Murphy expected to be Bailey’s backup but Giants have options

Murphy expected to be Bailey’s backup but Giants have options originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Giants are run by one of the best catchers in MLB history and have a catcher as their manager. At the moment, they’re also pretty set at the position on their big league roster.

Patrick Bailey is coming off his first Gold Glove Award and enters his third season as a heavy favorite to win another one. Bob Melvin plans to keep leaning heavily on Bailey, who rarely asks for a breather, but when the manager needs the backup, there will be a familiar answer.

President of baseball operations Buster Posey and general manager Zack Minasian brought three new catching options to camp, but Posey said this week that he doesn’t see anyone other than Tom Murphy being Bailey’s backup at the end of camp. Murphy is coming off a season mostly lost to a knee injury, but he’s back to full strength.

“I think that’s our anticipation that he’s the backup catcher, but we’re also excited about the other guys that are in camp,” Posey said of Murphy. “You never know what’s going to happen in baseball. I’m hopeful that’s their mindset, that they’re coming in and knowing that strange things happen sometimes.”

The Giants dealt with that last year when Murphy hurt his knee, trading for former Posey backup Curt Casali because they were so short at the position in the upper minors. Casali and Blake Sabol now are gone, replaced by Sam Huff, Max Stassi and Logan Porter.

Huff, a former top 100 prospect, has the advantage of being on the 40-man roster after being claimed from the Texas Rangers last month. He has 78 games of big league experience and multiple 20-homer seasons in the minors.

Porter played 11 games with the Kansas City Royals two seasons ago and spent part of last season with Triple-A Sacramento. Like Stassi, he’s a non-roster invitee in camp on a minor league deal.

Stassi might be the most intriguing of the trio because he has 10 years of big league experience, just about all of them coming against Melvin’s A’s teams while he was playing for the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Angels. While Stassi has at times offered above-average offensive production, it’s his glove that always caught Melvin’s eye. There are some on staff who view him as an ideal backup to Bailey.

“Max was a guy that drove me crazy on the other side. He was one of the original (pitch) framers that was really good at that,” Melvin said. “He has had some injury stuff, some hip stuff, which is tough on a catcher. But he’s fully healthy now, he’s a full go, and he still really has soft hands.”

Melvin compared Stassi to Casali, who stepped in seamlessly last year when Murphy went down. Signed to a two-year deal to be a right-handed partner for Bailey, Murphy played only 13 games last season and never got close to returning from a knee injury.

Murphy missed part of Thursday’s workout with back spasms, but the knee is doing fine. Barring a surprise, he’ll again open the season as Bailey’s backup, and the Giants are hopeful that if they need help again, they can pull from their own Triple-A roster this time.

Ready for Late Night

When he strained his left hamstring on May 28, LaMonte Wade Jr. was hitting .333 with a .470 on-base percentage. Those are the numbers that make him such an intriguing choice atop the lineup, even with Jung Loo Lee back from a shoulder injury. But as has often been the case with Wade, his production slipped as he lost strength in his legs.

It has been an ongoing issue for the first baseman, who turned 31 in the offseason. But Melvin said Wade is reporting to camp healthy and “in a good place.”

“He did a lot of running, a lot of running,” Melvin said of Wade’s offseason. “He feels really good about his legs right now.”

A consistently healthy Wade could be a game-changer for the lineup, and he’s feeling so good at the moment that he even told Melvin he would be open to returning to the outfield at times. That’s not something the Giants want to do initially, but there’s a reason why it might make sense later in the year. The organization’s top prospect, Bryce Eldridge, plays first base, and whenever he arrives at Oracle Park, he won’t be getting many days off.

Right Back At It

Lee’s shoulder injury, the second major one of his career, came when he crashed into the wall at Oracle Park. The Giants will ask him not to dive and slide much in spring training, but nobody seems too intent on changing his style once the season rolls around.

“I’m not (scared) about bumping into the fence but of course, I need to be careful being a defensive player out there in the outfield,” Lee said through interpreter Justin Han. “But still, I had a lot of time recovering, so I’m not (afraid) to go out there and play defense.”

Lee said he had much more time to recover from the second shoulder surgery than the first and had a “great, great rehab with the Giants.”

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