Tyler Fitzgerald had one glorious five-week stretch for the San Francisco Giants in 2024 where he hit 13 home runs in 26 games. He fell off so badly that the Giants traded last season’s primary second baseman to the Toronto Blue Jays in early April. But now Fitzgerald is ready to revive his career with one simple change: He’s been traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Dodgers tapped their most reliable trade asset to scoop up Fitzgerald: Cash. Cash considerations, to be specific, which we think means they sent their check to the Blue Jays inside a thoughtful greeting card.
There’s a lot of reasons that the Giants gave up on Fitzgerald. He slashed .217/.278/.327 last season in an injury-marred year where he got demoted to Triple-A. His power disappeared but his strikeout rate stayed high. This year, Fitzgerald has struck out in more than a third of his plate appearances in the minors, with his defense looking steadily worse in his age-28 season.
So why should anyone expect him to thrive as a Dodger? Because the Giants gave up on him, and as per the blood sacrifices made from 2010-14, the baseball gods will curse the team until penance is paid and Rusty the Robot rises from his watery grave in McCovey Cove.
It’s also because Fitzgerald is the type of multi-positional utility player that has over-performed with the Dave Roberts Dodgers. Chris Taylor had similar numbers to Fitzgerald in his own age-26 season in 2017. There’s just something about being a middle infielder willing to practice shagging flies in the outfield that leads to wild success in Chavez Ravine. Just ask Taylor, or Kike Hernandez, or Tommy Edman, or Gavin Lux, or Howie Kendrick.
It could be that Fitzgerald will have a Mike Benajmin-like fade into obscurity for Giants shortstops who got insanely hot for short stretches (Benjamin had 13 hits over two games in 1995). But it seems like fate has placed Fitzgerald in Dodger Blue to punish the Giants for giving up on him, like how Michael Conforto got a World Series ring last season with the Dodgers (though he was terrible).
Don’t expect Fitzgerald to go back to his slugging ways right away with the Dodgers. He’ll wait until he can start hitting balls into McCovey Cove when the Dodgers visit again on the last weekend of the season, invariably knocking the Giants out of the wild-card race. Can’t wait!
