The Giants have signed 35-year-old RHP Ramon Ortiz to a Minor League contract with an invite to Spring Training.
From SFGiants.com:
Ortiz peaked between 2001-03, when he went 44-33 for Anaheim. He defeated the Giants in Game 3 of the 2002 World Series in San Francisco, allowing four runs in five innings in a 10-4 Angels triumph. That was his lone Fall Classic appearance.
By my count, is this the 2nd member of the 2002 Angels team that the Giants have now signed? The other would be Bengie Molina. Ortiz played baseball last season in Japan for the Orix Buffaloes but didn’t have much success. According to the article, he went 4-7 in 17 starts with a 5.82 ERA. Interestingly enough, former Giant Ryan Vogelsong — he was traded to Pittsburgh in the Jason Schmidt trade — also played with Ortiz last season on the Buffaloes.*
Edit: Looks like I made a mistake, Vogelsong never pitched for Orix in 2008, but he did pitch for the Hanshin Tigers. He’s signed with Orix for the 2009 season.
You can find some of Ortiz’s statistics with Orix here. His K/9 of 3.51 is pretty frightening. According to FanGraphs, from 2005-2007 Ortiz’s pitch selection was as follows — ()’s indicate velocity: Fastball 54.6% (90.9), Slider 31.6% (84.3), and Changeup 13.2% (84.2).
There really isn’t much to say about Ramon Ortiz. He’s got a very slim chance of breaking camp with the team and he’s most likely to go pitch in Frseno. He’ll provide some depth for the starting rotation and if someone gets hurt, you can shuffle him in with the Pat Misch’s of the team to throw some replacement-level innings.

@Zets You're right, thanks for correcting me. It looks like he had a 3.99 ERA last season for Hanshin. For those who are interested, his Japanese stats are here: http://www.japanesebaseball.com/players/player.js...
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