A tough end for last year’s Willie Mac Award winner.
Shocking news this afternoon as the San Francisco Giants have outrighted second baseman Thairo Estrada to Triple-A Sacramento after placing him on waivers the other day. This all but ends the Giants career of the 2023 Willie Mac Award winner.
Estrada was always on the razor’s edge when it comes to value — elite defense as a second baseman (the 13th-best fielder in the NL last season, per SABR’s SDI, a component of the Gold Glove voting) that had to be paired with around league average hitting to make him an everyday player. Indeed, Estrada’s 2021-2023 was about 5% better than the league average (105 OPS+). This year, in 96 games, he’s hitting just .217/.247/.343 (68 OPS+).
His batted ball profile (48.1% career groundball hitter) was only ever mitigated by his speed, which could keep him out of double plays at a minimum. But this season, he’s tracking slower with his sprint speed and a 3-year decline that shows age is taking hold:
2021: 28.4 ft/sec
2022: 28.2 ft/sec
2023: 28.1 ft/sec
2024: 28.0 ft/sec
Last year, he suffered a broken hand and this year a wrist strain, and you can see with the batted ball data that the life has simply gone out of his swing. His elite defense has given him all his value. His +0.4 fWAR is makes him as valuable as Grant McCray and between Jorge Soler & Brett Wisely. But it’s clear the bat is no longer positively projectable.
I wrote the 2023 player review for Estrada:
He should not have been the best player. Instead, we should’ve looked at a guy who was the 21st-best player in all of Major League Baseball through the first half of the season as an unmitigated success of scouting and transaction (Zaidi plucked him from the Yankees, after all) even though he doesn’t check all the boxes on the Giants’ checklist. Farhan Zaidi doesn’t grok players with a 22.6% strikeout rate and 4.2% walk rate and especially not a 36.7% O-Swing (as Estrada had in 2023), but the speed, defense, contact ability (.271 average + 90.7% Z-Contact), and personality all combine to make an above average player.
In that, I pasted comments about his Willie Mac Award win last season:
“He’s such the runaway Willie Mac Award winner that I feel like it was kind of anti-climactic for a lot of us because he’s earned that from the first day he stepped foot in the Giants’ clubhouse,” interim manager Kai Correa said. “He’s so unassuming. He’s so consistent with his work, with the way he responds to success, with the way he responds to failure. His treatment of old players and young players, his interactions with the staff and fans.
“When somebody is that consistent as a professional, it’s awesome to see them honored by their peers in front of our fanbase for being that way, and rightfully so.”
Baseball is a cruel business and the whole “what have you done for me lately” of it all is front and center in this transaction. It’s a violent way to demonstrate that the team has run out of patience and projects no further value from him while also setting him on the path to playing in another league next season unless he can catch on for near the minimum or on a minor league deal. For a 28-year old with elite defense, it all must feel shocking.
It’s not implausible that the Giants add him back on the 40-man roster in the offsesaon and then tender him a contract for arbitration, but it’s highly improbable and it’s beyond farcical for me to even mention it. This is something you do to a player when you’re done with them and could find no takers. He’ll be released in the offseason.
Meanwhile, left-handed pitcher Tyler Matzek’s rehab never concluded with an appearance on the Giants. He appeared in 5 games for the River Cats, striking out 3 while walking 3 in 4.2 innings pitched. Taylor Rogers would appear to have gone unclaimed and the Giants still see him as valuable — or pricey enough at $12 million next season — to roster.
Brett Wisely was called up to take Estrada’s place.