• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar

San Francisco Sports Today

San Francisco Sports News Continuously Updated

  • Baseball
    • A’s
    • Giants
  • Football
    • 49’ers
    • Raiders
  • Basketball
    • Kings
    • Warriers
  • Sharks
  • Earthquakes
  • Colleges
    • San Jose State
    • Stanford
    • University of California, Berkeley

Player review: Austin Slater

January 16, 2025 by McCovey Chronicles

MLB: Houston Astros at San Francisco Giants
John Hefti-Imagn Images

Home of the Slater Tater

2024 stats (w/Giants): 43 G, 112 PA, .200/ .330/ .266, .056 ISO, 76 wRC+

Austin Slater’s run as the longest-tenured San Francisco Giant ended in 2024 with his mid-July trade to Cincinnati. A confluence of frequent injuries, burgeoning youth movement, and changing organizational emphasis sounded his death knell. For some it was a sad day (read my eulogy here), and for everyone, an expected one.

He had run into a wall covering center for Jung Hoo Lee in the first inning of a game against the Reds in early May. The subsequent concussion foreshadowed future pain to come. Two days later the same fence felled Lee.

Slater didn’t return to the line-up until June 5th, and made 18 more appearances with the Giants as an off-and-on pinch-hitter, platoon, lead-off man, and corner outfielder. His last at-bat as a Giant ended with a strikeout in Cleveland. His last hit came a day earlier. His last extra base hit and RBI against Los Angeles on June 30th. His last homer (also first of the year) and multi-hit game came against the Angels on the 16th. The last time Slater sent us all home smiling, mirroring the wide grin that burst from behind the wiry curtain of his mustache, came on the 10th, in the 10th inning against Houston.

A long goodbye peppered with signs of the end. A career .229 hitter with a well-below league average 83 wRC+ against right-handed pitching, Slater left San Francisco batting .286 facing his same-side foes. Small sample size alert! But his 149 wRC+ against righties and .884 OPS (in 27 PA) led the Giants at the time of his departure. Meanwhile in the split-advantage he had built his career on, Slater hit on the interstate with a 52 wRC+ — the lowest of his career, and first time he had posted a wRC+ below league average against southpaws since 2018.

A head-scratching reversal, doubly frustrating given he chose to tease a mid-career renaissance against an arm no one needed him to do well against. Slater’s value to Bob Melvin, the practicality of playing him, hinged on a certain level of consistency in a very specific context.

This specialty is why I’m spending time on a part-time set-piece like Slater, who is already half-a-year gone in terms of the calendar, and a century, spiritually, removed from franchise relevance. But since 2019, Slater posted a 125 wRC+ against lefties, a point better than Matt Chapman. And in those last six seasons, nobody in the Major Leagues had more plate appearances as a pinch hitter (175), nor did any other player — other than Ji-Man Choi (who had more than 100 fewer PAs) — match Slater’s clout with a 1.002 OPS and 177 wRC+.

Slater was a unique figure of resonance in a role typically defined by transience. A platoon play, a bench piece, outfield depth — his talents in one area were balanced out by his deficits in others. Like many things in life, it was Slater’s limitations that made him intriguing, and those limitations will only be interesting to a few. He’s a parochial player, but as I wrote in July, that’s exactly why he’s worth the spilled ink. In the field of Giantology, dissertations will be written about the Slater years, his successes and failures representative of those surreal times…that we’re hopefully, maybe, possibly, no longer mired in?

Though I hope he finds success as a member of the White Sox… San Francisco will always be Slater’s home. If he was to ever open up a novelty restaurant — probably called something like Slater’s Tater, home of the original “Slater Tater Tot Plate” — it’d be somewhere on the Peninsula, somewhere like Burlingame.

Filed Under: Giants

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • 49ers second-year pro projected to be the breakout player in 2025 on defense
  • Can you guess this 49ers fullback in today’s in-5 trivia game?
  • Who do you want the 49ers to play in Week 1?
  • Elephant Rumblings: Kurtz No. 14 in latest prospect rankings
  • Monday BP: Which series are you most interested in this week?

Categories

  • 49'ers
  • A's
  • Earthquakes
  • Giants
  • Kings
  • Raiders
  • San Jose State
  • Sharks
  • Stanford
  • Uncategorized
  • University of California, Berkeley
  • Warriers

Archives

  • May 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • September 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021

Our Partners

All Sports

  • San Francisco Chronicle
  • San Francisco Examiner
  • The Mercury News
  • 247 Sports
  • Bleacher Report
  • Forgotten 5
  • Golden Gate Sports
  • The Sports Fan Journal
  • The Spun
  • USA Today

Baseball

  • San Francisco Giants
  • Oakland A's
  • Last Word On Baseball - Oakland A's
  • Last Word On Baseball - San Francisco Giants
  • MLB Trade Rumors - A's
  • MLB Trade Rumors - Giants
  • White Cleat Beat
  • Around The Foghorn
  • Athletics Nation
  • McCovey Chronicles

Basketball

  • Golden State Warriors
  • Sacramento Kings
  • A Royal Pain
  • Amico Hoops - Kings
  • Amico Hoops - Warriors
  • Blue Man Hoop
  • Golden State Of Mind
  • Hoops Hype - Warriors
  • Hoops Hype - Kings
  • Hoops Rumors - Warriors
  • Hoops Rumors - Kings
  • Lets Go Warriors
  • Last Word On Pro Basketball - Golden State
  • Last Word On Pro Basketball - Sacramento
  • Pro Basketball Talk - Warriors
  • Pro Basketball Talk - Kings
  • Real GM - Warriors
  • Real GM - Kings
  • Sactown Royalty

Football

  • San Francisco 49ers
  • Las Vegas Raiders
  • 49ers Gab
  • Just Blog Baby
  • Last Word On Pro Football
  • NFL Trade Rumors - San Francisco 49ers
  • NFL Trade Rumors - Las Vegas Raiders
  • Niners Nation
  • Niner Noise
  • Niners Wire
  • Our Turf Football
  • Pro Football Rumors - 49ers
  • Pro Football Rumors - Raiders
  • Pro Football Talk - 49ers
  • Pro Football Talk - Raiders
  • Raiders Wire
  • Silver And Black Pride
  • Total 49ers

Hockey

  • Blades Of Teal
  • Fear The Fin
  • Last Word On Hockey
  • Pro Hockey Rumors
  • Pro Hockey Talk
  • The Hockey Writers

Soccer

  • Center Line Soccer
  • Last Word on Soccer
  • MLS Multiplex

College

  • Busting Brackets
  • California Golden Blogs
  • College Sports Madness
  • College Football News
  • Rule Of Tree
  • Saturday Blitz
  • The Daily Californian
  • The Stanford Daily
  • Zags Blog

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in