The Giants carried the same 26 players for the first 19 games of the season, waiting longer than all but one other team to make their first roster move.
The Giants carried the same 26 players for the first 19 games of the season, waiting longer than all but one other team to make their first roster move.
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SAN FRANCISCO — When David Villar was called into the Triple-A manager’s office over the weekend, he had no reason to believe the message Dave Brundage was about to deliver.
“My initial reaction was hey, maybe I’m getting moved, or maybe something else is happening, or it’s just a check-in,” Villar said Tuesday, after the River Cats skipper told him to get to Anaheim to replace Casey Schmitt on the Giants’ roster. “I was kind of like, ‘You got the right guy?’”
Not only had Villar been designated for assignment weeks earlier, San Francisco had gone the first three-plus weeks of the regular season without calling down once to Triple-A Sacramento for reinforcements. In fact, the Giants hadn’t made a single roster move from Opening Day until Saturday, when Schmitt was placed on the injured list with an oblique strain. Space had to be created on the 40-man roster for Villar, who lost his spot when he was DFA’d on March 25.
The lack of movement on the major-league roster so far is perhaps the clearest sign yet of Buster Posey’s fingerprints on its construction in his first year as president of baseball operations.
“Now, you’re going to have moves over the course of the season. But to only have one at this point, I think it’s a little bit by design,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Buster wants the continuity with the players here, and so far, so good. It’s worked well.”
By the time Villar walked into the visitors’ clubhouse at Angel Stadium, all but one other team in the majors had altered its 26-man roster for one reason or another. Injuries, bullpen availability, parental leave, performance — most teams had made moves by the first week of the season was over. The Phillies were the only other team with the same roster as long as the Giants, and they made their first move a day later.
It’s a decidedly different tact than the one taken by Posey’s predecessor, Farhan Zaidi, who was known for his tweaking on the edges of the roster. By this time last season, the club had made 17 different transactions; by this date in 2023, the number of moves was 23.
The stability has trickled down to the starting lineup, where Melvin has already used the same order five times. The most Melvin penciled in the same lineup last season was eight times, and no other batting order was repeated more than four times.
“Whatever you get thrown at you, you manage accordingly,” Melvin said. “But I think it’s kind of cool to have the same guys here. We have a little bit more of a set lineup. As far as the clubhouse too, it’s a tighter group that’s together when it’s consistent who the players are.”
The continuity isn’t just a departure from the previous regime but fairly novel looking even further back in franchise history. The Giants played 19 games without making a roster move, the longest the team has gone without a transaction since 1998.
“It’s different than the way things were operated before,” said Villar, who has gone between San Francisco and Sacramento since 2022. Even though it might result in fewer opportunities for other players at Triple-A, “I do think establishing a core group up here is kind of the way you win ballgames. I think you’re seeing it. Yeah, there hasn’t been as many moves, but everybody kind of knows their role right now and they’re doing it.”