Giants outfielder Luis Gonzalez will undergo surgery to repair a herniated disc in his back later today, reports Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic (Twitter link). The procedure comes with a sizable 16-week recovery timetable, which takes him through late June on the calendar. Once recovered, he’ll still need to build back up to baseball activity and game readiness.
Gonzalez, 27, got out to a hot start in 2022, his first season with the Giants after spending his entire career with the White Sox organization prior to that point. Through June 21, Gonzalez was hitting .302/.361/.447 in 180 plate appearances, but a lower back strain shelved him for the next two and a half weeks. He returned on July 9 but was back on the injured list with another back strain about six weeks later — this time missing the remainder of the season. Gonzalez may never have been fully healthy upon returning, as he batted only .204/.282/.270 in 170 trips to the plate between those two IL stints.
It was already known that Gonzalez would miss the start of the season due to ongoing back troubles, but an absence of this magnitude hadn’t been previously revealed. The Giants initially placed a four- to six-week timetable on his absence early in camp, but the team announced yesterday that he was seeking a second opinion from a spinal specialist.
The Giants are now down two outfielders, as offseason signee Mitch Haniger is dealing with a Grade 1 oblique strain that threatens his readiness for Opening Day. With that pair on the sidelines for now, the Giants will utilize Michael Conforto, Mike Yastrzemski and likely a combination of Joc Pederson and Austin Slater in the outfield to begin the season. Prospect Heliot Ramos was optioned the other day.
If Haniger is to begin the season on the injured list, that could also open the door for a non-roster invitee like Stephen Piscotty — who’s having a strong showing so far in camp — to make the Opening Day roster as well. Gonzalez’s long-term absence would create an easy avenue for adding such a player to the 40-man roster, as he’s now an obvious candidate to be shifted to the 60-day injured list.
Nice! Crawford and now Gonzalez. After teasing their fans with Judge and Correa, the Giants are now down to a borderline AAA team.
borderline?
Borderline, feels like I’m going to lose my mind. (Sorry, having an 80’s flashback.)
They’re long in the tooth too like M
Dude what? Gonzalez was going to be 5th outfielder on this team, at best. No biggie.
I’m definitely not a “dude”. I’m a woman, an actual one not a “trans”.
But you identify as a troll.
True
Too bad for Gonzalez, who looked decent (if a bit uneven) in limited reps last year. This quite possibly ends his tenure with the Giants.
I haven’t been following spring training too closely, but I get the impression Giants don’t want to throw Ramos into the same setting he failed to produce in last year. So looking like Piscotty makes the team.
No they don’t. The AAA failure was probably more telling.
The general consensus seems to be Sabol before Piscotty. Piscotty is going well, but Sabol is tearing it up.
Agree on Sabol, even before Joc in the outfield.
Let’s hope Sabol’s hot start to this spring isn’t a mirage, I really like him and his energy is infectious, always good to have a positive fun loving guy in the clubhouse to keep the mood up.
For the future, Matos is having a great spring and Vaun Brown was looking good too until his knee started barking. Giants are high on Grant McCray too. And Bryce Johnson stole 4 bags yesterday!
Well, Sabol’s bat is the main reason the Giants were interested in him. So far, he’s only been proving them right. Doubt he can keep up his crazy ST numbers, but if he can play an adequate LF and hit better than average, then he should be just fine until Haniger is 100% again.
Gonzo had options left and was not going to make the team. Ramos has already been sent away from ST.
Doubt Piscotti will make it out of AAA unless more injuries happen.
It’s good to have depth. Seeing it and obviously needing it so far this year. SFG will be fine no matter what all the trolls and naysayers think and see in their crystal ball of doom.
They have paid Gonzalez a fair amount of money to be injured, seems like the white Sox weren’t wrong in letting him walk.
They should probably move on from him at this point. By the time he’s ready to go other young prospects will probably push him out of the mix.
Give up on on a minor league player who doesn’t reach free agency until 2028? Good golly, this website is something else.
I thought he was on the minimum. If you are paying someone to be hurt, that’s about as good as you can do.
The Giants have paid him a grand total of 735k.
I’m happy I don’t work for you !
Id be happy to work for a boss that paid me 735 K. That said, it’s really not much in baseball terms.
I hear you. The minimum in an industry is the minimum.
The hits just keep coming.
He got it from overly swinging the lumbar.
Hoping for a full recovery. Could use a season in AAA to work on his defense and his base running which were issues last year. Doubtful he was going to make the club out of spring. Counting Joc, Wade Jr., and Sabol along with Yaz and Conforto there are five LH OF ahead of him on the depth chart.
John Bird, Totally agree, except I’m hoping we don’t see Joc in the OF at all.
Agreed
This is a lost season for Gonzalez and hopefully he recovers.
Bigger org question is why aren’t the Giants diagnosing their players med issues earlier?
His back was hurt last year; Xrays, MRI results? Belt’s knee issue coming out of the 2021 season. Crawford’s knee now; why didn’t he address his knee during the offseason, or did he?
The silver lining is Sabol. He’s going to make the opening day roster barring injury. If he can play Second Base that would be awesome. To make room on the opening day roster I could see Wade Jr. getting traded.
I read this a lot, Dave. In the world of medicine, surgery is nearly always the last option. Not throwing them under the knife straight up, doesn’t mean they haven’t been diagnosed.
It seems like a lot of injuries for the Giants, but I’m not that concerned. They have some depth, and the injuries are helping sort of the competition for roster spots. More importantly, the injury bug hasn’t hit the pitching staff (knock wood), like it has some other teams. Crawford is the biggest concern for me right now.
I think Estrada can hold down the fort at SS. Giants seem to have a lot of coverage at 2nd base, especially with Diaz and Wisely as left handed options.
Schmitt is not ready to play SS. That’s way too much pressure to put on a young player that could be a cornerstone for SF. Get him some AAA reps at SS but definitely don’t rush him.
Villar to 2nd, Estrada to SS, Schmitt to 3rd would work.
He looks ready to me.
Schmitt looks ready to me too but you know the Giants will start him at AAA. The only trouble with that is he won’t face elite stuff in AAA and he would in the majors and he looks ready for all of it, but I do understand they want him 100% ready and to come up and stay up. I’m really stoked about Schmitt, we haven’t seen this caliber of a prospect in a long time!
davemlaw, I agree Estrada can do the job, but it’s less than ideal. I love Estrada at 2B, and feel like the added pressure of playing SS could affect his hitting. Maybe it won’t, but 2B just seems like where he belongs.
I also agree that Schmitt probably isn’t ready. And maybe between Diaz and Wisely one of them might give the Giants some quality play. For a guy like Wisely ST can be misleading. When the regular starts, and pitchers start bearing down on hitters, and not working on stuff, it becomes a different game for young guys. Not sure Diaz is anywhere near an everyday guy.
My numbers guy was telling me yesterday that Diaz’ MLB defensive metrics at 2B are average at best. Not confidant at all he could cover SS.
They’re on a roll. Seems to be something every day since the Cobb comebacker.
Gonzalez can flat out hit but hasn’t had much of an opportunity to display it due to his chronic back injury. Hopefully dr’s will fix the problem and he can find his way down to Southern California next year to swing it for the Dodgers.
Meh poor man’s Trayce Thompson
Look at his statistics. Borderline player
He has only 350 ML PAs. At this point it’s more about scouting than stats. But, as stats go, he has an .827 OPS over his entire college, MiL and ML career. It’s too early to know if he’s borderline, or not.
After watching several games in Arizona at the beginning of the month, Piscotty looked better both at the plate and in the outfield than Ramos did, though admittedly it was a small sample size. With Haniger out already, who seemingly then was the only OF who was making solid contact, and the additional injuries already, this team will be lucky to be at .500 this year.
Wow. That was a giant leap in logic. So because Piscotty looked better than Ramos, and Haniger is injured, with injuries also to Crawford and Gonzalez, you’ve deduced they’ll be lucky to be at .500?
Forget all about the depth of the pitching staff. That Conforto has been solid at the plate (an .826 SLG. this spring). That Haniger’s oblique strain is of the mildest grade, and is expected to be ready for opening day. And that most other teams also have injuries, some to more key players than the Giants..
Plus the season is 6 months long. Even if Haniger’s injury lingers, there’s plenty of time. Fangraphs projected the Giants at 85 wins, and ZIPS projected standings for the NLW has the Giants at 88 wins. They’ll be very unlucky if they finish at .500 or below this season.
I just want to point out, you have issues with everyone’s math or opinion. And here you are criticizing someone who said a team who’s projected to win 85/88 games as you just said, who lost its shortstop and left/right fielder for awhile isn’t worth roughly 4-7 wins? The season is 162 so .500 is 81-81 and yet you act like this comment is out of line. Just wanted to bring your attention to your replies and some inconsistency within them. This is no way an attack just a different perspective or point of view.
If they said “they’ll finish at .500” then you may have a point. But, “this team will be lucky to be at .500” implies that they’ll actually be much worse than that which is, in fact, a giant leap in logic.
You might want to consider the possibility that Tad knows more about what’s happening at the Giants, than every single opposition fan on here combined. For example, an opposition fan on here stated the Giants were overpaying an injured guy that’s on the minimum. Perhaps there’s a very good knowledge based reason why Tad comes across to you as having issues with the opinion of opposition fans. In this case, the knowledge comes in the form of the lack of seriousness of the injuries you mentioned. At this stage,there is every chance both Haniger and Crawford will be suiting up on opening day. If not, they might miss a week. Hardly a situation that should have people projecting more losses. This is no way an attack, just a different perspective or point of view.
Thanks guynamedchris, i couldn’t have said it better. In fact had I tried, it probably would have been something long and rambling compared to your concise reply.
Get it fixed. Come back. Maybe be a piece at some point this or next season.