA Sports. Don’t worry, it’s not self-dealing, as Berry resigned from the agency and decertified at the beginning of last season.
Too — and this one is more important — two other recent hires have some history with Lamb. As much as I wanted to view Yeshaya Goldfarb’s departure as a sign that the Giants were implementing a Busterian Jihad, it’s worth keeping in mind that they hired away two baseball analysts already this season — Hadi Raad and Pike Goldschmidt — to work in the development arena and both of them have strong scouting & development analytics. I don’t think the Giants are ditching the numbers so much as beefing up the scouting.
Relevant to this post, though, is that both Raad and Goldschmidt were with two of the organizations that brought Lamb in over the years. Goldschmidt was with the A’s front office when they signed him in the 2020-2021 offseason and Raad was with the Pirates last season when the team signed Lam.
It’s very easy to dismiss this move as no risk, but as we try to piece together just what kind of players the team looks for, I think there’s value in keeping track of the types of players they sign or moves they don’t make. As of now, it doesn’t seem like Buster Posey’s concept of a player or the roster at large will be unique: surround developing players and All-Stars with veterans who have a track record, still can play the game, and have solid relationships with decisionmakers. That’s simply the pre-Zaidi state of the Giants.
That process is inherently less interesting to me but there’s safety in certainty — or, at least creating a situation where one feels a bit more certain about the players on hand. Jake Lamb will always be “the player that fans always like you to sign when you play a game of Out of the Park Baseball.” There’s also the fact that he played for the Angels last time he got onto a big league field. Even pitched for them! It reminded me of this article from last year:
The no-depth Angels have become a second-chance haven: ‘I thought I was probably done’
Will he hit? Can he field? Does it matter? I think it’s a telling move, much like the Joey Lucchesi deal the other day: solid floor, limited ceiling, and for just a little bit more than the league minimum, it keeps the team out of being in the Trenton Brooks or Mitch White business or trading for Matt Beaty on Opening Day because they need a left-handed pitch hitter or whatever.
Eventually, somebody’s concept for how the Giants should play baseball will work out.