Season review: Dany Jiménez

Next up on the San Francisco Giants season reviews is right-handed reliever Dany Jimenez.

Season stats

2 games, 1.1 innings, 1 hit, 3 walks, 0 hit by pitch, 0 home runs, 1 strikeout, 3.000 WHIP

6.75 ERA, 8.44 FIP, 0.0 rWAR, 0.0 fWAR

Status throughout the season

Jiménez made the Opening Day roster. He was designated for assignment on July 30, at which point he was returned to the Toronto Blue Jays per the Rule 5 draft rules.

Season review

Before we get into reviewing the 30 seconds that Jiménez spent on the Giants, I just want to say something. When the season was suspended due to the coronavirus, and it was unclear if there would be actual baseball in 2020, I started recapping a hypothetical 2020 Giants season, pretending that games had actually occurred.

I made it about two months into that season when plans for an actual season started up, and let me tell you something: Jiménez was absolutely dealing. Hypothetically, that is.

It was a different story when the actual season came around. Jiménez, who was a Rule 5 selection, was given just two opportunities, and when he didn’t perform he was sent on his way.

Stay tuned to find out who the 2021 recipient of the “Connor Joe and Dany Jiménez Memorial Rule 5 Draftee Who Makes the Opening Day Roster and is Given No Time at All Before Being Returned to Their Prior Team” award will be.

Jiménez is just one name in a long line of players under Farhan Zaidi’s regime who have been given essentially no leash before being dismissed. It’s still unclear what made the Giants so interested in Jiménez that they wanted to put him on the Opening Day roster, while being so low on him that they were willing to return him right back to Toronto after two appearances.

As is, there’s not much to evaluate in his performances. The first was a bit of a disaster — 1 hit and 3 walks in just 0.1 innings — but that can be chalked up to nerves since it was his MLB debut. In his second outing he set down the side in order. He had just 17 strikes in his 37 pitches, and only struck out one of the eight batters he faced, but the sample sizes are too small to do anything with.

The Giants clearly didn’t think he was MLB ready, which is a bummer given the potential in his arm. In 2019 he struck out 16.7 batters per nine innings in high-A, then 12.3 batters per nine innings in AA. There’s a lot of life in his arm, even if the Giants didn’t give him the chance to show it.

Role in 2021

We know that when Zaidi identifies players he’s intrigued by, he often returns to them. So we can’t rule out the Giants finding a way to get Jiménez back on the roster, but it seems quite improbable that he’ll be a member of the Giants next year.

Grade

Had his DFA been strictly due to performance, he’d receive a low grade. But it seemed to mostly be due to a bizarre organizational strategy, so ...

Incomplete