Why Giambi Matters

Giambi is currently in his 19th big-league season. (Getty)

It’s a quarter of the way through the season, and Jason Giambi is proving to be more than just the “waste of a roster spot” we may have thought he would be. I will be the first to admit that I was skeptical about his signing. At first I thought to myself, “why not just bring back Thome?” Even though I was skeptical, I knew he would provide some sort of leadership to this young squad. I just didn't know how much that would be.

Giambi’s effectiveness on this lineup can be neither fully measured, nor denied. In Sunday’s 10-8 extra innings victory against Seattle, catcher Carlos Santana smashed a grounder to first baseman Justin Smoak, who fielded the ball cleanly. In previous seasons, Santana may have trotted down the baseline for an easy out. However, Sunday he never gave up on the play, and reached on an error after closer Tom Wilhelmsen dropped the toss from Smoak. "Giambi told me to just run hard and put pressure on the defense.” This is in reminiscence of Giambi bulldozing his 250-pound body head first into first base for an infield single during a 14-2 blowout of the Phillies.

(AP)

Giambi said he hoped that he sent a message to the young guys on, “how we're going to play this game, how we're going to play as a team and how we're going to act." If you don’t believe that one person can have an effect on players offensively, think back to the work Orlando Cabrera did with Asdrubal Cabrera a few seasons ago. Orlando helped the other Cabrera tap into the power he previously never used, and Asdrubal went on to slug a career-high 25 home runs en route to his first All-Star campaign. It’s not completely out of the realm of possibility to think Giambi cannot have the same effect on this 2013 squad.

While gaining the respect of his teammates, opposing pitchers seemingly still “fear” Giambi as well. Pitchers have noticeably been pitching around Giambi, knowing he still has power to hurt them if they slip up. Though he only has two home runs, he has driven a number of pitches back to the wall that have looked just inches short of being gone. As pitchers worry about Giambi, they tend to forget about speedsters like Michael Bourn and Jason Kipnis on the base paths, allowing them to record easy steals. 

By looking at his .188/.293/.375 slash-line on the season, it’s easy to think that Giambi is just a waste of a roster spot. It takes a much deeper, second look to see the effect he is having on this team in what looks to be a special season brewing at the corner of Carnegie and Ontario.