Outfielder Brian Giles announced his retirement today, tweets Dylan Hernandez of the L.A. Times. The Dodgers had signed Giles to a minor league deal on February 7th, and soon after he told MLB.com's Ken Gurnick it wouldn't take long to decide whether his knee could hold up physically.
Though he's not a household name, Giles finishes with an excellent .291/.400/.502 line in 7,835 career plate appearances for the Indians, Pirates, and Padres. Giles' career OBP currently ranks 59th all-time. Giles made two All-Star appearances and received MVP votes in five seasons. He was involved in a blockbuster trade in August of '03, joining the Padres for Jason Bay, Oliver Perez, and Cory Stewart. According to Baseball Reference, Giles earned about $81MM in his career.
I guess he decided Dougie Mientkiewicz was just too good and didn’t wanna play for those Topes
I believe corey stewart went to the pirates from the padres in that deal, it was a 3 for 1.
So what you are saying is if a person has a good OPS they deserve to be in the HOF and therefore home runs, hits, RBI’s dont mean anything. Thats great.
My bad not a response to your post, the one below.
Brian Giles was a juicer, so no, he doesn’t deserve Hall of Fame discussion.
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The Pittsburgh/San Diego trade that sent Giles to the Padres was not a blockbuster. Pitt was roundly ridiculed for the deal at the time because Jason Bay was not considered a top prospect.
Huh, I wouldn’t have thought that Giles pulled down more cash than Nomar.
Good riddance to a bad person.
He probably was well behind Garrett Anderson at this point in terms of the Dodgers’ plans.
What??? Come on now.. Giles was a OBP machine, if he had anything left in the tank he would of made a great pinch hitter. Anderson has never even tried to take a pitch, EVER.
Luckily Coletti picked up Johnson.
Neither Anderson nor Giles are wonderful options at this point in their careers. They’re different players and Giles was superior to Anderson in their primes but like I said, their primes are well past now.
Not a huge bit of news, seeing as how it was a minor league deal and all, but I’m still not going to shed a tear that he’s gone.
So this means Doug M. versus Garrett A. for the LH pinch hitter role and X. Paul versus Reed Johnson (not sure what to make of Repko) for the RH role slash backup outfielder?
Ah. Wow. Thank god that happened because it seemed they took a giant step back when they signed him.
I know right, he was gonna take Ethier’s spot.
Giles was brought in to challenge Kemp for playing time, not Ethier. Gt your facts straight.
If Manny wasn’t careful, I think Giles might have snaked LF from him.
Sort of funny to look back on Cleveland trading Giles to Pittsburgh for Ricardo Rincon. Man, THAT has to go down as one of the worst trades in the past 20 years. Giles had an awesome stretch in Pitt after that.
Roids! I think its funny to hear Brian Giles and HOF in the same sentence.
Too many people worship OPS like it’s some sort of godly stat. Well wake up because there is more to baseball than OPS which I read about nonstop on here lol. Sure there are certain guys past their prime (i.e. Brian Giles and G.A.) but to solely focus on OPS as a means to get into the HOF is laaame and sadly is what a lot of posters on here would do if they were the ones judging the decisions. If you want to talk stats then throw all of the stats out there. Don’t continuously yap about OPS because that stat is really weak and seems to be pretty trendy as of late in the baseball world.
You do realize OBP and Slugging % are 2 of the very most important stats for a hitter? Combine them…and you get OPS. It’s not perfect (what stat is?), because it can penalize any speedster type of player because they generally will not hit for a high Slugging %, but overall it’s very good. But just like with any % stat, you need to look at sample size. Giles had just over 6,500 at bats, and just over 1,800 hits. Obviously he didn’t play long enough to where that .900 OPS would matter in a HOF discussion. Now if he had 2,000 more at bats, preferably earlier in his career, that would be a different story. If he had those 2,000 more at bats, he could have around 90-100 more homeruns (average 25 per every 572 at bats), 350-375 more RBIs (averaged 95 per 572 at bats), 400 more runs, around 120 more doubles, and 400 more walks.
If that were have to happened, we would be looking at a Brian Giles with about 370 homeruns, 1,450 RBIs, 1,500 Runs, 1,500 walks, 530 doubles, and a career line of around .291/.400/.502. That would be close to a borderline HOFer. But as the real case is, Giles had far few too at bats to be able to put himself into a position to be in a real position to be placed in the HOF.
Since we’re talking HOF here, and who should and should not be in, here’s a few pennies from me. Two guys not in the HOF who should be.
Steve Garvey and Gil Hodges.
I’m sure someone has some stat against them, but look at their careers, and the fact that I’ve heard some writers say they look for is “Were they dominiant in the era they played?” as how they judge a HOF player, how are these two greats not in the Hall?
Because they weren’t actually dominant? Both of them were memorable and very famous, but neither of them were true greats. Hodges was an integral part of a great team, but being very, very good on a great team isn’t the same as being great. Tony Perez got in on that logic, and that was wrong, too. Hodges in his best years was at best the fourth or so best player on his own team.
There’s a reason there’s a hall of fame AND a hall of fame museum. Garvey and Hodges have a place in the museum with guys like Roger Maris. It’s no knock on them. They’re just not inner circle greats.
Great career for Giles, and one of the great short baseball players of recent years. Too bad he spent most of his best years horribly underseen and underrated on mediocre teams. Kind of like a similar player, Bobby Abreu. Neither of them are hall of famers, but they both get plaques in the hall of very good.
81mm not a bad haul.
He was a roider, his numbers should be considered “enhanced by PEDs”. I hope he can afford a new pair of ‘nads with his 81mm.
And who exactly is taking him to court?
In all honesty Giles played in all those non friendly hitters park he could easily have had more HRs and RBIs…but otherwise whenever I saw that guy hit I thought he looked more like a football player than a baseball player dude was ripped PEDs couldve played a factor but that could be said for all those players during that era…
A professional athlete has to be on roids to be ripped? Call off the olympics.
I don’t think you got my comment at all…I said, “PED’s could’ve played a factor.” I didn’t state that he was on any sort of PEDs. This was me responding to this whole thread. All in all Giles was an underrated player. He was unbelievably hard to strike out and would always put up a battle.