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Showing posts from October, 2009

Trading Rowand Might Be An Option

MLBTradeRumors .com posted and interesting piece today regarding the different players around baseball that are being vastly overpaid. After looking at the list, it makes me feel a little bit better about the Rowand , Renteria and Zito contract disasters, and it also got me thinking of how to possibly get one of these guys, most likely Rowand , off the Giants hands. Now, this is mostly just speculation on my part, and since there really hasn't been anything to report on for the Giants over the last 2 weeks, I figured why not start some trade speculation. If the Giants have any hope of getting some of the dead weight like Aaron Rowand or Edgar Renteria off their roster, it would likely be in a deal in which they'd have to bring back some other teams' overpaid player in what basically amounts to a swap of bad contracts. Right away, when looking at the list of baseballs most overpaid players, the one name that I was surprised to see on there was Alex Rios. The 28 year-old

Sanchez and Garko Must Be Better In '10

The majority of the Giants' fan-core have been very open about there displeasure for Brian Sabean's trades from this last summer. Sabean sent two of the teams top-5 pitching prospects (#2 Tim Alderson and #5 Scott Barnes) away in separate trades for Freddy Sanchez and Ryan Garko, and their first 2 months in the orange and black couldn't have gone much worse for them. For Freddy Sanchez, it was a problem for him to stay on the field. He played in just 25 of the 67 games that took place while he was on the Giants roster, and when he did play, he clearly was affected by his back. His numbers took a big time plummet after the trade, but I think it's more so the injury issues with Sanchez that have people frustrated. He's a good hitter when he's on and healthy, but he just couldn't stay on the field after coming over from Pittsburgh. He sported just a .295 OBP and a .619 OPS while with the Giants, and wasn't much of a run producer either, hitting just 1 homer

Performance Review: Sabean and Bochy

With so many people expressing mixed emotions about the Bochy / Sabean extensions over the past couple of weeks, I wanted to take a little bit more of an in-depth look at what these two have done here during their time in San Francisco. It's no secret that Sabean has made big time mistakes over the past couple of years through free-agency. He signed Aaron Rowand and Barry Zito to multi-year deals that will ultimately pay the two under-achievers nearly 200 million dollars before their time in San Francisco is up. Then capped it off by guaranteeing a aging, injury prone under- achieving Edgar Renteria nearly $20 million for 2 yea rs. Even since he took over reigns of the Giants in the mid-90's, free agency hasn't been too kind to Sabean and that's not how he's put his good teams together. Sure, he did get Juan Uribe for peanuts and Jeremy Affeldt on a great deal last off-season, but come on, every time this guy shells out multi-year, big dollar contracts, he

Bochy, Sabean Sign Extensions

Though it wasn't official at the time, it was made pretty apparent in the Giants' postseason press conference last week that both manager Bruce Bochy and general manager Brian Sabean would be returning to the team for the 2010 season. On Tuesday, it became official, as both signed 2 year extensions with the Giants, with a club option for 2012 on both. I'm still not too thrilled with the fact that both of these guys are going to stick around for another couple of seasons, but the deals are done, and I'm not going to sit here and magnify the mistakes these guys have made over the last couple of years. Sabean has been hit-or-miss in the free agent market over the past 5 years, with most of his moves coming up as misses. The area in which he has succeeded in though, is rebuilding this teams farm system. The organization, from top to bottom, is in much better shape now than it's been at any point this decade, and I think that is what ultimately got him his extension. The

Giants Offseason Begins Now

The Major League Baseball offseason doesn't officially start until the end of the World Series, when free-agents can file and trades can be made. However, for the Giants and GM Brian Sabean, the offseason planning should start now. Even after a year in which they overachieved, the Giants have a bunch of question marks heading into the winter. In our last post, I put a bow on the Giants season and talked about some positive things they have to look forward to in 2010 (Pablo Sandoval, Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Brian Wilson etc..) but they still have a bunch of things they need to figure out in house, and they only will have a couple of weeks to do so before all the baseball world enters the off-season mode. The major questions for the Giants will be what to do with their impending free-agents, and they certainly have a couple of key ones. The two guys who have been tenured here the longest, Bengie Molina and Randy Winn, will both be free agents in a couple of weeks, and I'd say ch

Giants End Season On High Note

The Giants ended their 2009 season on Sunday, going out with a victory in San Diego, capping off what was a very surprising and successful year for the organization. Pablo Sandoval also put a nice final touch on his season, as he hit the game-winning solo home run in the 10th inning to put the Giants on top for good. Then Brian Wilson came on to shut the door on the Pads for his 38th save of the year. It was really a fitting way for "Big Panda" to finish off his year with that home run, as he really emerged as the Giants' team MVP in 2009. He showed a glimpse of what he could do at the end of the 2008 season, and didn't disappoint in the slightest in 2009. Sandoval's final line for the '09 season looks pretty darn good: .330 avg, 25 HR, 90 RBI, .943 OPS, and I think he's just starting to tap into the potential that he has. It took him a little while to get his power bat going too, as he only hit 3 home runs over the first two months of the season, so he