San Francisco Giants Season In Review: Angel Pagan

Oct 24, 2012; San Francisco, CA, USA; San Francisco Giants outfielder

hits a double against the Detroit Tigers in the third inning during game one of the 2012 World Series at AT

When the San Francisco Giants acquired Angel Pagan from the New York Mets last season, I was all for it. Nothing against Andres Torres or Ramon Ramirez, both of whom were sent in exchange for Pagan, but I always liked Pagan’s game – even if he had a tendency to take banana routes in the outfield.

I expected Pagan to be the top of the lineup spark the Giants needed – his speed and ability to get on base severely desired, so color me surprised when the native Puerto Rican struggled out of the gate.

For the seasons first month and a half, Pagan was woeful at the dish – peaking at .256, while spending the majority of that time hovering in the low .200’s with an on base percentage that would make Hector Sanchez blush. His defense was, well, questionable to say the least and many had grown tired of the Giants’ “big” offseason acquisition. Still, Pagan continued to play through the struggles and was eventually moved out of the middle of the lineup into his more traditional leadoff spot (a stupid move by Bochy in the first place), where Pagan returned to form and proved to be the much needed catalyst the Giants were looking for.

The definition of streaky, Pagan had extreme high’s and extreme low’s during his season, at least statistically, having two months where he hit .375 and .342 and two months where he hit .210 and .245. The numbers all evened out though as Pagan’s pre and post All-Star splits where very similar, although, it was a postseason to be forgotten as the Giants’ angel in the outfield was only able to muster 13 hits in 69 AB’s and was relatively quiet on the basepaths, only putting up a lone steal in the Giants’ 16 games.

Still, overall, Pagan proved to be the player the Giants had hoped for when they acquired the speedy outfielder and despite the peak’s and valley’s of his season, Pagan still did what he was supposed to do.

Season Grade: B+