The Yomiuri Giants of Nippon Professional Baseball have agreed to a contract with outfielder Lewis Brinson, according to reports out of Japan. It will be a Giants-to-Giants move for the 28-year-old Brinson, who finished the 2022 season with San Francisco before being outrighted off the club’s 40-man roster in September.
Brinson began the season in the Astros organization on a minor league contract, but didn’t see any MLB action until after Houston dealt the outfielder to San Francisco on September 1. Brinson went on to appear in 16 games with the Giants, with only a .683 OPS over 39 plate appearances. While it did mark a sixth consecutive year of big league play for Brinson, his move to NPB presents a turning point in his pro career, as Brinson has yet to live up to the hype once attached to his status as one of baseball’s top prospects.
The 29th overall pick of the 2012 draft, Brinson was selected by the Rangers, but then moved to the Brewers as part of the trade that brought Jonathan Lucroy to Texas at the 2016 trade deadline. Brinson was part of an even bigger blockbuster in January 2018, when he was one of the four youngsters dealt from Milwaukee to Miami in exchange for Christian Yelich.
Brinson kept up his impressive minor league production amidst these moves, yet his Triple-A numbers simply didn’t translate against Major League pitching. Brinson has hit .198/.246/.328 over 1150 career PA in the majors, striking out in 327 of those trips to the plate. After four seasons of struggles with the Marlins, the team finally parted ways with Brinson during the 2021-22 offseason.
The Tokyo-based Giants now represent an opportunity for Brinson to get his career on track. Though Brinson has never been able to find himself at the plate in the big leagues, his consistently strong production in Triple-A (he hit .298/.356/.566 over 373 PA at the Triple-A level last season) provides some hint that he might be able to produce against NPB pitching.
So, he finally got the idea…
I remember when he was the #1 prospect of the Brewers. Never could hit for average.
Shoulda stopped two words prior.
Are you sure about that? He batted .343 in the 388 at-bats he took with the Brewers’ Triple-A affiliate.
Key word here is Triple-A.
Why are we talking about batting average?
@slowcurve I know, but the OP said he never hit for average.
@rememerthecoop I’ll be the first person to look beyond batting average, but OP said he never hit for average. Just saying otherwise throughout the minor leagues.
It’s okay, pirate dude. Batting average does matter, some folks would rather walk w men in scoring position than actually, you know, hit someone in. The hipsters think they all have it figured out because they are smarter than every other generation that came previous. Just ask them.
Well one, I never said BA isn’t important, just that you should always look beyond just BA. There’s a reason most people use the triple-slash, and it’s because each of BA, OBP, and SLG tell you three very important things about a batter: how often they get hits, how often they get hits and walks, and how many bases they rack up per at-bat. I still think there’s importance to it, just not the most important thing. Two, if I wanted to see how well a guy did with RISP or in high leverage, then I’d just look at average with RISP/high leverage. Last year, sub-.270 hitters like Charlie Blackmon, Jose Trevino, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Bobby Witt Jr., Wil Myers, Joey Wendle, Ben Gamel, Tyrone Taylor, Corey Dickerson, Travis d’Arnaud, and Willy Adames all had a BA over .300 with RISP. Jesus Aguilar, Salvy Perez, Aledmys Diaz, and Brandon Drury batted over .400 in high leverage last year. Heck, .256 hitter Harmon Killerbrew hit .271 with RISP, and .262 career batter Reggie Jackson hit .273 in high leverage situations. Three, you take advice from Earl Weaver who once said “your most precious possessions on offense are your 27 outs,”. The act of getting on base is avoiding an out.
@Sideline Redwine I 100% agree with you. Its sad that people think getting a walk is the same as a hit. A single with a guy on second drives in a runner, a walk in the same situation does nothing. I like some of these advance stats but you need to use a bit of the eye test and some common sense. I don’t need a random stat like WAR to tell me if a player is good or not, 99.9% of baseball fans dont even know how its calculated, they just hear it and think “wow this player is good”
@mlb perfectly summed up.
It’s relative to the player and his contributions elsewhere. BA is a piece of the pie. For some guys, it’s a bigger piece. For most guys, they do enough elsewhere that the BA slice on the pie chart is much smaller.
Whereas, a guy like Arraez, that’s kind of what he does. He swings and puts the ball in play, and you NEED him to have a high average for him to get anywhere near maximizing his value.
Where I am from you described a liberal or Democrat if you prefer, not a hipster.
How many AB’s do you think batters come up with RISP over the course of the season? How does that backup BA’s relevance at all? I don’t think you’re ever going to have somebody tell you a hit is equal to a walk in that situation. It also doesn’t prove BA is all that relevant, especially when you don’t use it with supporting numbers.
DP, it is sad you feel the need to bring politics in this. Bigly sad, HUGE sad.
Many players hit in AAA but never in the ML. That is why they are called AAAA players which every organization has.
Fish made out like bandits in both the Yelich and Stanton trades.
I’m assuming this is sarcasm, but they arguably did fine ridding themselves of that Stanton contract that is/will age horribly. And even if you do consider that trade a failure, their absolute fleecing of St. Louis in the Ozuna trade more than made up for the package of busts they got from Milwaukee and dump of Stanton.
Likely sarcasm, but it’s hard to tell. Getting nothing, however, for Stanton is a fail as even when injured (and injuries are his Achilles heel, even though I believe he’s never injured his Achilles heel!) Stanton can still crank out 30+ HRs during a time when HRs are now decreasing. Worse for the Fish, the Marlins will have to send the Yankees $10MM a year for the final three seasons of the deal, paying for him eight years after he left. Sherman basically sold for pennies on the dollar. He should have taken a more measured approach over the first year and he would have had a better return.
@Buzz Killington
You were good when you stated Yelich.
You lost credibility when you mentioned Stanton. I guess you’re one of the buffoons that said the Jeter gifted Stanton to the Yankees. That trade and the idiots talking about Stanton being gifted to the Yankees has been a running joke for us Marlins fans ever since Stanton’s first season with the Yankees. I’m chuckling right now as I post this.
No matter how you slice it, Jeter got hosed on both deals. Although I don’t think it’s better now…
I’m just saying though…all the people here that clowned me for saying others would get comparable/more money in a couple of years have been proven wrong…
And though I dont want to get into it, you cant possibly make the argument that you would rather pay $26ish million for Garcia and Soler, pay the Yankees more than almost anyone else on the current team, and still be looking for a middle of the order type corner bat/willing to give assets for it than just still having Stanton here right now
@formerlyz
For me, when the Marlins signed him to the deal it wasn’t so much the AAV or us signing him. It was the 13 years that made me not want it from day one because Stanton was already struggling to stay on the field in his early 20s, I didn’t have too much of an issue with the no-trade because you have to do that sometimes, especially with the challenges the Marlins have with getting guys to trust signing with them. If they gave Stanton 7 or 8 years, I would have been all for keeping him through the duration of his contract.
He probably was going to opt out though. Dont forget, it really was a 6 years/$107 million contract. If not for the pandemic, and him wanting to stay where he is, he easily could have topped the 7 years/$218 million remaining.
His injuries were all freak injuries, not as much as Cooper, but still not things I would worry about. I think the way he has been used in New York has partly been to blame for causing some of his issues the last couple of years. They’ve also pushed a lot of narratives b/c of judge and how the Marlins treated him as an asset, where they acted like he was 57 years old, and gave him up, plus paying $30 million if he doesnt opt out, to get the 4th and 5th guys they should have got back for him as the only return
Would anyone here knowledgable in the affairs of Yomiuri know if Adam Brett Walker is signed for next year?
I know he played there in 22, but I don’t know if he’s signed. His father played in the NFL.
Man Brinson or nick Williams, who’s going to be better, who do we hang on to… prospects man, heart breakers.
Lewis Brinson Comments should be closed
Cool. He hasn’t lived up to his hype, but he’ll get to enjoy a great country and culture while playing ball.
And he’s still young enough to come back.
Smart move by him to take the money and run..He’s a classic AAAA guy, who should do well over there..
Hmmmm…Let guess that Brinson goes there and bats about .290, has about a .350 OBP, hits 25 HRs, drives in 90 RBI and steal 30 bases.
He was starting to figure some stuff out that last go around, but the way they used him was always weird. It fits with his whole pro career though. He always took a couple of years to figure out each level, and usually did better after a demotion
Not that I’m suggesting he should have got more opportunities
Likable guy. Best of luck.
Always rooted for this guy, bet he’s gonna go off
Hope he does good and learns how to learn about hitting. That way he can come back and gave a couple good years
A reminder about prospects.
Good for him, hope he kills it.
Ah yes, Lucroy–refused a trade to Cleveland that year (they went to the ws, of course!), ended up in Texas, quickly found himself in the “where are they now” file. Dude was never much good after that. He could have gone to a world series, apparently was too good for that lol. People make decisions and have to live w the consequences. Dumb decision, dude.
We have a couple of those in Marlins history.
In the 199-97 offseason, Albert (Joey) Belle agreed to terms to play for the Marlins. However, he ghosted on the Marlins, and they didn’t hear anything until after he signed with the White Sox. Marlins pivoted to signing Moises Alou and went on to win the 1997 World Series.
In the 2002-03 offseason, the Marlins agreed on a trade that involved Mike Hampton and Juan Pierre going to the Marlins for Preston Wilson and Charles Johnson in a multi-player trade. Hampton proceeded to exercise his no-trade clause. Upon the Marlins trying to convince him to agree to a trade, he made it clear that he’d only agree to a trade if the Marlins immediately traded him to another team because (reported after being confirmed) Mike Hampton wanted “to player for a team that was actually trying to win…” The Marlins went on to shock the world and won the 2003 World Series. There was some further sting in this story since Mike Hampton and his family are long-time Florida residents.
Didnt the Marlins have to pay Hampton? I remember something like that
They might have had to. I know the Rockies were paying a good portion of his contract to get rid of him. With the Marlins portion, I don’t remember the entirety contractual parts of that deal, but the forced trade to the Braves and Hampton’s reasoning will always standout because of what happened.
I sat next to Keith Law at the 2017 futures game in Miami and made a joke that the Marlins would trade Christian Yelich for this guy in a couple of months, and in 5 years we’ll still be sick about it…
Man…
It was supposed to be a joke…
His three HRs in 2022 were all against the Dodgers. So I guess he was a good Giant!