Player Review: Nick Ahmed

Nick Ahmed came and went, but in a way, the Giants are still reeling from his brief tenure.

2024 stats: 52 G, 172 PA, .232/ .278/ .303/ .581, 65 wRC+, 0.3 fWAR; 4 OAA, 3 FRV at SS

Nick Ahmed’s greatest asset to the 2024 San Francisco Giants was who he was not. Nick Ahmed was not Brandon Crawford. He was not Marco Luciano. The reason we are thinking about Ahmed’s 50 games played in a Giants uniform right now, the reason Farhan Zaidi signed him to a minor league contract in March of this year, was his “dumpability.”

This pretty much happened. Ahmed played the role of the hired gun with zero attachments perfectly. He came and went, patched a hole on defense, held a bat over the plate every 9 hitters, and bought the Giants some time as they tried to figure out a way to bridge a fast-widening gap between a Franchise Icon and an enigmatic fledgling.

The Crawford-Ahmed-Luciano connection never linked up. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s reasonable to question whether the conservative, business-minded move to bring on Ahmed ended up having deeper ramifications for the club.

Looking at it with a Luciano lens, Ahmed’s arrival was a canary in a coal mine. His presence didn’t come off as a support, rather a blow to the young prospect struggling to develop into someone not talked about in the future tense. After being named the shortstop of 2024 by Zaidi himself during the offseason, Luciano ended up only getting 60 innings over 9 games at the position. Ahmed logged 426 innings, and Tyler Fitzgerald, Brett Wisely, and Casey Schmitt all accrued more time there as well. The rug got pulled out from Luciano at short, then another rug was ripped out from under him at second. Though this is not to completely excuse Luciano’s play, I’d bobble some grounders too if I felt unsure about the very ground beneath my feet.

Looking at the situation from Brandon Crawford’s perspective — who told The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly (subscription req.) that he had wanted to come back, that his aspirations in returning to the Giants was not to cling to his starting role but serve as a part-time defensive sage to the likes of Luciano, Fitzgerald, and Schmitt — the whole Ahmed affair would feel more than insulting. Crawford certainly could have done what Ahmed did for the Giants: plus-defense with a non-existent bat , but with the added bonus of fans getting to see Crawford take infield with his “proteges”. The lineage, the plan, for shortstop made visible. This arrangement probably would’ve made things easier for Bob Melvin to find more playing time for Luciano or Fitzgerald in the early months of the season. Ahmed had just come off a surgery, spurned by a team that went on to the World Series in 2023 — he was playing with a chip on his shoulder, performing well defensively and deference had to be paid to that.

Drive wasn’t the gear Crawford was in at the start of the season. He was in a parked car outside The Cliff House gazing out at the horizon and thinking about his legacy. A little transparency about conditions and role and that perceived stickiness of a Crawford return would’ve been washed away. Re-signing The Shortstop might’ve even come across as a vote of confidence in the Giants’ crop of young infielders.

The defense was slick, and he had some clutch moments in April with runners in scoring position, but it feels generous to call Ahmed’s abilities integral to the roster. Brett Wisely out hit Ahmed for a spell when he went on the IL in May (and played solid defense), then Tyler Fitzgerald’s July power surge made his services offically redundant while also strengthening a blossoming narrative that the front office was apt at burying talent.

It’s telling that Ahmed’s signature moment of 2024 came against the Giants.

Nick Ahmed was a security measure, an investment in the present rather than the future, that set the tone for one of the major storylines of the 2024 season. The veteran muddied the waters around their top prospect, and the Giants are still trying to sift through that self-inflicted murk. The soul searching is real and with the firing of Farhan Zaidi and hiring of Buster Posey as President of Baseball Operations, it’s clear that the club, if given a do-over, would’ve approached things differently at short.