It’s been an offseason of unexpected moves for the San Francisco Giants. No one expected them to pursue Luis Arráez as the answer to their second base conundrum, and adding a catcher (Daniel Susac) in the Rule 5 Draft wasn’t an obvious move. They addressed their rotation, as was necessary, but not the way that anyone predicted. And while Harrison Bader was a sensible center field move that some saw coming, most people probably expected that money to go to the bullpen first.
And on Saturday, shortly after wrapping up their Cactus League play with a 10-7 win over the Cleveland Guardians, the Giants made arguably their most unexpected move of the year: they signed reliever Ryan Borucki.
On paper, that doesn’t raise any eyebrows. When Jon Heyman first reported that the sides were nearing an agreement, I thought nothing of it; these are precisely the type of Minor League depth moves that teams should be pursuing this year. But then Robert Murray reported that it’s a Major League deal for Borucki. The team has since announced the move.
And now I’m extremely confused.
Borucki is a left-hander, which is, unfortunately, probably the best thing we can say about him right now. He had a strong rookie debut as a starter in 2018, and missed most of 2019 with injury. When he returned to good health, he did so in a relief role, and in the six seasons that followed he’s had a 4.26 ERA, a 4.53 FIP, and been worth -0.1 fWAR.
Those numbers are almost entirely propped out by a bizarre 2023, when Borucki had an exceptional 2.45 ERA (but just a 3.50 FIP), behind a truly wild outlier stat: despite averaging 3.4 walks per nine innings for his career, Borucki issued just four free passes in 40.1 innings in 2023.
Remove that year, and it’s been an ugly decade for the 6’4 southpaw, who had a 4.94 ERA in 2021, a 5.68 ERA in 2022, a 7.36 ERA in 2024, and a 4.63 ERA a year ago. There wasn’t a lot going on under the hood last year to make that 4.63 ERA look good, either (though his FIP was a mildly better 4.25). He struck out just 8.2 batters per nine innings, while walking 4.1. His fastball velocity of 93.9 mph was in the 43rd percentile in the Majors, which looks notably worse if you just look at relievers. Despite inducing a large amount of soft contact and groundballs, Borucki’s still due for some negative regression, as his allowed batting average (.227) dramatically outpaced his expected average (.264).
In fairness, Borucki had a strong Spring Training. He appeared in six Cactus League games and pitched six innings, allowing just three hits, one walk, and no runs, while striking out eight batters. But the cold water on that performance is that he did so as a non-roster invitee for the Chicago White Sox, a team that lost 102 games last year … and he became available to the Giants when he opted out of his Minor League deal with the lowly ChiSox after being informed that he would not make the Opening Day roster. As a general rule of thumb, shoring up your roster four days before Opening Day with players that the laughing stock of the league doesn’t want isn’t usually a strong recipe for success.
The Giants are quite short on left-handed relief options, but Erik Miller, who pitched for the third time today, seems ready to go for Opening Day. Matt Gage has been fine, and Joey Lucchesi is in camp as an NRI. Neither of those two are exciting, but I would expect them to be better than Borucki (and the same can be said for Juan Sánchez, who was recently reassigned to Minor League camp). Gage doesn’t have options and it’s hard to see him making a roster that includes both Miller and Borucki, so he’s probably not incredibly comfortable right now. To make space on the 40-man roster, Hayden Birdsong was transferred to the 60-Day Injured List.
Anyway, the Giants made a move at the 11th hour and I don’t understand it. But they’re smarter than I am, so hopefully they understand it. They sure keep us on our toes, don’t they?
