So, the answer to the question of “Who will replace Barry Zito?” is Ryan Vogelsong. I assume that the Giants didn’t want to mess with the development of Clayton Tanner or Eric Surkamp, and just plain didn’t want to watch Henry Sosa pitch.That, plus a little extra wiggle room on the 40-man, probably narrowed it down to the half dozen minor league vets who are hanging around Fresno in case half the pitching staff gets eaten  by the zombie apocalypse.

Vogelsong is probably less of a known quantity than the other Fresno guys,  and that’s probably to his advantage. Josh Banks and Shane Loux have very recently been bad in the majors and not great in the minors. Vogelsong, on the hand has also been bad in the majors, but that was a number of years ago, and he’s had some okay numbers in Japan since then.  That means the answer to the question “Is this guy going to be any good?” is still going to be “probably not”. But there’s more emphasis on the “probably” than the “not”.

As much as I’m pulling for Vogelsong to write an interesting final chapter to the story of his involvement with the Giants, It would really be better if Barry Zito recovered quickly, and found his missing 3 mph of fastball velocity while he’s at it. Chris pretty much covered the reasons why yesterday, but if you don’t let the dollar signs cloud your vision, Zito has been good for 200 or so innings of  not -terrible pitching. That will be hard to match for Ryan Vogelsong, or any minor league free agent.