San Francisco Giants designate Eric Surkamp to make room for Michael Morse

The San Francisco Giants have made some solid moves so far this Winter as they’ve added a couple of arms to their pitching staff and have recently signed left fielder Michael Morse.

Now the Giants were able to keep Hunter Pence on board after the terrific season he had with the Giants. I figured Pence would have a decent market, but made the right decision to re-sign with the Giants because of the bigger names out there.

Guys like Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran, Shin-Soo Choo, Curtis Granderson, Chris Young and Nelson Cruz were just a couple names available. Now nobody was going to take over Angel Pagan’s spot in center field, but left field was improvable.

Adding Morse to their lineup gives them the chance to have someone who can hit 30 home runs in a season. That’s something they haven’t had in awhile, actually since Barry Bonds. Pence came pretty close this season with 27, Pablo Sandoval had 25 in 2009 and Buster Posey hit 24 in 2012.

So now that Morse is with the team, someone needed to be removed from the 40 man roster. The lucky contestant chosen to be designated for assignment happened to be left handed pitcher Eric Surkamp. The 26 year old lefty has a career record of 2-3 and a 7.36 ERA with 13 strike outs in 29 1/3 innings pitched.

He finished 2013 with a 23.63 ERA.