The Giants are probably signing Pablo Sandoval to a minor-league deal

According to Jesse Sanchez, who just might be batting 1.000 with his scoops, the Giants are going to sign Pablo Sandoval. It will be a minor-league deal, and he’ll report to Sacramento.

For what it’s worth, the people closest to the team are suggesting it’s not a done deal:

But Jon Heyman reported he was already on a plane to take a physical in a since-deleted tweet, while keeping his additional tweets about Sandoval to the Giants up, so I’ll roll with this.

And there’s only one possible reaction: Well, huh.

Earlier in the day, I attempted to make sense of the unlikely comments from Bobby Evans, in which he refused to shut the door on the idea. If Sandoval had no relation with the Giants, if he were just a ne’er-do-well who was down on his luck, like Sam Dyson, this wouldn’t seem so weird. The Giants will be responsible for paying him just the major-league minimum, so there really isn’t a lot of risk.

The angle that I neglected to cover is the possibility that Sandoval’s struggles really are mental. That he put too much pressure on himself to live up to the contract in a high-pressure environment, for a new set of coaches and fans. That the pressure compounded and he was besieged by regrets and what-ifs, and that it spiralled out of control until he had no idea how he was going to fix it.

That’s at least one workable theory. And if the cost is about $300,000 — the price of a fifth- or sixth-round pick, roughly — it’s not a completely reckless gamble.

It’s just a very, very strange one to process.

I, for one, was thinking this season was just a little too boring. Let’s call a cease fire in the Belt Wars and start the Panda Watch back up.

I guess we already have the hats? And the GIFs?

Alright, I’ll go up into storage and get the boxes down, sheesh.