Giants likely to move bullpen mounds to outfield

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Oracle Park grounds crew was at work Tuesday morning dismantling the bullpen mounds that have been located in foul territory for the ballpark’s entire 20-season history. It’s a process that occurs every offseason, but this time, the removal is expected to be permanent.

President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said the Giants are moving closer to finalizing plans to relocate the bullpen mounds to the outfield, a decision primarily driven by the desire to improve player safety on the field.

“We made a lot of progress on designs that would have them move out to the outfield and potentially alter some of the dimensions out there,” Zaidi said. “We'll have more detail on those in the coming days. There's still some administrative and logistical hurdles to go through as far as that's concerned. The primary objective there, as we've talked about over this year, is safety and moving those bullpens out of the field of play, but that will certainly, at least to some degree, kind of change the offensive environment that we have here in this park.”

Zaidi doesn’t expect any potential changes to the dimensions to be drastic, but bringing in the fences would dovetail nicely with his stated goal of finding ways to improve the Giants’ offensive output at home. The Giants went 35-46 at Oracle Park this season, averaging only 3.34 runs per game at home compared to 5.02 on the road. Their 63 home runs and 271 runs scored at home both ranked last in the National League.

“I would still view the dimensions and the plans that we've looked at as maintaining the spirit of this park,” Zaidi said. “It's still going to be largely a pitcher's park. This has become a fair or more neutral park for hitters as time has gone on, and this season, I think it was as relatively favorable as any from a hitting standpoint. I think as we look at some potential changes to the dimensions, they will be directionally along the same lines.

“I don't see us doing something overly dramatic, where a year from now we're talking about unwinding some of those changes. I think we're going to be conservative with any potential changes there.”

Worth noting

● Zaidi said he has had some conversations with the Twins regarding reliever Sam Dyson, who went down with a right shoulder injury that eventually required season-ending surgery after the Giants traded him to Minnesota at the Trade Deadline. Zaidi maintained that the Giants were not aware that Dyson was injured before consummating the deal.

“We had some follow-up conversations with them,” Zaidi said. “They had some questions, and we were very forthright.”

The Giants moved three relievers off their Major League roster at the Trade Deadline, and Zaidi said Dyson was the most difficult to part with, as he had envisioned him potentially becoming the Giants’ closer in 2020. The deal with the Twins only materialized in the final 10 to 15 minutes leading up to the Deadline.

“You always want trades to work out for both sides,” Zaidi said. “We traded three relievers and two of them [Drew Pomeranz and Mark Melancon] have pitched as well or exceeded expectations for their clubs. Unfortunately, with Sam, it hasn’t gone as well. But I look at the guys that we kept, and we had [Trevor] Gott get injured, we had [Reyes] Moronta get injured, [Tony] Watson. That’s some of the uncertainty and the occupational hazard of being a Major League pitcher. I’m disappointed for Sam and for the Twins, obviously, but from the standpoint of anything untoward about the deal, I have no concerns about that at all.”

● Zaidi said he is interested in retaining many of the Giants’ free agents, including left-hander Madison Bumgarner, and will continue to have conversations with their representatives this offseason. Will Smith, Pablo Sandoval, Stephen Vogt and Fernando Abad’s contracts are also set to expire.

“He's got a tremendous track record as a starting pitcher,” Zaidi said of Bumgarner. “Every team in baseball could use starting pitching that you can rely on. I would just say, as a general statement, we've got a handful of free agents all that did a really nice job for us this year. We have a certain level of interest in bringing all those guys back.”