SF Giants players and coaches as Star Wars characters

SF Giants as Star Wars characters
Donovan Solano: R2-D2

This one seems fairly obvious. Both Donovan Solano and R2-D2 are a little shorter, but both are incredibly reliable and can get you out of a fix when you need them to.

When you need to open a door as you are running away from Stormtroopers on Bespin, you know that R2 is your guy. And when you’ve got a runner on second base with two outs, Donnie Barrels is the man that you want up at the dish.

Their origin stories are also quite similar if you think about it. I know that people like to trash on the prequels, but if you remember back to The Phantom Menace, R2 was one of the few astromech droids that tried to go out and fix Queen Amidala’s ship as they sought to break through the Trade Federation’s blockade of Naboo.

R2 was the only one able to fix it even though it was clear that they saw the droids as fairly expendable and he obviously was a fixture for the rest of the series.

Similarly, Solano was not expected to do much when Farhan Zaidi signed him back in 2019. We thought maybe he’d be a solid bench player for the team. He actually wound up being their best hitter over the course of the past two seasons and got off to an excellent start for the team even after they fought to keep his salary down this year.

Solano and R2 are kindred spirits, and let’s just hope Solano gets back on the field as soon as possible so he can emulate R2 even more.