Of all the foreseeable problems from the multiple free agent deals the San Francisco Giants signed this offseason, Mitch Haniger not playing much was the most obvious.
Wouldn’t you know it, he’s barely played this year. .214/.271/.378 in 57 games (218 PA), the same number of games he played last season for the Mariners (.246/.308/.429 in 247 PA). In 2021, he played in 157 games (.253/.318/.485), missed 2020, and played in just 63 in 2019. Now, he will definitely exceed last year’s total at some point over these final 9 games, but what seemed like a simple path to playing more games than 2019 has been foreclosed thanks to these comments from Gabe Kapler.