Dave Righetti is still a Giant

There have been - and will continue to be - mass changes across the San Francisco Giants organization. The franchise is getting a face lift, and that means cutting ties with many of those responsible for giving them their current face.

Speaking of faces, few non-player faces are as familiar to Giants fans as that of Dave Righetti. Rags played for the Giants from 1991-1993, before joining the organization as a pitching coach in 2000.

After 2017, Raghetti was demoted to special assistant to Bobby Evans, quite arguably to serve the role of scapegoat. All of the Giants scapegoating, of course, served only to delay their realization of the truth: That the team wasn’t good, and needed changes.

Righetti will not be one of those changes. According to Hank Schulman, Rags will stay in the organization for his 20th season (23rd if you count playing days), though his role has yet to be determined.

Now, I’m not sure anyone outside of the organization has enough intel on Righetti to know whether or not retaining him is beneficial to the direction of the team. But it is comforting to see that they’re not having a fire sale simply to have change for change’s sake.

And I’ll be honest. While the team needs to begin a whole new chapter if they want to return to the land of hardware the likes of which the Dodgers have never seen in my lifetime, I like seeing someone who makes me sentimental.

Righetti reminds me of Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Ryan Vogelsong. He reminds me of Noah Lowry, Robb Nen, and Kirk Rueter. He reminds me of championships. I like championships.

The organization isn’t acting on sentimentality anymore. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be some, anyway.