San Francisco Giants Lose Pablo Sandoval for Rest of Season

The injuries just keep on piling up for the San Francisco Giants and now Pablo Sandoval will be out for the season with a hamstring injury.

Pablo Sandoval booked it home on a sac in a 7-5 win for the San Francisco Giants against the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday July 30th. He went on the DL next day with what was believed to be a hamstring strain. Today, it was reported that Pablo Sandoval will now miss the rest of the 2018 season.

Giants Manager, Bruce Bochy, told reporters on Monday that Sandoval’s MRI revealed a significant tear in his hamstring. The news comes just as Evan Longoria returns to play after his broken bone in his hand, and with Brandon Belt hanging out on the DL currently.

Sandoval was hitting .248 with a .727 OPS. His homers were probably his biggest asset along with his defense recently. Sandoval was really enjoying a nice breakout in recent weeks and had become a reliable option off the bench at multiple times in the season.

The plan going forward is to backup first base with Austin Slater and Buster Posey and that sounds good. We could also see Ryder Jones a little more here in the coming weeks as well.

The other option is to potentially call up Chris Shaw, but that seems out of the question at the moment since the first base issue just doesn’t seem to be as big of a hole to fill as the third base issue. But, with Brandon Belt being out for an additional 8-10 days, Shaw might get called upon anyways. It would at least be smart to put him on the 40 man roster after Sandoval goes on the 60 Day DL since Sandoval will no longer be part of the 40 man in the immediate future.

Ultimately this is sad, and hopefully this isn’t how we remember the end of Pablo Sandoval’s second stint in San Francisco. I don’t know if he’ll come back next season, but for the last two seasons it has been really fun to see Pablo somewhat back to his old self, more so in the dugout and in the clubhouse than on the field. A personality type like his is infectious, and really does wonders for clubhouse life. This is more than a depth loss for the Giants, but hopefully he still sticks around the clubhouse and the team and can give back in that capacity.