Pagan Trade Only Creates Questions

On the surface, the Giants’ trade today for Angel Pagan is perfectly fine. They traded a guy who they likely weren’t going to bring back anyway (Andres Torres) and a solid reliever who’s replaceable (Ramon Ramirez) for a leadoff hitter with speed, something the Giants lacked most of last season. Pagan had a breakout year in 2010, regressed some in 2011 but still managed respectable numbers, and is younger than Torres. He fills a definite need for the Giants, and again, the trade looks good on the surface.

Beneath the surface, though, the trade raises a number of questions. For one, the Giants had already traded for Melky Cabrera earlier in the offseason and had him penciled in as the starting center fielder. Pagan is a much better option there defensively than Cabrera, so logic would dictate Cabrera would shift to a corner spot. Problem is, the Giants have Nate Schierholtz in right and Aubrey Huff’s contract in left. Where does Cabrera play? Would he bump Schierholtz to the bench and weaken the team’s outfield defense in the process? Would he push Huff back to first base and cause Brandon Belt to spend another year shuffling between San Francisco and Fresno? Would he force the Giants to bench Huff and get nothing in return for his massive salary? Or would the Giants actually keep Cabrera in center and make Pagan the fourth outfielder?

Benching Huff is the easiest move, but if he re-dedicates himself to getting in shape and starts to hit the Giants will need his bat in the lineup. Belt is too good of a hitter to ride the bench all year and it’s time for the Giants to commit to him at first base. Schierholtz could be the best defensive right fielder in the game, and the runs he saves in AT&T’s vast outfield are just as important as runs he drives in at the plate. The Giants are counting on Cabrera to be a major part of their lineup, and they don’t have anyone on the roster that can do the things Pagan does. So who sits?

I can’t see them not playing Pagan or Cabrera, considering the assets they gave up to acquire them. A team built around pitching needs their best defensive alignment on the field, so Schierholtz has to play. Huff’s contract will dictate his playing time more than anything, so the Giants will give him every opportunity to hit again. That leaves Belt out in the cold once again, probably even starting the season in Fresno. After his wasted year last year, it’d be a shame to see Belt not get a real chance at keeping a big league job; sadly, that’s the scenario that seems most likely.

Getting Pagan was a good move on the surface. The ramifications of the move, though, won’t fully be felt until spring training. The Giants created a lot of questions for themselves with this move, and I fear the answers they’re going to come up with.

But hey, maybe Belt can learn to play SS while he’s in Fresno. And throw right handed. Now that’s a solution.

Confirmed: Larry Baer Hates Us

Peter Magowan did a lot of good things while he was head of the Giants’ ownership group: he spearheaded the effort to keep the Giants in San Francisco, he signed Barry Bonds, he found a way to get voters to approve a new ballpark, etc. But to me, Magowan will be most remembered as an owner who was content to contend; that is, he was happy with building a team that would contend for the division, but never went above and beyond to add more expensive players to the roster. He liked spending just enough to be competitive, and if the Giants made the playoffs it was an added bonus.

Magowan was the first person I thought of when I heard Larry Baer would be taking over for the departing Bill Neukom as the man in charge of the Giants. Whereas Neukom seemed happy to spend money on improving the team (and that’s what ultimately forced him out), Baer comes from the Magowan school of doing things: spend just enough to keep people filling the seats and buying panda hats, but don’t go crazy with payroll. Sell the line of, “all we need to do is get to the playoffs, and anything can happen!” while keeping payroll costs capped.

Any hopes I had of being wrong about Baer were wiped out after hearing his recent comments about the state of the Giants. If you haven’t heard them, check them out here. And check out CrazyCrabbers.com's thoughts about Baer here.

Here’s a few of Baer’s choice quotes, and my thoughts about each:

“(T)he big thing for us is to further secure our pitching.”

Excellent plan! Signing Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum to long-term deals should be the highest priority for the Giants, since the team is built around starting pitching. And one of the strategies to keep the pitching in tact is to surround them with a dynamic offense, right? Well….

“Certainly we want to add some bats. We want to be careful we do it the right way.”

What does that even mean? What’s the right way, exactly? Not overspending on marginal bats? Ok, I’m with him there. Smart plan! Wait, didn’t the Giants recently offer $4.8 million to Willie Bloomquist? They did, right? Ok, so... that whole doing it the right way thing, that's out the window already? Alright then.

“We’re just looking at other things, some utility players.”

Oh, you’re just looking at other things? Some utility players? That makes sense, considering the lineup is so formidable as is. Because if there’s one thing that cost the Giants the playoffs last season, it was a lack of utility players. They simply didn't have enough utility players.

“We’re not necessarily shopping, per se.”

Oh, good. That's nice to hear.

“In a way we have two new free agents, Buster Posey and Freddy Sanchez.”

I just threw up. No, Larry, you’re not adding two new free agents. You’re adding two guys coming off of catastrophic, season-ending, surgery-requiring injuries with no guarantees that either of them will be the players they were before they went down. Saying that Posey and Sanchez are free agent additions is a cop out of epic proportions, a slight-of-hand move to trick people into believing the Giants only need to make marginal improvements to the lineup and not go after more expensive options. Wrong on both accounts: the Giants need a lot of help offensively, and since they've decided not to "rush" their best hitting prospects the only way to get it is to spend money on players who can provide it. Trading for Melky Cabrera, signing a utility player or two, pointing at Sanchez and Posey and calling it a day isn't going to get it done.

This reminds me of the winter after the ’03 season, when Vlad Guerrero  was on the market and seemed to be the perfect piece to add to a 103-win team and provide the lineup protection Bonds had lacked. Instead, we got Michael Tucker, AJ Pierzynski and a bunch of lame excuses about Vlad’s bad back. There may not be a Vlad Guerrero on the market this year, but the excuses still remain. Only now, it’s “doing things the right way” and “our injured guys are just like adding new free agents! Really!”

It’s going to be a long winter.

Giants Get Cabrera, Ambivalence Reigns

Meh.

What happens when your favorite team makes a trade and you’re ambivalent about it? Do you just shrug your shoulders and move on? Spend countless hours analyzing it to try and make yourself feel either good or bad about it? Make a sandwich?  Let me tell you, I did all of those things today.

Jonathan Sanchez is gone, Melky Cabrera is here, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Cabrera is coming off of a year in which he set career highs in virtually every offensive category. His .305/.339/.470 line would’ve made him a God in the Giants’ lineup and he managed to add 18 HRs and 20 SBs for good measure. After a horrific 2010 season, he dedicated himself to getting in shape last offseason (hmm…sounds familiar) and responded with the best year of his career. The Giants are getting him at the right time (he’s still only 27), on the cusp of his first free agent season with plenty to prove in order to get a big contract in 2013. In the short term, it seems like a nice move for the Giants. They’re getting a young outfielder who could be hitting his career peak.

On the other hand, I can’t shake the feeling that this is Melky Cabrera. I could be mistaken, but I think the Spanish translation of “Melky” is “nondescript outfielder.” Before last season he was the very definition of a reserve outfielder, not excelling in any one area but good enough to keep a Major League job. I’m naturally suspicious of a player who has a career year after six plus seasons in the league, and the chances of him regressing to his norm are far higher than him having a repeat of 2011. The Giants may try to shoehorn him into the leadoff spot despite of the fact that he’s not a leadoff hitter, and his range in the outfield is awful. His negatives almost cancel out his positives.

As for Sanchez, it’s not at all surprising to see him go. The Giants would’ve owed him somewhere around $6 million in arbitration, and with Barry Zito still in the fold the Giants would’ve been paying two guys a total of $25 million to fight for the 5th starter’s job. It is a bit surprising that Sanchez’s stock has fallen so low that he wasn’t enough to get Cabrera on his own, since the Giants had to throw in a minor league pitcher to get the deal done. If you’d told me two years ago that all the Giants would get for Jonathan Sanchez in a trade was Melky Cabrera, I’d have called you crazy. They simply waited a year too long to trade him.

So in the end the Giants get a serviceable outfielder coming up on his walk year, lose a talented but erratic pitcher who’s likely peaked, and save a few million in the process. So, good? I guess? I’m still ambivalent.  If Cabrera truly has turned a corner and can repeat his success from last year, it’s a very good trade. If he turns back into Melky Cabrera, it’s probably a wash since Sanchez is unlikely to get much better than he was last year.

Melky Cabrera, your opening day Giants center fielder. Meh.

Small Market Blues: Why the Giants Must Trade Lincecum

It’s tough being a fan of a small market team like the Giants. We watch them develop young stars, revel in their success on the field, and then we’re slapped in the face by the cold, hard reality of economics. The Giants just don’t have the means to spend like the Yankees, Red Sox or Phillies, and that means they have to get rid of their best players before they walk away for nothing in free agency. It’s a frustrating cycle of events for sure.

The latest player the Giants will likely have to move in order to “get better” is none other than Tim Lincecum. Major sources have already started discussing potential deals- like here, here, and here – and the Giants probably have no choice but to trade the face of their franchise before losing him to free agency in two years. Trading Lincecum would also free up enough of the team’s money in 2012 to allow them to sign a few key free agents to fill out the roster, something that having Lincecum on the payroll prevents them from doing.

Aside from the initial shock of trading away the team’s best pitcher since Juan Marichal, trading Lincecum makes sense for a few reasons. For one thing, the Giants simply lack the financial means to compete with free-spending clubs. Much like the Royals did last year with Zack Greinke, the Giants would be wise to trade their ace at the peak of his career before he becomes too pricey in free agency. The Giants would get young, affordable talent in return as they build their roster for another playoff run in the next five or so years. Also, moving Lincecum would allow the Giants to fill their glaring offensive holes in both the infield and the outfield. I’m not talking spending a ton of money on one player like Prince Fielder or Jose Reyes; no, the Giants simply cannot afford to sign players of that caliber. Instead, moving Lincecum would free up enough money to sign a group of players such as Brad Hawpe, Ryan Doumit, Jamey Carroll, Orlando Cabrera and the like. They aren’t superstars, but they’re solid players who would make the team better overall. And when you’re a small market team on a budget like the Giants, you have to find value wherever you can get it. Plus, it’s not as though Lincecum is irreplaceable. The free agent market is flooded with affordable, quality starters like Jamey Wright, Jeff Suppan, Chris Young and Brad Penny. The Giants could afford to sign a handful of those guys and let them fight it out with Eric Surkamp to fill Lincecum’s rotation spot.

That might not make you feel better about trading Lincecum, but it’s simply the reality teams like the Giants face on a day in/day out basis. It’s not as though they have a brand new ballpark to generate money, nor do they have endless revenue streams to put back into team payroll. This is a team on a budget, folks, and they have to adhere to that budget at all costs. They simply cannot raise payroll beyond a certain point, and because of that tough choices have to be made. Choices like trading the most popular player the team has had in 25 years. Plus let’s also not forget that the ownership group has to make money, too. We as fans may want the team to spend their revenue on improving the lineup, but we’re forgetting that the owners have to prepare themselves for a rainy day. It’s easy to forget that.

So while it may not be popular, trading Lincecum is the right move. Not only will it make the Giants better in the long term, it’ll also help set the market for when they inevitably have to trade Matt Cain this coming July. I know we’d all like to see Lincecum and Cain anchoring the Giants staff for another five years, but that simply cannot happen. The Giants just can’t afford it.

It’s a harsh reality, being a fan of a small market team on a tight, strict budget, but it’s a reality we as Giants fans must learn to accept. We’ll all miss Lincecum (and eventually Cain), but the Giants will be a better team for it four or five years down the road. In the meantime, we can look forward to competitive, scrappy baseball played by the best team a pre-determined amount of money can buy.

Go Giants!

Neukom, Optimism Out; Baer, Pessimism In

In a stunning development, the San Jose Mercury News is reporting that Giants managing general partner Bill Neukom is out, being replaced by Larry Baer.

What does this mean for the Giants? Bad news, man… bad, bad news.

Reports are that Neukom is being forced out by the Giants’ board because he dared to spend the extra money the team made from last year’s phenomenal championship run, rather than hoard the money away for a “rainy day” as the article put it. Let me get this straight: the Giants’ board doesn’t want to spend the money they’re earning from fielding a winning team, so they’re forcing out the one guy who does want to keep spending and keep putting winning teams on the field. That makes... well, that doesn't make any sense at all.

Baer is a holdover from the Peter Magowan era; an era defined by teams that were just good enough to contend but never spent enough money to get them over the hump. With Baer in charge, is that the kind of team we can expect the Giants to field from now on? In a word, yes. If Neukom is being forced out because he spent too much money, the ownership group obviously is going to replace him with someone who’ll spend more to their liking. Baer is that puppet, err, man.

I’m immediately worried about the Giants long and short term future. With the contracts of Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum coming up soon, you have to wonder if the Giants will do what it takes to retain their homegrown World Championship core or let them walk to the highest bidder. To keep all of the key pieces, payroll will have to rise well above $120 million and something tells me this ownership group isn’t too keen on a number in that price range. I fear we’re heading backwards, back to the era of teams in the $90-$105 million payroll bracket with the explanation that they have a ballpark to pay for and have to keep costs low... basically, back to the era of Peter Magowan. And forget about signing a free agent like Jose Reyes or Prince Fielder; instead, get ready for more players like Ray Durham or Michael Tucker.

Neukom was also a key player in developing the Giants’ minor league system, installing what’s become known as the “Giants Way” and placing a greater emphasis on the draft. In the Magowan era, which Baer is a product of, the draft was secondary and the minor league system was used as a means to trade for veteran players. The Giants would routinely sign Type-A free agents (Tucker, Armando Benitez, etc.) and lose their first round picks in the process as a way of avoiding paying huge signing bonuses to amateur players. With Baer in charge, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see the Giants revert back to that formula.

This is a shocking day in Giants history, and sadly I also think it’s a dark one. Bill Neukom was a true baseball fan and ran the team like one; he talked about wanting to win, and backed up his talk by spending the money necessary to do so. Larry Baer is a businessman first, and his main concern will be the ownership group’s bottom line. The days of putting the success of the baseball team ahead of the size of the ownership group’s bank accounts are sadly over.

It was 52 years before the Giants won a World Series in San Francisco; will it be 52 years before they win another one? If you’d have asked me that question a week ago, I would’ve laughed. Now? I’m not so sure.

At least we’ll always have 2010. Thank you for that, Mr. Neukom. You got a raw deal.

And I really, really hope Tim Lincecum thinks pinstripes make him look fat.

Season on the Brink

“Must win” has become such an overused term that it doesn’t really have meaning anymore. When games in April and May are called “must win” it seems silly; when the term is applied to games late in the year, it seems obvious.

Forget all that, though. These next 3 games with the Diamondbacks are must win games. Must. Win. As must win as a series can be. The entire season hinges on this series, and that isn’t hyperbole. If the Giants lose even one game, they’re in even more trouble than they are right now.

The Giants are 6 games behind Arizona with a month left to play. It’s incredibly easy to say that the season’s over and it’s time to start looking towards next year; you could say it’s the most likely scenario. But there’s a small glimmer of hope that the Giants can still win their division and get the chance to defend their World Series title next month. Small, yes. But it’s glimmering. I swear.

Am I being overly optimistic? Probably, but there are a few reasons why I think the Giants could make this a race down the stretch:

- Cure for Cancer: Cutting the two-headed monster of Aaron Rowand and Miguel Tejada (Rowada) was the best decision Brian Sabean has made all year, albeit one that was made a few months too late. Both guys had chips on their shoulders because of their lack of playing time, and both guys let everyone in the clubhouse know how unhappy they were every chance they got. That can wear on a team over the course of a season, especially when the complaining is coming from more than one player. Getting rid of two guys who’d become clubhouse cancers is a major step in loosening up a team that has looked and played tight over the last month. Plus the less guys on the team with personal agendas, the better.

- Reinforcements: Pat Burrell is back and with him comes the threat of someone who can actually hit a home run every once in a while. Brett Pill gets a chance to prove if he can hit at the Major League level. Darren Ford and Emmanuel Burriss both provide late inning speed on the bases. Brandon Crawford can save runs with his glove. Even Mark DeRosa is finding ways to contribute.

The roster needed a jolt, and since no trades were made last month the jolt has to come from the Giants’ system. The players they added aren’t difference makers, but they can all help in various ways to make the Giants a more dangerous team.

- Pitching: Simply put, the Giants still have better pitching than the Diamondbacks. That doesn’t matter much when the offense is impotent, but the fact remains that the Giants have the better staff top to bottom. If they continue pitching to their ability and the offense manages to string together some hits… it’s almost too tempting to think about.

I’m not a Pollyanna here: I know the Giants are hanging on by a thread, and I know they’re going to need a lot of things to break their way in order to overtake the Diamondbacks in the division. I also know the odds are stacked against them because of injuries and poor play. Their chances are slim.

I also know that stranger things have happened in baseball. Larger leads have been lost, and teams have managed to come back from impossible odds. It’s even happened to the Giants: in 1998, a Cubs outfielder (Brant Brown) dropped a routine flyball in left during a late September game that helped the Giants force a one-game playoff for the Wild Card. The Giants were all but dead in the WC race, but a red hot last few weeks of the season (and a dropped flyball) put them right back in it.

There’s no Brant Brown on the DBacks, but that doesn’t mean they can’t blow this lead. The Giants are 6 games out and have 6 games left with Arizona. Their collective fate is still in their hands, even if it’s seemingly slipping through their fingers. It all starts tonight.

Still… if only they’d have won some of those must win games back in April. Things would’ve been a whole lot easier right now.

Claim Check: Could the Giants Land Heath Bell?

The Giants made a significant move today, claiming Heath Bell off of waivers from San Diego.

Let me clarify that: it’s significant in that it blocks Arizona and Philadelphia from getting a shot to trade for Bell. Chances are slim that the Padres would ship their closer to the Giants, since their asking price would likely be more than San Francisco is willing to pay. It’s a pipe dream, and we should get the notion of Bell joining the Giants out of our heads right now. It’s not going to happen.

Unless, of course, it does happen. Now I’m confused.

The Padres tried hard to move Bell before the non-waiver deadline but couldn’t find a team to pay their asking price; instead, they ended up moving Mike Adams to Texas instead. It was widely assumed that San Diego would offer Bell arbitration and let him walk in the offseason, taking draft pick compensation in return. Bell threw a wrench in those plans the day after the deadline, however, when he told a reporter that he fully intended to accept San Diego’s arbitration offer and stay with the team for at least another year. Bell seems to genuinely like playing in San Diego, so there’s no reason to believe he’s playing some kind of leverage game with his comments.

This puts the Padres in a tough position. If they offer Bell arbitration, he’s almost guaranteed to accept it and would be awarded somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million for 2012. That’s a huge amount of money for a low-payroll team like the Padres to pay, especially for a closer. If they don’t offer him arbitration and let him walk in free agency, they get nothing in return and run the risk of alienating their fan base even more this winter. If they offer him a multiyear deal, then they have more money and years tied up in a closer who’ll turn 35 next year. None of the options sound all that appealing from the Padres’ standpoint.

Enter the Giants. With both Brian Wilson and Sergio Romo hurt, the back end of the bullpen is in dire need of an arm. Bell remains one of the top closers in the game and would easily slide into the 9th inning role until Wilson was healthy again. This is more than a blocking move, in my opinion. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Giants aggressively pursue a trade with the Padres.

The Padres, for their part, would be smart to at least listen to the Giants’ offers and perhaps lower their asking price for Bell. Knowing that Bell would accept arbitration takes away a lot of their leverage, since they won’t have the draft pick compensation to fall back on. If they can get a decent group of prospects from the Giants- no elite players like Gary Brown, mind you- they may seriously consider trading their closer. Plus, there's nothing preventing them from bringing Bell back in the offseason as a free agent if they ultimately decide they're willing to pay him.

On their end, the Giants could sweeten the pot by agreeing to not offer Bell arbitration in the offseason. That'd make it easier for the Padres to bring Bell back to San Diego if they’re so inclined without them losing a draft pick in the process. San Francisco could offer an attractive package of players- maybe starting with Dan Runzler, for example- without giving up another “untouchable” prospect. They have the means to get a deal done if they push hard enough.

The Giants made it clear that they’re going for it this year when they made the Carlos Beltran deal, injuries be damned. Losing Wilson and Romo is yet another big hurdle for the team to overcome, but adding a closer of Bell’s caliber would go a long way in helping them get through September. Cody Ross was a waiver claim last August and helped push the Giants to the World Series; this year, it very well could happen again.

And if Bell happens to hit a few home runs off of Roy Halladay this October, even better.