About 10 days ago, I took out my phone and asked Siri to set a reminder for me:
Siri: remind me to write about Mike Ford on Monday.
The Giants had just acquired Ford from the Marines, and in his first game with his new team, he drove in two runs and got a hit. Farhan Zaidi is a known roster-fiddler, but this new player already had a major-league moment, unlike the dozens of players the Giants have put onto the 40-man roster, only to remove shortly after, like Jose Siri. This story would be different. Ford was probably going to be a contributor for the 2022 Giants.
He was designated for assignment before I got around to the article. Ford was removed from the 40-man roster on Wednesday to make room for infielder Donovan Walton, the subject of this article.
I warned you last time not to get used to any of the players acquired in these minor trades. However, with the deepest of sighs and greatest of reservations, I would like to proclaim this trade to be different. Walton is certainly a part of the Giants’ short-term plans, if not their long-term plans. He won’t be removed from the roster and quietly re-signed, like Luis González and Darien Núñez. He won’t be DFA’d before he even gets close to the major-league roster, like Ashton Goueau or José Godoy. And he won’t get an impossibly short cameo before being removed from the roster, like Skye Bolt or Ford.
We know that Walton will be a different story for a simple reason: The Giants didn’t get him for cheap. They gave up Prelander Berroa, an honest-to-goodness prospect. The 22-year-old right-hander was one of the players stolen from the Twins in the Sam Dyson trade, and he has a legitimate big-league ceiling. Most of the preseason prospect rankings had him in the Giants’ top 30, including our own Melissa Lockard, and he was striking hitters out in High-A Eugene this season. He wasn’t a fringe prospect they wanted to jettison.
The Giants needed to put Berroa on the 40-man roster or expose him to the Rule 5 draft after the season, but that doesn’t mean they had to trade him right now. They were in a similar position last year with Alexander Canario, and he was one of the main prospects in the Kris Bryant deal. Berroa absolutely could have been the difference between finalizing a deadline deal and being a runner-up.
This is evidence that the Giants either really, really like Walton, or they felt like they were going to really, really need him.
Or both.
So start with the basics. Walton is a 28-year-old middle infielder. He’s the second second baseman named Donovan in baseball history, and he should also be the second second baseman named Donovan in Giants history, but he’s also played short, third, a little outfield and even an emergency inning at first base. He’s a left-handed batter, and his offensive worth can be described in two stats:
Career minor-league walks: 205
Career minor-league strikeouts: 258
Those came in 1,935 minor-league plate appearances, but that’s not as important as the ratio, which is almost 1:1. When a batter is walking nearly as much as he’s striking out, it’s worth paying attention. That kind of ratio can tell you different things because 1992 Don Mattingly wasn’t the same as 2021 Wilmer Flores, who wasn’t the same as 2004 Ray Durham. But the ratio is a beacon unto front offices everywhere: Hey, pay attention to this guy. Maybe there’s something here.
But man cannot live on minor-league bat control alone. Unless a batter is an Ichiro-like freak, the walks will dry up in the majors when pitchers realize there isn’t a lot of extra-base risk that comes with challenging him. Without power, there’s a low floor that comes with the minor-league 1:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, which is why some bat-control specialists only have a ceiling of a barely acceptable utility player.
There is promise on that front, however. Walton set a career high for home runs in 2021, with 13 in 283 at-bats in Triple A. That’s not Fernando Tatís, Jr. power, but it got closer to a Brandon Crawford-type slugging percentage, which will do more than keep pitchers honest. Walton even has two dingers in the majors, so you can add those to the career high from last year. His homers look like this:
And he can apparently drive pitches off the plate inside when he has a mind to. Look at this Panda-like homer:
The defense is apparently strong, too: He’s made several minor-league All-Star teams, and he’s won a Minor League Baseball Gold Glove as recently as 2019, and that was at shortstop. But Walton struggled throughout his brief trials in the majors (.575 OPS in 102 PA), which is why he was available to the Giants in the first place. A decent comp might be Luis González, but a slightly older infield version.
If you’re into the personal side of things, Lookout Landing has you covered with thorough looks at his past and history. He changed his name from Donnie to Donovan to please his grandma. His dad was a promising pitching prospect who never made the majors, partly because of a tumor under his shoulder blade and partly because of a rotator cuff tear. He’s had a helmet thrown at his face by Heliot Ramos’ brother.
Everyone talked about the helmet throw at the time, but it left Ramos in a poor position, and he followed with a weak right jab. People should have been talking about the catcher’s elite mitt-throwing skills.
That’s 80-grade mitt-throwing, right there.
Anyway, that’s the who of Walton, and it’s part of the why. It’s not all of the why, though, and in the last two months the Giants have acquired:
• Luke Williams
• Kevin Padlo
• Isan Diaz
• Walton
All of them are infielders, and it’s as if the Giants have an alternate, secret Triple-A team, and they need to find platoons for it. I’m guessing the Cheyenne Pond Cats, but only because that’s what the minor-league-team-name generator spit out.
Why is there so much urgency with Evan Longoria returning to the lineup on Wednesday and Tommy La Stella playing nightly in a Triple-A rehab assignment?
Probably because a team that doesn’t have a backup plan for Longoria and La Stella — two mid-30s players with recent and substantial injury histories — is a deeply silly team. There once was a baseball team that didn’t have a backup plan for a 41-year-old shortstop, and while there were benefits to this plan (decades of Brian Bocock references), none of them showed up on the field. Alex Blandino was probably the original backup plan this season, but he’s in a dreadful slump to start the season. They needed a backup plan for the backup plan.
This all tracks, but the Occam’s Razor explanation of the trade might simply be that the Giants like Walton, and they’ve liked him for a long time. When they were in talks with the Mariners about Ford, Walton’s name probably came up. When the Giants acquired Padlo, Walton’s name probably came up. Maybe the Giants weren’t keen on trading Berroa just yet, or maybe the Mariners’ price was even higher at first.
And if it doesn’t work, they’ll call up the Mariners and get someone else. Just one more trade fills up their punch card and gets them a free prospect.
The Giants almost certainly have plans for Walton, and you’ll see him soon. This will make the eventual Mariners-Giants World Series that much more fun, just like Bengie Molina made the Rangers-Giants more fun in 2010, so keep an eye on that storyline. Until then, here’s another infielder for the collection. This one just might be different.
(Photo: Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)
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