Some great news was announced Sunday morning. Former Giants outfielder Connor Joe was deemed cancer free, his agent tweeted.
Joe, 27, announced in March that he was undergoing treatment for testicular cancer. He was the Giants’ Opening Day left fielder last season, and played eight games with San Francisco.
Joe went just 1-for-15 with the Giants last season before he was designated for assignment. The Giants then had to send him back to the Los Angeles Dodgers as a Rule 5 Draft pick.
With the Dodgers’ Triple-A team, Joe had a strong season by batting .300 with 15 homers and a .929 OPS in 105 games played. He was a non-roster invitee to Dodgers spring training, but had to leave a few weeks before games were shut down due to the coronavirus.
Are Dontrelle Willis and Michael Morse coming out of retirement?
Not quite. At least, not yet.
In wake of the coronavirus outbreak that ravaged the Miami Marlins clubhouse over the weekend, the former major leaguers went on Twitter on Monday and offered their services to the Fish.
Morse, a former Giants analyst for NBC Sports Bay Area, retired from MLB after the 2017 season. He had two separate stints with the Giants — 2014 and 2017 — and is responsible for one of the most memorable home runs in Giants postseason history.
In Game 5 of the 2014 NLCS against the St. Louis Cardinals, Morse hit a game-tying pinch-hit home run down. An inning later, Travis Ishikawa won the National League pennant with a three-run walk-off homer.
A benches clearing brawl between the Giants and Washington Nationals started by Hunter Strickland and Bryce Harper in 2017 resulted in Morse suffering a concussion. He would never appear in another major league game after that.
Willis, an Alameda native and current A’s analyst for NBC Sports California, hasn’t pitched in the big leagues since 2011. The D-Train won the 2003 National League Rookie of the Year with the then-Florida Marlins, so this would be a reunion of sorts.
More than a dozen Marlins players and staff members contracted the coronavirus over the weekend, forcing their series with the Baltimore Orioles to be canceled. The New York Yankees were supposed to play in Philadelphia on Monday, but the league canceled that game in order to keep the Yankees out of the visiting clubhouse, which the Marlins were just using.
Obviously, Morse and Willis aren’t coming out of retirement to join the Marlins. But Miami soon might be desperate enough to call a few out-of-work players.
