Giants sign left-hander Wood to 1-year deal
The San Francisco Giants finally have a lefthanded pitcher in the mix for a rotation spot.
Alex Wood, an eightyear veteran who spent parts of five seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, signed a one-year, $3 million deal with the Giants Thursday that includes performance bonuses that give Wood the chance to earn up to $6 million in 2021.
The southpaw has only pitched in 16 games over the last two seasons due to injury issues, but the Giants are hopeful that he’ll regain the form he showed during the prime of his career when Wood was one of the Dodgers’ most reliable starters.
“We view Alex as a guy who is going to start games for us and hope we can give him the ball every fifth day,” president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said Thursday. “When you have reliable starters, that’s always going to be preferable to try and patch together 27 outs at the front and back of a game.”
Prior to the 2019 season, Wood had thrown more than 800 major league innings and compiled a 3.29 ERA during stints with the Braves and Dodgers. A shoulder injury hampered Wood upon his return to Los Angeles as a free agent last offseason, limiting the 30-yearold to nine games and just two starts.
Zaidi has seen Wood at his best, as the team’s top executive was the Dodgers’ general manager during the 2017 season when Wood repped Los Angeles as an All-Star and finished ninth in National League Cy Young Award voting. He said Thursday that when he saw Wood pitch during the 2020 World Series, the four scoreless innings he threw over two relief outings suggested he can still be a force in a major league rotation.
“For me, watching him pitch like that in the playoffs was reminiscent of when I’ve seen him at his best,” Zaidi said.
If he remains healthy during spring training, Wood will be a front-runner for a job in the Giants’ starting rotation. He’s the only left-hander with extensive starting experience in the majors on the 40-man roster and the performance bonuses in his contract were designed so he could take down the innings a starter would expect to throw over the course of a season.