San Francisco Giants Fan Favorite Joins Front Office in Latest Hire

The San Francisco Giants brought back a fan-favorite outfielder to work for Buster Posey’s new front office.

June 29, 2009; St, Louis, MO, USA; San Francisco Giants left fielder Randy Winn (2) drives in a run on a fielders choice in the seventh inning against the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium. San Francisco defeated St. Louis 10-0. / Jeff Curry-Imagn Images

Randy Winn, who played five seasons as an outfielder for the San Francisco Giants, will join the front office as its vice president of player development, the team announced.

Winn is the latest hire by new president of baseball operations Buster Posey, the former All-Star catcher who helped the franchise win three World Series in five years from 2010-14.

Recently, Posey hired Zack Minasian as general manager, the brother of Los Angeles Angels general manager Perry Minasian. Both are the son of Zack Minasian, who was the clubhouse manager for the Texas Rangers for 20 years.

Winn has been a part of the organization since he retired as a player. He was  San Francisco’s roving outfield and baserunning instructor from 2013-16.

After that, he was promoted to special assistant to the general manager, a role he served in from 2017 to 2018. He then moved into a pro scouting role under Minasian in 2019.

He’s also served for more than a decade as a game analyst for Giants broadcasts on NBC Sports Bay Area. In September the Giants also named him chairman of the Giants Community Fund.

Winn was a deadline acquisition in 2005 from the Seattle Mariners. After that, he spent the next four seasons with the Giants.

In five seasons with San Francisco he finished with a slash line of .290/.345/.432/.776 with 51 home runs and 262 RBI. Those were the best numbers of his career with any of the five Major League teams he played for.

The Los Angeles, Calif., native played his college baseball at Santa Clara and was the roommate of Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame selection Steve Nash. Winn was a third-round pick of the Marlins in the 1995 draft.

Before he could make his MLB debut with the Marlins, he was picked by the Tampa Bay Rays in the 1997 expansion draft. He made his big-league debut a year later with the Rays and spent his first four Major League seasons with them.

In 2002, he was dealt to the Seattle Mariners as part of the compensation in a trade for manager Lou Piniella.

For his 13-year MLB career, which ended in 2010, he finished with a slash line of .284/.343/.416/.759 with 110 home runs and 662 RBI.

Posey is assembling a front office that it hopes can lure free agents to an organization that has struggled in that area in recent years.