This is the first in a series of meaningless, esoteric posts written to make people think, "Dang, if he’s writing about something that uninteresting, I can’t imagine how uninterested he is in the Barry Bonds trial."
So here's a 25-man roster filled with players from the past ten years whom you barely remember. If you remember them at all. Which you probably don’t.
C
Trey Lunsford, Yamid Haad
Alberto Castillo didn’t make the cut because he used to play for the Yankees, so take that, East Coast Media Consortium!
INF
Francisco Santos (1B)
Angel Chavez (2B)
Ivan Ochoa (SS)
Tomas de la Rosa (3B)
Chad Santos (1B)
Brian Dallimore (INF)
Francisco Santos used to be Deivis Santos, who used to be Deivi Santos, which is at least one Deivi fewer than his later incarnation, and he used to be 23 years old when he was really almost 30. Other than that, he was the perfect prospect.
Chad Santos, on the other hand, was a masher who hit .429/.500/.857 over his MLB career, hitting a home run roughly once every seven at-bats. It’s a shame he didn’t stick with those numbers.
And of all the people on this roster, Brian Dallimore is probably the most beloved and remembered. Heck, he was the official AAA utilityman of this fine site. Also, he wasn’t the one who ended Dontrelle Willis’s run of good pitching, but he certainly didn’t help.
OF
Alex Sanchez
Jalal Leach
Julio Ramirez
Carlos Valderrama
Adam Shabala
I remember pulling for Jalal Leach, a 32-year-old journeyman who was coming off a .379/.431/.692 partial season in Fresno. It’s insane to hope for a 30-something like that to even make a roster, much less win a starting job and lead the team to a championship. I don’t know why I was so stupid.
Alex Sanchez was released by the Devil Rays in 2005 after hitting .346/.373/.466. How could a team like the (then) lowly Rays release such a dom…oh. Well, that, and he started complaining that he wanted to be an everyday player. That made Lou Pinella angry. You wouldn’t like Lou Pinella when he’s angry.
And of all 25 players on this list, the only one I honestly have no recollection of is Julio Ramirez. He scored three runs for the 2005 Giants, which was about 36% of the team’s total that year, so you’d think I’d remember him.
SP
Damian Moss (2003)
Travis Blackley (2007)
Brian Powell (2003)
Brian Cooper (2004)
Matt Kinney (2005)
Obviously, Moss isn’t a complete unknown, but this team needed an ace. After placing fifth in the Rookie of the Year voting just one year earlier for the Braves, Moss made 20 starts for the Giants. Then he was traded for Sir Sidney Ponson in a deal that both the Orioles and Giants have legally agreed to never mention again.
Also, you know the old saying: "Why get just one nondescript AAA journeyman named Brian when you can get two at twice the price!" That used to be the old market inefficiency, and kudos to the Giants for trying to exploit it. Brian Martin, Brian Steven, and Brian Carter were snatched up by other teams first, though, even though they weren’t professional baseball players, so the Giants couldn’t corner the market.
With Moss and Blackley, the Giants have employed 20% of the pitchers in the history of Major League Baseball who were born in Australia and started a major league game. If Clayton Tanner makes a start in his Giants career, that number will shoot up to 27%. This is progress, people. Measurable, defined progress.
RP
Mike Stanton
Jay Witasick
Wayne Gomes
Brian Boehringer
Brandon Puffer
Leo Estrella
Dave Burba (v. 2.004)
You can always find random relievers in bullpens – guys who fill in for a week before disappearing into the ether. The trick, then, is to find guys who were actually valuable (or supposed to provide something more than mop-up work) and still forgotten. Witasick threw 68 innings of 2.37 ball for the 2002 Giants. Of course he did.
Boehringer was who the Giants received in the Bobby Estalella trade – they gave up a catcher with a 113 OPS+ who was as pure as the driven snow for a nondescript reliever! Gomes was the most nondescript reliever of his generation, as even he usually forgets to put his 368 MLB innings on his resume. The Giants traded Felipe Crespo for him, and operation Trade Away the Awesome Bench for Forgettable Relievers was in full swing.
And while Mike Stanton had a long MLB career, he makes this list as the closer. Mike Stanton, closer. Oh, yeah.
Also, Dave Burba was on the Giants in 2004.
This is the year that Carlos Villanueva breaks out – just ignore the incorrect and identical predictions from the past five years – and when he does, we can really start to gripe about the Wayne Franklin/Leo Estrella trade. Well, we could have if the 2011 Giants didn’t win the World Series. That’s the real tragedy of that whole championship thing: we can’t complain about Wayne Franklin and Leo Estrella quite as vociferously. What a shame.
Remember, the important thing isn’t that this post wasn’t interesting in the slightest. The important thing is that it wasn’t about what Barry Bonds was wearing, what he looked like, or what that twitchy juror sitting second from the left is thinking.