Ryan Vogelsong is back where he wanted to be.
Ryan Vogelsong is back where he wanted to be. (USATSI)

Free agent starting pitcher Ryan Vogelsong was reportedly very close to signing with the Astros recently before changing course and heading back to San Francisco to re-up with the Giants. The deal was finalized Friday.

In talks with the Astros, things even progressed to the point that he flew to Houston for a physical and to meet with manager A.J. Hinch. Generally speaking, the physical with the team doctors happens in the final stages of agreeing upon a deal. When it gets far, usually something happened in order to prevent the deal from coming to fruition.

To hear it from Vogelsong, that something came from the Astros, but we can't know what it was.

Via Ultimate Astros, here are the pertinent Vogelsong quotes:

I made a visit to Houston and met with A.J. Hinch the manager and the staff, the training staff, and I took a physical — just as the process went along here, really wasn’t comfortable with what was going on.

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Some things happened that I just wasn’t comfortable with and negotiations kind of broke down after that. Once that happened it was time to move on.

There's more, from a Vogelsong radio show appearance:

So it's time capsuled. From Vogelsong's point of view, the Astros did something incredibly weird.

We have only heard one side of the story, of course, but the Astros have fallen under scrutiny for their handling of negotiations with top overall pick Brady Aiken in last year's draft, which also ended up causing their agreement with fifth-rounder Jacob Nix to fall through. There was also the Mark Appel flap.

This Vogelsong thing could be insignificant, for sure. He was obviously very comfortable in San Francisco and it didn't sound like he wanted to leave. It's just that a player coming out and saying a team did something that made him so uncomfortable in this manner is uncommon.

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