The Giants plan to add an outfielder/first baseman Gerard Encarnacion on the active roster before the start of tomorrow's series against the Reds, reports Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic. Encarnacion is currently traveling with a team to Cincinnati, he adds. The Giants would have to officially select Encarnacion's contract from the 40-man roster, but with so much cap space at the moment, they would only need a corresponding 26-man move to make it work.
It's been an unusual rise to the top for the 26-year-old Encarnacion. He briefly made his major league debut with the 2022 Marlins after spending four years ranked near the back half of their top 30 prospects but hit just .182/.210/338 in 83 plate appearances. Miami passed on him in unclaimed money last summer, and Encarnacion became a minor league free agent at the end of the season. He received little interest from MLB clubs and ended up signing with los Guerreros de Oaxaca in the Mexican League.
Encarnacion completed the Mexican League surge, hitting .366/.439/.989 with 19 home runs in just 107 outings. Even in an extremely friendly environment, his output has attracted the attention of major league clubs. The Giants got him a minor league deal and sent him to Triple-A Sacramento, where he hit .352/.438/.616 with 10 homers in 146 plate appearances. As in the Mexican League, the Triple-A Pacific Coast League is incredibly friendly, but Encarnacion's production still sits at 59% better than the league average there, with a wRC+ rating.
Although he has been a corner in his career, the hulking 6'4″, 250-pound Encarnacion has more than 600 innings of experience at first. That includes five games last week for the Giants. Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area writes on Twitter that the Giants have been getting new answers for him ahead of the expected call to the majors.
Encarnacion would add a right-handed bat with clear power and the Giants' first base and outfield combination. San Francisco currently has it Wilmer Flores on the injured list (and struggling to produce even when healthy), while a righty-swinging corner bat David Villar hitting .257/.270/.457 for a 35% slugging rate. That's a sample of just 37 plate appearances, but Villar also hit .142/.236/.315 in 140 MLB plate appearances last season.
Encarnacion himself has had a lot of hitting issues in the past, so he's by no means a surefire prospect this time around. He struck out in a staggering 38.8% of his Triple-A plate appearances with the Marlins last season, though he also walked enough (15.1%) and hit for enough power (26 homers, .224 ISO) to salvage a .228/. 347/.452 batting line in Jacksonville. He has dropped his strikeout rate to 24% with the River Cats this season and is still drawing walks in 12.3% of his trips to the plate. Those encouraging trends, coupled with the impressive production he's shown in Mexico and Sacramento, make Encarnacion a more interesting post-deadline call-up than a garden of change.
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