Now Ramon Ortiz is tied with Russ on the Giants' all-time reacquired Ortiz list. This was unexpected.

Of course, Ramon Ortiz has never started a game for the San Francisco Giants. He started 16 games for the Fresno Grizzlies in 2009 and bounced around three different organizations after that. He'll be 39 in March, but he's still putting up decent K/BB ratios in AAA, so he's not ready to retire just yet. That's commendable, in a way. There will be a lot of time to not pitch, so keep going for it as long as you have teams offering contracts. Or maybe he just likes Fresno. It's possible.

Even in his prime, Ortiz wasn't much. He had a nice season in 2002 -- of course he did -- but after that he was average at best, pretty bad at his worst. So this is probably non-news.

But this story goes on the front page for one reason: Ryan Vogelsong. When Vogelsong was signed, I didn't even make former-Giants-prospect jokes. I just ignored it because there wasn't any way he was going to make a difference in 2011. I learned my lesson.

So this is a story about Ramon Ortiz, who will end up leading the 2012 Giants starters in ERA. You read it here first. Note that my powers to edit a post never go away, so I can tidy this up later. All screenshots are obviously doctored. I can tell by the pixels and from seeing a few character-assassination attempts in my time.

I'll admit it -- I'd never heard of George Genovese before reading this fantastic article by Chris Haft:

Genovese signed approximately 40 players who proceeded to the Major Leagues. That group included Garry Maddox and Gary Matthews, who patrolled the Giants' outfield in the first few seasons after the club traded Mays to the New York Mets in 1972. Along with Bobby Bonds -- whom the Giants signed only after Genovese's intense lobbying -- Maddox and Matthews helped maintain the club's proud black legacy.

The article also notes that Genovese signed George Foster and Chili Davis in the '70s, and Rob Deer and Matt Williams in the '80s. I've long been fascinated with the parade of All Star outfielders that the Giants had (and frittered away) in the '70s, but I had no idea that one guy was responsible for the bulk of them.

And without Genovese lobbying for Bobby Bonds, there's a pretty good chance that my memory is 586 home runs lighter because the Giants don't sign a certain Pirates outfielder after 1992. I don't like that alternate dimension.

Last year on Valentine's Day, this very site featured a community projection for Miguel Tejada. That seems like a perfect metaphor. So much tenderness (of the hamstrings). So many broken hearts. Those candy hearts taste like the rosin bag that Tejada would use to keep his hands dry. It all fits.

It's community-projection time! Maybe you don't think that needs an exclamation point. But I like these posts. They're excuses to talk about particular players. Of course the projections are going to be awful and inaccurate -- we're all idiots here -- but it gives us a chance to convene and decide which players we're optimistic about, and which players are supposed to be in the lineup. Remember when we were pessimistic about Aubrey Huff, and then the next year we were optimistic? That was awesome. The first time.

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Wait, I guess he picked one up. This is all so confusing.

Just a note of thanks and some wishes of good luck for Andrew Baggarly, who wrote his farewell to the Mercury News yesterday.

Though what I do is completely different from what the beat writers do, I wouldn't do it nearly as well without them. I'm dependent on them. And I'm not going to name names, but there are beat writers around the league who wouldn't make my job as fun. I like the Giants guys, and I especially liked the mix of analysis and personality that went into Extra Baggs. That will be missed, even as it carries on with a different name and different curators.

But because I spend most of my time during the days and nights writing instead of reading, I'm more likely to tune into a Chronicle Live or pre-game show than I am to read a recap. So in that sense: more Baggs! This has to be a dizzying, exciting time for him, and I wish him the best of luck.

Just watch out for that Maiocco character, Baggs -- I have it on good authority that he's cunning, deceitful, and ruthless*.

*Not really. He seems very nice. I just wanted to test out the adjective I invented: Maiocciavellian.

I was envious of the Cubs when they signed Kosuke Fukudome. I thought he'd be as productive in the majors as Hideki Matsui, but with the ability to play center. It's not like Kosuke was a bust -- he has a career .361 OBP -- but he certainly wasn't worth the 4/$48M that the Cubs gave him. The Giants were interested, but they dodged that bullet to sign Aaron Rowand. Whew.

I was envious of the Mets when they signed Kaz Matsui. The Giants were screwing around with Neifi Perez and Deivi Cruz, and there was this amazing, speedy, electrifying shortstop just begging for a team like the Giants to take a chance on him.

And now I'm envious of the A's for signing Yoenis Cespedes. Oh, I'm not envious of the A's for that whole "everything else" part, but I'm envious that they signed a Great Unknown. They got a player who is a total mystery, a freak of a free agent. And now A's fans can spend the next couple of months dreaming the what-if dreams.

Would it have been a good idea for the Giants to sign Cespedes? Absolutely no idea. I'm going to guess that it wouldn't have been. Between concerns about his patience, contact, and ability to stick in center field, he sure sounds like Cody Ross with a better publicist. I'm not qualified to evaluate tools and such, and there are talent evaluators who would slap me with a rosin bag for making that comparison, but I can see Cespedes hitting .261/.323/.456 while playing an okay center. That seems like a good place to set the over/under. That'd also be Cody Ross' career line. For $35 million, I want a little more cost certainty.

But what I'm envious is that it's the kind of move that can make the imagination run wild. Cespedes could be a Josh Hamilton-like freak, or Vlad Guerrero with more speed. He could be a $25 million player masquerading as an $8 million bargain. He could be the middle-of-the-order hitter that the Giants desperately needed, but with the youth that Carlos Beltran didn't have.

Or he could be Aaron Rowand -- a guy who refuses to bow to the Copernican nonsense suggesting sliders are actual, real things, and, wait, hold on, I'm a just gonna sit on a fastball here.

It's just been a while since the Giants signed a Great Unknown. I remember being excited for Zito's 2007 season, and being afeared that he'd be miserable towards the end of his deal. Half right! I suppose that was the last time there was a Great Unknown acquired in free agency for the Giants. That was the last time there was a way to spend the rest of the winter months thinking what if.

There's a huge difference between what's good for a team and what's interesting and compelling during the turgid parts of the offseason. Cespedes probably wouldn't have been a good fit for the Giants, especially if they are going to stick with the rainy-day fund for the near future. But this has been a dull offseason -- not bad, necessarily, just dull. Melky Cabrera might hit like the good Melky Cabrera. Maybe Brandon Crawford can do okay in that late-blooming, Omar Vizquel kind of way. But there wasn't an exciting, daring move to stir the winter soul.

If I can't make it clear enough, this was also an exciting, daring move:

So was the Aaron Rowand signing. Well, in the minds of some folks. Daring and exciting aren't synonyms for good, thoughtful, and practical. But for the next couple of months, A's fans can dream a little bit. I envy that. If Melky were here, I'd probably glare at him for a bit, making him wonder just what in the hell my problem is. I'm still a borderline melkoptimist, but if he's the excitement of the offseason, the offseason wasn't exciting. And, say, it looks like the offseason wasn't exciting.

The A's had an exciting offseason, though. For better or for worse, there was always something going on. I'm a little envious about that.