The Giants announced Thursday that they’ve claimed catcher Meibrys Viloria and right-hander Drew Strotman off waivers from the Rangers. The team also reinstated Sam Delaplane, Anthony DeSclafani, Mauricio Llovera, Sam Long, Gregory Santos, Donovan Walton, Colton Welker and Alex Wood from the 60-day injured list. San Francisco’s 40-man roster is now at capacity.
Viloria, 25, appeared in 26 games with the Rangers in 2022 and, in 75 plate appearances, logged a .159/.280/.270 batting line. That’s similar to the output he managed across three seasons and mostly brief stints with the Royals from 2018-20. All in all, Viloria is a career .201/.270/.283 hitter in 276 Major League plate appearances.
That said, the lefty-swinging backstop has a far more appealing .257/.395/.412 slash in 108 Triple-A games. He’s also touted as a plus defensive backstop, boasting a 34% caught-stealing rate between the big leagues and the minors, and drawing plus reviews for his framing. He’ll give the Giants, who entered the offseason lacking in catching depth behind Joey Bart, another option on the 40-man roster, joining backup Austin Wynns and fellow recent waiver claim Dom Nunez.
Strotman’s stint in the Rangers organization will prove brief. Texas claimed him off waivers from the Twins on Sept. 19 and tried to pass him through waivers themselves not two months later. The now-26-year-old Strotman went from Tampa Bay to Minnesota (alongside Joe Ryan) in the 2021 deadline deal that sent Nelson Cruz to the Rays.
Strotman had Tommy John surgery in 2018, and while his velocity has generally recovered, that surgery and the ongoing command issues created some some concerns that he may have to move from a starting role to the bullpen. The Twins tried that approach in 2022, surely hoping that Strotman’s fastball and cutter would play up in shorter stints. It didn’t out, however, as the 2017 fourth-rounder pitched to a grisly 6.44 ERA with a career-worst 13.8% walk rate in 50 1/3 innings of bullpen work with Triple-A St. Paul this season. Strotman’s 24.2% strikeout rate and 51.1% grounder rate were both solid but not strong enough to offset the persistent location issues.
Things didn’t get much better with the Rangers. Strotman tossed 2 1/3 innings with their Triple-A club over the final week-plus of the season, allowing just one run and recording five punchouts. Sharp as those numbers were in that small time, he also walked three of the 14 hitters he faced, bringing his total to 36 walks (plus six hit batters) through just 254 batters faced in 2022 (14.2% walk rate).
Strotman has a minor league option left and was at one point a prospect of some note, so the Giants will see if they can get him on track. They’ve had plenty of success in coaxing new levels of performance out of pitchers in recent seasons, but Strotman is little more than a project at this point and shouldn’t be seen as a lock to survive the winter on the 40-man roster (nor should Viloria, for that matter).
Viloria is a good backup.
WHO
Zaidi already back to his usual way of doing business – more dumpster diving and no significant impact players.
Dude, chill. What sort of “impact players” were you expecting not even an hour into MLB free agents being allowed to sign with new teams?
I think he just wants to see FZ do something other than sift through the dumpster for a change. This team isn’t very good or particularly fun to watch.
I like Viloria but what is SF doing?
Adding a good defensive backstop on the cheap, it would appear.
Maybe we should find one that has learned how to hit..
He’s a backup catcher. He’s a plus defender and pitch framer. He’s cheap and under team control for five years.
What were you expecting from a waiver claim, Posey 2.0?
The San Francisco Giants. LOL
Who’ve won three World Championships to the Yankees’ one since the turn of the century.
What LOL?
World Championships? LOL when …..a decade ago ??
Team is terrible. Franchise has only posted a winning record above .500 Once since 2016
Again, what are you LOLing about? How long ago was the last Yankee championship? More than a decade, and for all the money Cashman has spent.
Frisco fans. Geez
I’m a Yankee fan.
@tonygwynn (we know it’s you) – Your pathetic existence on this site is based around rehashing the same boring Giants trolling lines over and over again, so you don’t really have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing fanbases or other people.
If this is the way the Giants are going to show their “financial capability”, they will sign about 200 players.
If it weren’t for Farhan, MLBtraderumors wouldn’t have half as many articles to write! I will be shocked if both these guys are on this team in a month since Farhan will find another shinny object he likes more by then and will need some room on the roster. So great for baseball and players like this in general who get washed out in the churn. Are they paying FZ per move or to actually put a competitive team worth watching on the field eventually?
you do know every team is going through this process right now right? This is their chance to stash players in their minor league systems after running through the process.
Most teams do it this time of year but FZ does it all year round! This is basically the only value he has added to this team since he can’t draft, can’t develop, can’t figure out the international FA market and doesn’t think he needs to actually sign a proven major leaguer! He may finally do that since the fans are ready to boycott this unwatchable team next year if he doesn’t. As soon as he signs someone it will be one of these guys that gets shown the door
@frugalfarhan
I wish they WOULD just boycott, because those fans are insufferable.
When Farhan took over, the team was full of dead weight contracts with an ownership group that refused to go into a full rebuild. Not to mention, the Dodgers and Padres are both powerhouses, so the idea of the Giants even being competitive was laughable…
… except that they won 107 games. And they did it by doing the “all year round” dumpster diving you seem to hate. In said powerhouse division, years before the team was expected to win, in a season that just being above .500 would’ve been cause for celebration.
That year wasn’t likely going to repeat given the aging roster, one-year contracts expiring, and not being able to bet on repeat years from some of the guys, so Farhan did his best to resign players he felt could bridge the team until they could build a more reliably competitive nucleus.
And now he is talking to FA shortstops, which will certainly cost the team money. The Giants are also widely believed to not only be pursuing Judge, but some speculate he may sign with them. We can wait and see what he actually does, and be able to form opinions then, but for now, we are not even three hours into FAs being able to sign with new teams on an article discussing two bottom-of-the-roster players the Giants picked up. Hardly worth grabbing your pitchfork over.
frugalfarhan, That’s a spurious claim. If you think other teams don’t do this year round you’re not paying attention. Follow a transaction tracker, and you’ll see every team making waiver claims, and DFA’ing guys year round. Some teams do it more than others, and FZ is more active than most, but all teams engage in searching for undeveloped talent, but mostly MiL depth, through the waiver wire.
The dumpster diving has officially started for the 2023 Giants lmao. What a joke
What the hell are we doing? We need to free up space on the 40 man roster to protect players like Luciano, Harrison, Matos, Casey Schmitt, Vaun Brown.. these guys aren’t it.
Wow, it’s refreshing to see a legitimately good critique of this move, not some overly sensational comment about how the Giants are a joke because they made some inconsequential move.
The Rule 5 draft isn’t until the Winter Meetings. They have time to protect Luciano before then. Whether Matos merits inclusion is up for debate.
Harrison, Schmitt, and Brown are not eligible for the Rule 5 this year.
Oh good to know. Thanks for the reply.
Woe is me, my team is constantly proactively seeking value at the margins.
They want to be the new version of the Oakland A’s/Tampa Rays, but with a massive bank account.