Yankees sign Randy Winn to one-year deal

Posted on January 27, 2010

Randy Winn of the San Francisco Giants slides home safely as New York Mets catcher Ramon Castro applies a late tag during their game at AT&T Park in San Francisco, CA on August 27, 2005. (Photo by Brad Mangin)

 

The New York Yankees, desperate to fills some holes in their outfield have signed aging free agent Randy Winn to a one year deal for 2010 according to Joel Sherman of the New York Post. The deal is worth $2 million according to Jon Heyman of SI.com. The switch-hitting Winn spent the last several years with the Giants playing a terrific right field at AT&T Park, but his offensive numbers have deteriorated so bad he is now useless as a right-handed hitter.

Winn had just an awful year at the plate for the Giants ion 2009, hitting .262 with just 2 homers and 51 RBIs in 597 plate appearances. He is so bad batting right-handed that you can’t even risk sending him up to the plate against any lefties. The only thing that saved him over his last few years in San Francisco was his skill in playing one of the most difficult right fields in all of baseball: AT&T Park.

I have been photographing Randy Winn longer than pretty much every other working photographer out there. I first shot Winn in 1989 (see above) when he was playing for the Danville Little League All-Stars as a 15-year-old in Danville, CA while I was working my first newspaper job out of college at the San Ramon Valley Times. Winn went on to star at San Ramon Valley High School in both baseball and basketball and then made a name for himself playing college hoops with Steve Nash for coach Dick Davey at Santa Clara.

Winn started out his baseball career with the Devil Rays in 1998 and had a break-through year in 2002 when he oput up the best numbers during his stay in Tampa Bay by hitting .298 with 14 homers and 75 RBIs. He was traded to Seattle before the 2003 season and had a few decent years for the Mariners before he got the break of his life, when on July 30, 2005 he was traded to the Giants for Jesse Foppert and Yorvit Torrealba.

After Winn arrived in San Francisco he played out of his freaking mind for two months, hitting .359 with 14 homers and 26 RBIs in just 58 games. In September Winn was named National League Player of the Month after he banged out 51 hits and hit 447. Just the way you want to perform when you are auditioning for a new club. Luckily for him Giants GM Brian Sabean was easily impressed and signed him to a fat contract extension worth $23.25 million over three years. Yikes! Soon Giants fans would be counting down the days till that contract expired.

Winn is a very quite guy around the clubhouse who leads the young players by example and is well-respected by his teammates. That is cool, but he can’t play anymore, and the Yankees and their fans are in for a rude awakening this season, especially when he comes to the plate in a big situation and rolls over, hitting a weak ground ball to second base. Winn would probably make a good coach or manager in the future if he wanted to stay in baseball. He might need to do that sooner rather than later, as his playing days are numbered. Beware Yankee fans!