The Giants Baseball Blog

It looks like the last guy that I wanted the Giants to sign this winter will actually be coming to San Francisco after all. According to Ken Rosenthal, the Giants and Mark DeRosa are in the final stages of completing a 2-year deal that would pay him around $6 million per year. If you've been following us here over the last couple weeks, you know my stance on DeRosa, but since it looks like he really is going to be a Giant, it's time to face reality. Sabean has had his eye on this guy over the last few trade deadlines, so once DeRosa dropped his demand from a 3 year deal to 2, I began to get the feeling that Sabean would grab him. I've pointed out how DeRosa's horrible second half of 2009 shows signs of decline, and outside of his last two seasons, he really hasn't ever been consid ered a power. He has been a late bloomer, as he didn't get an everyday job until 2006 when he was 31 years old, and in his first two seasons as a starter, he averaged just 11 home run

First off, I wanted to wish all our readers here at The Giants Baseball Blog a merry Christmas, and a happy holiday season. I truly appreciate all of you that contribute to the site by adding comments and sending e-mails, and we hope to be even bigger and better here in 2010! Now, back to baseball, the Giants are nearing a deal that would bring back their utility infielder that did so well for them in 2009, Juan Uribe. The exact terms of the deal haven't been reported yet, but apparently, the deal is a 1-year pact with an option for 2011. Uribe had a big 2009 season for the Giants, and especially thrived in the second half of the year when he worked his way into the everyday lineup. Uribe was among the team leaders in the major offensive categories and didn't even receive 400 at-bats. He hit .289 (2nd) with 16 hr (3rd), 55 RBI (4th) and an .824 OPS (2nd). And he really turned it on down the stretch for the Giants though hitting .347 in September with 7 bombs and 21 RBI. At that

With all the rumors flying around, and the Giants still waiting to make their first move the of the 2009-'10 offseason, I wanted to go ahead and take a wild guess at what the Giants 25-man roster could look like come opening day 2010 in Houston. This is more so what I'd like to see than what I think Sabean has in mind, but the moves I'm suggesting here are very possible and realistically could happen if Sabean decided to constuct the team like this. Signings: LF Kelly Johnson (2-year, $8.5 million + team option for 3rd year at $5.5 million), RF Xavier Nady (1-year, $8 million + mutual option for $9 million), 1B Adam LaRoche (3-year, $28.5 million), C Rod Barajas (1-year, $3 million), UT Jerry Hairston Jr. (1-year, $2 million), P Russ Springer (1-year, $750K) Lineup- LF Kelly Johnson ( Will return to pre-2009 form and hit .280+ with .800+ OPS ) 2B Freddy Sanchez ( Full, healthy year should yield .300+ avg, 40+ doubles) 1B Adam LaRoche ( Should be Giants #1 target for 1st

According to Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald, and MLB Trade Rumors , the Giants and the Marlins appear to be getting more serious in their discussions about Dan Uggla. There have been some names exchanged by each team and things could be getting closer to being completed. What makes me think that trade talks are actually making progress is that someone from Miami is reporting it, rather then just speculation from baseball writers on the Internet. Still, it doesn't mean that the Giants are going to end up with Dan Uggl a, but it does mean that it's becoming more of a possibility. Apparently the Marlins and Giants have discussed Jonathan Sanchez, Clayton Tanner and one other mid-level pitching prospect, but I have a hard time seeing the Giants part with Jonathan Sanchez, who's still under team control for 3 more years and is only getting better each season (4.24 era, 177 k's, 1.37 WHIP, .221 BAA in 163 IP). Sanchez really came into his own last year after throwing his n

Saturday marked the deadline for teams to offer players eligible for arbitration a contract for 2010, and a couple big names became free agents after their clubs declined to do so. The top two names that immediately jumped out at me when looking at the non-tender list were Kelly Johnson and Garrett Atkins. If I were running the Giants, Kelly Johnson would now become my target for left-field and I'd feel just fine giving him a 2-year deal. He was injured in 2009 and it shortened his season and hurt his production, but prior to 2009, he was quietly becoming one of the better, more consistent leadoff hitters in the NL . In his two full seasons at the big league level in '07 and '08, Johnson hit .282, while averaging 14 bombs, 69 RBI, 10 steals, 88 runs and an OPS of .818. All those numbers, besides maybe the stolen base number, are very good numbers for a leadoff guy. Plus Johnson has played the majority of his games in the spacious Turner Field, which favors pitchers, jus

The Giants entered the Winter Meetings in search of a corner infielder, but apparently Brian Sabean has narrowed that search down to just first basemen, leaving two likely candidates. Those two candidates are former Nationals first basemen and %OBP extraordinaire, Nick Johnson , as well as former Pirate and Brave, Adam LaRoche . I've mentioned both of these guys here in recent days as the top two candidates to play first next year for the Giants, and it looks like that could come to fruition by the end of the meetings Thursday. In fact, Sabean said Wednesday afternoon that he expects things to pick up by Wednesday night, possibly hinting that we could see some movement before the day's done in Indy. Of the two players, I like LaRoche, because of his power numbers, his consistency and his athleticism. Johnson is overweight and injury prone, and I really think his best days are behind him. It's true that age doesn't necessarily effect OBP, but if Johnson can only play in

With day two of the MLB winter meetings winding up, there really isn't much new to talk about on the Giants front. The new name of the day Tuesday was Kevin Kouzmanoff, as apparently the Giants and Padres have discussed a possible deal that could land the third-basemen in San Francisco. The names being discussed on the Giants end have been Fred Lewis and Kevin Frandsen, neither of whom appear to be much in the Giants plans heading into 2010. That said, Bruce Bochy did shoot down the Kouzmanoff rumor during his media session, saying any deal of any kind, not just the Kouzmanoff rumor, is not immanent. Bochy also said Tuesday that he expects both Andres Torres and Eugenio Velez to play big roles with this team in 2010, and adding more outfielders to the mix is not necessarily a sure thing. Since there isn't much new talk to discuss today, I figured I'd take a little bit closer look at the top-4 free agent candidates to be the Giants opening day catcher next April. Miguel Oliv

Baseball's annual winter meetings got started on Monday in Indianapolis, and the Giants have been talked about just as much as any other teams as they search for ways to improve their meager offense. The Giants enter the meetings in need of a couple corner outfielders, a corner infielder and a catcher who can bridge the gap from Bengie Molina to Buster Posey. Brian Sabean stated before he left for the meetings that the Giants would not get involved in the bidding for the top dogs on the free agent market, Jason Bay and Matt Holliday. Not only would those guys cost the Giants their top pick in next Junes amateur draft, they're also both seeking deals in the neighborhood of the 100 million dollar range. Instead, Sabean is likely focusing on outfielders such as Jermaine Dye, Xavier Nady and Johnny Damon. I was a little surprised at the interest in Damon at first, but after looking at it a little longer, I've begin to see some logic in adding Damon. The Giants need a leadoff hi

After a few weeks of silence, their is finally some real Giants news to talk about. Earlier this week, Brian Sabean and the Giants front office decided not to offer arbitration to the teams' free agents, meaning the Giants cannot receive any compensation for their players signing elsewhere. Now, there aren't many free agents coming off of this team that I would have liked to see offered arbitration anyway. The only guy who did make some sense though, was Bengie Molina. Molina's agent has supposedly been in serious contract talks with the New York Mets , discussing a 2 year contract for the 35 year-old backstop. I think that it's pretty safe to say, that in this free agent market (extremely thin in the catching department) Molina's a commodity, and I think it would have been smart on the Giants' part to have offered it to him. If worse came to worst, then you have Bengie Molina back for another year to help Buster Posey along in his development, and I don'

Although the Major League Baseball off-season isn't quite a full-month old yet, I'm pretty surprised at how quiet things have been. As far as the Giants are concerned, the only news to come from them in recent weeks, besides Tim Lincecum winning his second consecutive Cy Young award, has been Brian Sabean hinting that they'll steer clear of the top offensive free-agents, Matt Holliday and Jason Bay, this offseason . Now, this shouldn't come as a surprise to Giants fans, the team hasn't added a big time offensive player in decades, but for a team that has a need for offensive as much as the Giants do, I am a little surprised that Brian Sabean is already dismissing the idea of pursuing either of them. I made a post here a couple weeks back comparing Jason Bay and Matt Holliday here , so I'm not going to be comparing them as players today, but I'm just not sure what the Giants are waiting for in terms of building their offense? One bat like Holiday's o

Tim Lincecum has done something that no other Giants pitcher in history has done, win two consecutive Cy Young Awards. In fact, the only two NL pitchers to ever win the award in consecutive seasons were Randy Johnson and Sandy Koufax. It was definitely a close call though, and by no means did the 25 year-old ace run away with the award. Adam Wainright, who led the NL in wins with 19 and innings pitched with 233, received 12 first-place votes, one more than Lincecum's 11. However, Lincecum received more second place votes and more total points. Chris Carpentar finished second in the voting with Wainright coming in third. Atlanta's Javier Vazquez and Arizona's Dan Haren also received votes. Lincecum only finished the year with 15 wins, but his 261 strikeouts, 1.05 WHIP and his .206 BAA made up for the lower win total. The lanky one who most call "The Freak", but I call "The Franchise", struggled a bit down the stretch and went just 1-3 with a 3.60 era in

It's been a couple of weeks since the start of free agency filing, and the Giants apparently are wasting no time making contact with potential help for their ball-club. The team is apparently interested in free agent Johnny Damon, and have had talks with the Marlins about a potential Dan Uggla trade. The Giants have been interested in Uggla, it seems, for the better part of the last two years. The Marlins are always looking for ways to cut payroll if they can, and Uggla is entering the expensive phase of his career. He's got 2 more years of arbitration left and then will be a free agent after the 2011 season. The Giants desperately want and need his power, but they'd need to do some shifting in the infield if they were indeed going to make a major play for Uggla. Yahoo Sports reported yesterday that Uggla doesn't want to change positions if he's dealt, which means the Giants would have to move Freddy Sanchez to the hot-corner, while placing Pablo Sandoval over at f

The Giants organization has been in the news quite a bit lately, and it's not the kind of news that you hope for. I'm sure most Giants fans are aware of the trouble that "The Franchise" got into a couple of weeks back after being caught with an illegal substance, as well as the tragic news out of the Dominican that involves Giants' elite 19 year-old infield prospect, Angel Villalona . Now, these two issues are drastically different and on completely different levels, but both seem to be making news each day over the past week or so. The Lincecum news isn't something that is going to get him into any kind of legal trouble, or get him any suspensions from the MLB or the Giants, but it is something that will likely follow him wherever he goes in the immediate future. I'm not in anyway comparing steroid use to marijuana smoking, but I'm expecting the same type treatment from road fans towards Linceucm as Barry Bonds got after the steroid scandal. Obviou

On Saturday, the Giants finalized a 2 year contract extension with Freddy Sanchez, who they acquired in July for Tim Alderson. The new deal for Sanchez will pay him 12 million over the next 2 seasons instead of 8.5 million for just 2010, which was his option for 2010. I've voiced my disappointment in Sanchez a few times here since the Giants dealt for him over the summer. He wasn't able to stay on the field full time to help this club with their run at the NL Wild Card, and even when he was in there, he didn't seem to make much of an impact in th e lineup. Now, I wasn't necessarily hoping the Giants would cut ties with Sanchez (they probably would have had to pay 4 million or so to buy him out), just didn't think he was worth upwards of 10 million dollars, and would have liked to see the Giants pursue someone like Orlando Hudson with that money. The Giants already have an infielder who's being paid about 3-4 times what his play over the last 2 seasons would indi

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

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

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

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