Giants Say Good Night to Late Night LaMonte in an Effort to Jolt Offense

Four years ago, LaMonte Wade Jr. seemingly came out of nowhere — he was acquired in a minor trade following a couple cups of coffee in Minnesota — to help the Giants win 107 games and their first division title since 2012. His stream of clutch hits in a close NL West race earned him the nickname “Late Night LaMonte,” and while he couldn’t quite replicate that timeliness in subsequent seasons, he continued to do solid work in a platoon capacity for the Giants, at least until this year. Last week, with the team in the midst of a 2-6 slide during which they scored just 13 runs, president of baseball operations Buster Posey designated Wade for assignment as part of a shakeup aimed at upgrading the offense.

The 31-year-old Wade, who played with Posey on that 2021 squad, was dealt to the Angels for a player to be named later or cash on Sunday, with the Giants sending some unspecified amount of money towards the remainder of his $5 million salary. He was replaced on the roster by Dominic Smith, who had opted out of a minor league contract with the Yankees earlier in the week. Backup catcher Sam Huff was also DFA’d, while infielder Christian Koss was optioned to Triple-A Sacramento. Catcher Andrew Knizner and outfielder Daniel Johnson were both called up from Sacramento to replace them; each had signed minor league contracts with the Giants in May.

With the three new players in the lineup, the Giants proceeded to reel off five straight victories against the Padres (salvaging a split of their four-game series) and Braves (sweeping the weekend series) to lift their record to 38-28, good enough to slide into second place in the NL West, 1 1/2 games behind the Dodgers. Not that the offense really awoke from its slumber. While the team did score 21 runs in those five games, breaking its streak of consecutive games scoring four or fewer runs at 16, its longest since 1965 (h/t Andrew Baggarly), the Giants hit just .200/.256/.327 (64 wRC+) over that stretch, worse than their .223/.304/.306 (77 wRC+) during the eight-game skid. The new guys, in case you were wondering, went 7-for-36 with two doubles and a walk. For the moment, correlation is good enough.

Wade had scuffled from the outset of the season, starting with an 0-for-16 streak that began on Opening Day and ended with a pinch-homer against the Astros on April 2 — his only home run to date. He collected three hits, all for extra bases, in his next game on April 4, but managed just four more multi-hit games since. At the time of the deal, he had hit just .167/.275/.271 (59 wRC+) with -1.1 WAR in 169 plate appearances. That was a sudden and startling drop-off for a player who had hit .260/.380/.381 (119 wRC+) in 401 PA last year — with career highs in both batting average and on-base percentage — and .256/.373/.417 (120 wRC+) in 519 PA in 2023. That said, he tailed off after a hot start to his 2024 season, hitting .311/.438/.419 (147 wRC+) before the All-Star break but just .207/.316/.341 (87 wRC+) after.

With his home run total dropping from 17 in 2023 to eight last year, Wade spent the winter tweaking his mechanics, widening the distance between his leges and lowering his hands and his crouch. Unfortunately, the changes seem to have backfired, starting with a slower swing. Statcast’s bat tracking metrics show that he dropped from an average bat speed of 72.8 mph in the second half of 2023 and 72.4 mph in ’24 to 69.7 mph, a substantial fall-off. While his squared-up rate actually improved slightly (from 27% to 29.1%), his blast rate — reflecting a combination of a fast swing and squared-up contact — fell from 13.3% to 8.4%.

Though Wade’s average exit velocity this year was right in between those from his previous two seasons, he wasn’t consistently hitting the ball as hard as in either of the past two seasons:

A few things in this table jump out. For one, I’ve included maximum exit velocity, useful as a measure of a player’s raw power. Here we see Wade down over three miles per hour relative to last year, an alarming drop and another sign that all may not be right. Second, Wade’s average launch angle increased by more than 10 degrees relative to last year. He’s hitting the ball in the air a lot more often — his groundball rate has dropped from 39.6% to 30.4% — but doesn’t have much to show for it. Particularly with his decreased raw power, the result has been enough cans of corn to fill a supermarket end cap.

Third, the tightly-bunched average exit velocities obscure the differing distributions underlying them, which are more visible using what Tom Tango calls “Best Speed” — the average exit velocity of the hardest-hit half of a player’s batted balls. On Statcast’s own customizable leaderboard, it’s abbreviated as EV50 even though it doesn’t represent a 50th-percentile batted ball the way EV90 denotes a 90th-percentile batted ball (which some prefer to using max EV because it’s stickier year to year). Where Wade averaged 99.5 mph on his top 50% of batted balls in 2023 and improved to 101.2 mph in ’24, he’s down to 97.8 mph this year. On a percentile basis among batters with at least 150 PA, those averages represent fluctuations from the 44th percentile to the 76th and then down to the 15th. Meanwhile, Wade’s barrel rate also ranks in the 15th percentile, his hard-hit rate in the 10th.

Wade’s struggles weren’t for lack of trying. Here’s what hitting coach Pat Burrell told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Shayna Rubin in late May:

“We all feel for him and what he’s going through because he’s working so hard,” Burrell said. “With him it’s all timing. From a timing standpoint, the work isn’t translating and it’s very frustrating… To his credit, he hasn’t given in one day and is working his ass off. My opinion, from what I’ve seen over the years, is that if you have relentless workers that keep fighting for it, they get results.

“When you’re struggling with your timing and feel like you’re late, feeling like you’re taking big swings, it’s because you’re trying to catch up. When you’re trying to catch up, you don’t make as good decisions. It’s that simple. When you’re making poor decisions, a lot of the time it’s not because you’re on time. He’s not a guy that chases, he’s a guy that understands the strike zone better than anybody we have. That’s when you know he’s really fighting.”

The trade of Wade to the Angels marks the first time general manager Zack Minasian and his brother, Angels GM Perry Minasian, have come together on a deal. Anaheim already has a lefty-swinging first baseman in Nolan Schanuel, but all of the Halos outfielders — regulars Taylor Ward, Jo Adell, and Jorge Soler, plus reserve Matthew Lugo, the recently returned Mike Trout, and the recently acquired Chris Taylor — are righties. Wade’s defensive metrics in the outfield are nothing to write home about (-7 DRS and -6 FRV in 1,171.2 career innings), but he should add a bit of balance to the mix, at least if the Angels aren’t too inclined to wonder why they’re giving playing time to two unproductive veterans recently jettisoned by other California teams (Taylor was released by the Dodgers on May 18). It’s par for the course in the land of Mickey Mouse.

Back to the Giants, while Wade’s last 350 or so PA dating back to mid-2024 have been quite bad, it’s surprising that they chose to move on to Smith, a 29-year-old lefty who has been sub-replacement level for half a decade. A former Mets prospect who was leapfrogged by Pete Alonso and briefly tried to play the outfield with dreadful results (-20 FRV in 1,330 innings in left field from 2018–21), Smith hit for a 150 wRC+ across 396 PA with the Mets in 2019 and ’20; the universal DH in the pandemic-shortened season was a godsend to him. He’s never come close to living up to that, managing just a .241/.311/.360 (87 wRC+) line and -1.2 WAR in 1,538 PA with the Mets, Nationals, Red Sox, and Reds from 2021–24; additionally, he briefly passed through the Cubs, Rays, and Yankees organizations without playing a regular season game for any of them. After opting out of his minor league deal with the Yankees at the end of spring training, he found no better offers, so he re-signed and hit a tepid .255/.333/.448 (105 wRC+) at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

Unlike Wade, whose platoon splits tilt heavily toward right-handers, Smith is largely platoon-neutral, albeit with a career 91 wRC+ against lefties and 98 against righties. He’s started all five games since joining the Giants, each versus a righty. He collected three hits, including a two-run double off the Padres’ Dylan Cease in a 3-2 win on June 5, and a pair of sacrifice flies in a 5-4 win the next night.

Manager Bob Melvin now has multiple right-handed options to pair with Smith in a platoon or job share in Jerar Encarnacion, Wilmer Flores, Casey Schmitt, and David Villar. Flores, the Giants’ everyday designated hitter, has hit four homers in three starts at first base this season, including three in a May 16 game against the A’s. No other Giants first baseman has homered yet this season. The 27-year-old Encarancion, who hit .248/.277/.425 (94 wRC+) in 119 PA with the Giants last year, was activated last week after missing the first two-plus months of the season due to surgery to repair a fractured left ring finger suffered while trying to make a diving catch during spring training. He’s only played two games at first in the majors, both for San Francisco last year, but has 69 games of minor league experience there plus another 13 in winter ball. The 26-year-old Schmitt, a former second-round pick, is a utility infielder who recently picked up first base; he’s hit just .180/.281/.240 (56 wRC+) in 58 PA this year and owns a lifetime 70 wRC+. Villar, a 28-year-old corner infielder, has hit .200/.360/.250 in 25 PA with the Giants this year and owns a lifetime 93 wRC+.

Whatever combo Melvin uses for now, the Giants have an eye towards the arrival of Bryce Eldridge, a 6-foot-7, 240-pound behemoth who was their 2023 first round pick. The 20-year-old Eldridge, who placed 26th on our Top 100 Prospects list this spring as a 55-FV prospect and drew comparisons to Matt Olson and Adam Dunn, was recently promoted from Double-A Richmond (where he hit .280/.350/.512 for a 148 wRC+) to Sacramento, where he’s played just five games.

As for the other moves, the 27-year-old Huff, whom the team picked up off waivers from the Rangers in January, had hit just .208/.259/.340 (68 wRC+) with -0.1 WAR in 58 PA while backing up Patrick Bailey, whose defense has at least helped to partially cover his own Jeff Mathis-like .185/.246/.272 (47 wRC+) line. The 30-year-old Knizner, who spent part of last year with the Rangers after a five-season run with the Cardinals, is a subpar defender and career .209/.277/.315 (66 wRC+) hitter who was somehow raking at a .378/.512/.520 (185 wRC+) clip in 129 PA at the Triple-A outposts of the Nationals and Giants.

Koss, a 27-year-old 40-FV rookie who hit .299/.376/.496 (134 wRC+) last year in a season split between Richmond and Sacramento, made the Giants out of spring training. He’s played 20 games at second base as well as three at third and two at shortstop, hitting .219/.275/.266 (57 wRC+) in 72 PA. Johnson is a well-traveled 29-year-old lefty who had played 35 games for Cleveland in 2020–21 and one for the Orioles last year, with minor league stints in the organizations of the Nationals (who drafted him in 2016), Mets, and Padres in between. He was hitting .272/.312/.534 (114 wRC+) with six homers at Sacramento.

For one week at least, the Giants’ shakeup has paid off, and even if Smith only replicates his recent replacement-level contributions, that would actually represent an improvement upon Wade’s recent work. Still, Smith’s ceiling is much lower and the other moves should have minimal impact. The Giants also need to get the likes of Bailey, Willy Adames (.193/.281/.303, 68 wRC+), and Tyler Fitzgerald (.250/.306/.351, 88 wRC+) going in an effort to help an offense that ranks 12th in the NL with a 92 wRC+ and 10th with 4.11 runs per game. If they do, they could remain right in the thick of a surprisingly competitive NL West race.