Giants Latest to Pick up Rosario: Last?

As reported a few days ago by the Chronicle and SFGiants.com, the Giants picked up Sandy Rosario via waivers, after a successive of waiver claims - plus a trade in the middle by the A's and subsequent loss back to Boston, but not before shipping Graham Godfrey over the Red Sox for nothing - left Rosario with five team changes in this off-season alone.  He has not done much in the majors, in fact, stunk, but had great minor league stats.  Will the Giants be his final team of this off-season?

ogc thoughts

I think so, at least for much of spring training, as I have to think that he is out of options and must either make the team or be put throught waivers again.  I view this as another one of the Giants reclamation projects akin to their pickup of Santiago Casilla, not that he'll necessarily be as good (and who knows, he could be better, look at his minor league record).  A hard thrower who has had a ton of control problems in recent years in the majors, showing a major case of jitters perhaps, as he has had a very good career of controlling his walks in the minors.  But not only that, but he couldn't strike out many in the majors either.  Still, very limited usage in the majors, so who knows what he might do if given some time to calm down and pitch.

He had a bit of a breakout season in 2012 in AAA, 1.04 ERA in 25 appearances with 16 saves, 26.0 IP with only 20 hits and 2 walks, striking out 24 for a 0.7 BB/9, 8.3 K/9, and 12.0 K/BB ratio, showing the excellent control he has had most of his career, in fact, a career high by almost double in K/BB ratio.  That is Romo territory at the major league level.

Nice pickup, overall.  He's a strikeout machine in the minors, exhibit a lot of control, really, most of his career, his major problem has been giving up too many hits, in spite of all the strikeouts.  He would be really good if he can do three things with the Giants:  one, avoid the hits, the BABIP on him has been incredible in the minors, but that could just be very very bad BABIP luck because as a reliever, he doesn't get a lot of IP, two, bring his strikeout ability to the majors, where it has been sorely missing, and three, control the walks, and he does have those last two on his minor league resume, he just needs to bring that consistently to the majors.  And the Giants have had a pretty good record in the Sabean era with pickups, except for the dark years of rebuilding and losing.

But he will be 27 YO for the next season, so he does not have much more time to figure things out.  Hopefully the Giants pitching doctors, particularly Dick Tidrow, will find the cure for what ails Sandy.

He takes a spot on the 40 man roster, leaving the Giants at 38.

In addition, the Giants added Cole Gillespie, signing him to a minor league contract, which is just going to confuse me even more as we still have Conor Gillaspie in our farm system.  I have occasionally caught myself confusing the two of them for each other when reading about prospects.  :^)

Conor is most probably gone by opening day as I believe he is finally out of options and will have to be put through waivers once the Giants decide that he is not going to make the 25 man roster.  He has mainly played 3B, so he will need to show some versatility in spring that he can play other positions, else he's probably better off with an American League team that can DH him regularly.

I can see Minnesota being into him, they took Buscher off our hands a while back and gave him a lot of playing time despite hitting that was not that good at 3B (wasn't really good even for SS), though I don't know what their 3B situation is right now.  But like I noted, DH is probably a good spot for him.