Giants activate Brandon Crawford, recall Keaton Winn

The San Francisco Giants have made a pair of roster moves to meet today’s roster expansion from 26 to 28. Brandon Crawford returns from the IL after a 2-week stint and he’s joined by RHP Keaton Winn, who had made some noise in just five appearances but after being optioned to make space had run into some injury troubles in Triple-A.

Winn’s arm is needed as the Giants work their way through the rest of this seven-game road trip, particularly after Jakob Junis got in a lot of work in last night’s win. Meanwhile, it sure will be nice to have back Brandon Crawford for the season’s final month for one last ride.

It sure does feel like he’s been out a very long time, but it’s only been a couple of weeks, and earlier this season it was just a couple of weeks. If he avoids the IL the rest of the way, that means he’ll have missed a month this season, the same amount of time as last season; but last year, even though he didn’t end it on a remarkably high note, he came back from the IL strong and hit and gloved better than he did before his IL time. Through July 15 of last season, he had a .629 OPS. He had a .687 OPS in 179 PA from August 6 to October 5 (46 games).

Maybe he’ll be the straw that stirs the drink and propels the Giants to a run that pushes them into the Wild Card. Recall that he missed two weeks at the beginning of May, and prior to that point, through April 29th, his OPS was stalled out at .596. He hit .288/.374/.384 in the first 25 games after his return, reaching his season-best OPS of .679, which either coincided or ignited an 18-7 run by the Giants. After that, at the exact time the entire vaporized, Crawford hit .143/.194/.245 before this latest trip.

Normally, we’d say they could use his veteran presence, his bat and his glove, but one guy is not going to turn around what’s still a really bad offense. But the vibes? Well, all he can is improve upon them. Brandon Crawford might have a little magic left in him. Contrast that with the team they’re playing right now and you can see that vibes matter.

Welcome back to both and here’s hoping we see the best they have to offer over the final 28 games of the 2023 regular season.