Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
What Tommy La Stella knew excited him.
He mentioned Muir Woods and Napa, but the 2020 Oakland Athletic said he has not gotten to explore the area as much as he wants. He had known Scott Harris from when the Giants GM was with the Cubs, who then just had a utility player in La Stella. He bonded over the phone with Gabe Kapler, who is “thoughtful” and a “progressive thinker,” the manager doubling as a recruiting tool.
The Giants had competition, but they extended a third year and landed a coveted target with a backloaded, $18.75 million deal that makes the 32-year-old the only player on their roster due money in 2023.
“San Francisco’s where I wanted to be,” La Stella said on an introductory Zoom news conference Thursday. “So I’m very relieved we were able to get it done. And the third year was important — I felt like wherever I went, I wanted to be able to be there for a few years and to be a part of something. Certainly you can be a part of something in two years, but to get that extra year to be around the same faces and build something together was my goal.”
The Giants have been building something since Farhan Zaidi came aboard, but had not been confident enough in a building block to go three years on a free agent until now. La Stella fits in so many ways this season and the next couple.
Immediately, he becomes a contingency plan at first should Brandon Belt not be ready for the start of the season. The Giants had lacked a lefty-hitting second baseman to platoon with Donovan Solano and Wilmer Flores, and he fills that need. The club didn’t have another third-base option last season to spell Evan Longoria — who played 53 of 60 games through an oblique problem — and now they have a solid lefty hitter to give him nights off. They love La Stella’s bat, and they have so many ways to get it into the lineup.
They do not have a top prospect ready to play second or third, and the closest is likely Will Wilson, who hasn’t played above Rookie ball. Even so, Wilson is a righty hitter who, if things pan out well, could platoon with La Stella eventually. He isn’t blocking anyone.
Not that La Stella knows or worries about that. He said he looked into the farm system “a little bit,” but cared more about the current roster that has both experience and youth. He mentioned Buster Posey, Evan Longoria, Belt and Brandon Crawford, most with World Series rings like the one La Stella won with the Cubs.
“It’s a unique group. I think that was one of the reasons it was so intriguing to me,” said La Stella, a New Jersey native who played 27 games with Oakland last season and wants more of the Bay Area. “They’ve got a nice blend of guys who have been around, very accomplished players, won multiple championships and some younger players who are coming up and blossoming into great players, too. So I think the opportunity to come here and learn from those guys and collaborate was high on my list.”
The Giants’ interest in La Stella did not need much explaining because it is as if Zaidi himself molded him. La Stella led the majors last year in strikeout rate at 5.3 percent, which wasn’t even particularly close. He fanned 12 times and walked 27 times in 228 plate appearances while posting a .370 on-base percentage.
If those numbers sound like ones that would make Zaidi swoon, well, they are. He didn’t need to look down to double-check the back of La Stella’s baseball card.
“I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time just staring at his 27-walk-to-12-strikeout ratio from last year,” said Zaidi, who let Harris and Kapler do the heavy lifting in recruiting. “That probably says more about me than him, although it does say a lot about him.”
The Giants believe strongly in a culture that values improvement at each stage, and La Stella has improved with age.
He always has had the bat-to-ball skills, though they have been honed. What’s most impressive is he added power to his game — 16 home runs in 2019, five in last year’s abbreviated season — without sacrificing strikeouts. Earlier in his career, he pinch-hit often and had to face late-game heat from relievers, creating plenty of difficult at-bats. The reps have kept adding up, and his at-bats have gotten better.
He hates striking out and lets “the flow of the at-bat dictate my approach,” he said. It’s an approach a bit at odds with the one that Donnie Ecker, Justin Viele and Dustin Lind advised last season, which viewed strikeouts as an at-times reality of a quality at-bat. The Giants’ hitting team has wanted batters to wait for their pitch and not change approaches according to the count.
“If I’m facing a particularly difficult pitcher, somebody that I don’t see well, I don’t think it suits me to be trying to drive the ball over the fence,” said La Stella, who said he’s heard “wonderful things” about the Giants’ hitting coaches but has not connected with them yet. “…Over the years I’ve kind of identified the moments where I feel like I can take a shot versus more just focusing on bat-to-ball skills and hopefully finding some grass out there.”
However he does it, the Giants will take the results over the past few seasons, which included a 2019 All-Star Game appearance. He’s a bit of an oddity as a late bloomer and hasn’t gotten more than 360 plate appearances in a season in his career. Zaidi said he expects that to change this year.
Getting 500 at-bats would be a first. The Giants hope after 2023, it’ll be a third.