San Francisco Giants Lose LHP Eric Surkamp

The Giants lost young lefty Eric Surkamp today to a waiver claim by the Chicago White Sox.  The Giants designated Surkamp for assignment last week in order to free up a spot on the 40-man roster for recent free agent signee Mike Morse.  I, for one, am a little sad to see Surkamp go.

Surkamp looked promising a couple of years ago, when he got six starts for the Giants at age 23. He wasn’t particularly effective, but he looked like someone who could help the team as a fifth starter in the fairly near future.  Instead, he blew out his elbow tendon and had Tommy John surgery in late July of 2012.

Surkamp came back from the surgery last year and looked quite good at AAA Fresno, posting a 2.78 ERA across 11 starts and 78.1 innings pitched with solid ratios.  It certainly put him back in the mix with Ryan Vogelsong and Yusmeiro Petit for the Giants’ fifth starting slot in 2014.  Given that both Vogelsong and Petit are big question marks going into 2014, it would have been nice to have at least one more viable candidate around.  The Giants certainly have better pitching prospects in their system than Surkamp, but they’re all a long way from being major-league-ready.

The irony is the Giants just freed up a roster spot by selling Brett Pill‘s rights to the Kia Tigers of South Korea’s KBO.  Unfortunately, the timing was such that the Giants had to designate Surkamp before the Pill sale was finalized.  In fact, as of this moment the Giants’ website still lists Pill on the 40-man roster, meaning the team can claim somebody else off of waivers when the roster space officially opens.

For what it’s worth, the Giants have already claimed two young pitchers off waivers earlier this off-season, Erik Cordier and Jose De Paula.  Cordier is a big right-hander with a big fastball (it reportedly sometimes reaches 100 mph) but not enough command. The Giants are reportedly hoping they can make some adjustments with his mechanics and turn him into a serviceable major league reliever.

De Paula is a smallish lefty who the Padres gave up on after a fairly decent half season (14 starts) in AA ball last year.  De Paula missed all of the 2012 season with what one website says were “visa issues”, meaning De Paula may be older than his reported age 23.

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