The San Diego Padres have one of the most talented infield duos in recent MLB history, with Manny Machado at third base and Fernando Tatis Jr. at shortstop. They inserted Jake Cronenworth at second base last season and watched him come in second in the Rookie of the Year race.
And yet, no eyebrows were raised when they reportedly signed infielder Ha-seong Kim on Monday despite the fact that the South Korean star primarily plays shortstop and third base. More and more, teams are embracing position-less baseball and versatility, and the Padres figure to slide Cronenworth to the outfield or a utility role and use Kim at multiple spots.
This was supposed to be part of the rebuild blueprint for the Giants, too, and president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi has preached flexibility since taking over. Manager Gabe Kapler does as well, and bench coach Kai Correa takes it so seriously that he spent hours diligently working with Austin Slater on middle infield skills this spring.
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But a funny thing happened during the shortened 2020 season. While they moved players around early, the Giants ended up looking pretty traditional down the stretch.
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Mauricio Dubon, the super-utility-man who was supposed to be their Chris Taylor or Kiké Hernandez, played second and short eight times apiece over the first few weeks, but starting on August 16 he was used exclusively as a center fielder. Wilmer Flores started the first two games of the season at third but played there just once over the final 58. Donovan Solano played third base five times in the first 18 games and then never again, and he appeared at shortstop just twice.
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In the outfield, Mike Yastrzemski played all three spots the first five weeks and then never left right field in September. An elbow injury limited Slater to DH duty the final six weeks but even before that he only appeared in the outfield corners.
Part of this had to do with Evan Longoria returning from an injury and playing just about every inning at third, but there was another reason the staff went away from versatility. The Giants made an MLB-leading 21 errors in their first 18 but over their final 42 games they had just 21 more, the second-fewest total in the NL.
The staff went away from moving guys around because it was necessary competitively, and on a recent call with reporters, Zaidi gave a new reason for those early defensive issues.
"I think some of that I would say has to do with just a lack of reps that we had going into the season," he said. "I think about summer camp and we played a few intrasquad scrimmages and then we played a couple exhibition games. That is usually a very important and valuable environment for moving guys around and getting them more comfortable."
The Giants let a lot of their veterans DH during intrasquad games in July so they could ease into the season physically, and by the time opening day came around they were more than four months removed from the defensive reps they got at other positions in spring training. When that rust showed early on, adjustments had to be made.
The question now is what will the Giants do in 2021. There's no question that they still want to be more versatile and would benefit from it, with team officials saying in recent weeks that they hope Dubon in particular can return to the envisioned role. They've seen the Dodgers make it work, but the current roster might be more inflexible than the 2020 one.
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The Giants non-tendered Daniel Robertson, who served as their utility man in September and they'll have two fewer roster spots to work with in 2021. They added Jason Vosler, who could be able to move around the infield, but opposing scouts say he's best suited for third base or first, where the Giants have a pretty big crowd in place already.
Zaidi and Scott Harris aren't done shopping and still could add more versatile pieces. Hernandez and Tommy La Stella are among the free agents who could help. They hope to once again embrace versatility in 2021, but part of that will be up to how much work players can get in during spring training.
"I guess we'll see how 2021 spring training looks, but that's going to be an important component for us in getting to the point where we're comfortable moving guys around," Zaidi said. "I think what we saw in cases, especially early in 2020, is that without some of those preseason reps it's tougher to move a guy into a position where he doesn't have a lot of history and doesn't have a lot of recent history in particular."