Giants re-sign Jean Machi to minor league deal

Earlier in the day, I wrote about the type of reliever the Giants should acquire. An hour later, they re-signed Jean Machi. Sometimes the baseball gods ask you to pull their finger, and you do it without thinking. They have their moments.

Machi is a two-time world’s champeen with the Giants, though a much bigger part of the 2014 roster than in 2012, and we all have at least a couple fond memories of him. There’s the immortal GIF, for one. Sometimes the baseball players ask you to pull their finger, and you do it without thinking. There’s also the brilliant extra innings game against the Pirates in 2014, for two. That’s when we learned that Machi was roughly as fast as Angel Pagan:

4.1 seconds! I still can’t get over that! Hey, everybody, get a load of this, Jean Machi can run 90 feet in 4.1 seconds!

But he’s here to pitch ostensibly, and there aren't a lot of happy recent memories for any team in that regard. He was the closer for a bit last year with the Red Sox (!), and it went about as well as you might have expected. More recently, he was in Triple-A with the Cubs, where he was doing well enough (26 strikeouts in 29⅓ innings, with nine walks and five homers allowed), but he was released just last week.

Then, uh, I guess we should point out that he was arrested for different bodily indiscretions shortly after. It was a tough week for him, so I didn’t think less of him when the story leaked out. It wasn't just the drunken tinkling that got him in trouble, though, as he also asked the Stuffed Olive employee if he wanted to fight about it. That's not ideal.

But the Giants don't take the character of their players lightly, and they were apparently fond enough of Machi to welcome him back as depth. Do you remember him pitching 33 games for the Giants just last year? Man, I sure don’t. I would have guessed that he was on the 2010 team before I guessed that. In 2013 and 2014, though, he was quite good with them. The Giants aren’t necessarily hoping for that kind of season, but they’re guessing that he’s a better reliever in a glass case than some of the other options they had in Triple-A.

Just, please, poke some holes in the glass case.

This wasn’t the news you were expecting to read this morning, but here you go. There’s a not insignificant chance that you’re going to see Jean Machi in a Giants uniform again. If he makes it back, it’s because he's either dominating Triple-A (yay!) or the rest of the bullpen was eaten by June beetles (booo). The odds are good, though, that he’ll hang out in Sacramento for a while, possibly coming up for a cameo in September, if at all.

More importantly, we get to update the list of old friends the Giants have re-signed over the last decade:

• Darren Ford
• Jackson Williams
• Jesse Foppert
• Todd Linden
• John Bowker
• Russ Ortiz
• Boof Bonser
• Brad Penny
• Eric Hacker
• Andres Torres
• Kevin Correia
• Travis Blackley
• Scott Munter
• Ryan Vogelsong
• Travis Ishikawa
• Kevin Frandsen
• Nick Noonan
• Mike Kickham
• Conor Gillaspie
• Travis Ishikawa again
• Jean Machi

The Giants went out on the open market and found themselves an old friend. This is not a previously published article on McCoveyChronicles.com. We’re about a week away from Lance Niekro coming back, and I’m okay with that. Keeps your guard up.