Giants Should Move Past Manny

There was an article published on both the Giants and Dodgers team pages that said both teams could back off their pursuit of Manny Ramirez. The Giants were more so following the market and haven't presented a formal offer for Manny. The Dodgers are most likely bidding against themselves at this point for his services as I highly doubt that Brian Sabean is going to continue monitoring this situation while there is other work to be done before Spring Training. The Giants still must add another infielder to the mix and hopefully that doesn't end up being Rich Aurilia. I still like the possibility of Ty Wigginton, as I have kind of pushed to sign the guy all winter long. He is a lot more productive at this point that Rich Aurilia is and he actually could force Bruce Bochy to play him eveyday when he gets on his hot streaks. Joe Crede has also been mentioned as a possibility for the Giants, but apparently his back is too much of a concern to warrant much of a contract and unfortunately his agent is Scott Boras who always begs to differ. Anyway, as things wind down this winter, it looks as if the Giants are pretty much done with their work this winter. We're only about 6 weeks from the first full squad workout of the spring and a little over a month away from seeing pitchers and catchers starting to scatter into Scottsdale Arizona for the spring so Sabean's full focus should be on fine tuning this team in anyway possible, not shooting for the stars on Manny Ramirez, who isn't a good fit here and probably has no real interest playing for San Francisco.

I also wanted to talk a little bit about the contract that Pat Burrell just got from Tampa Bay. Burrell grew up in the bay area and a lot of people thought he'd be a good fit in San Francisco if they could transport him to first base. I don't think Burrell really wanted to move to first initially, but now he's in the AL where he'll be at DH on most nights. He signed with the Rays for 2 years and 16 million dollars. That's cheaper than what the Giants just got Edgar Renteria. knew the market was falling for the free-agents not named Tex and C.C., but 8 million a year for a sure thing 30 home run, 100 walk per season guy would be a risk worth taking. Again, I'm not sure that Burrell was a real possibility, as the cold weather and spacious yard have scarred away the hitters on the free agent market, but he's the kind of guy this lineup needs and if he could have been at least serviceable at first (they could have used Ishikawa as the late inning defensive replacement) then he would have been worth a shot. The Giants have Winn coming off the books next season so if Burrell didn't work so nicely at first in '09, he could be moved back to the outfield in 2010. I don't know, I could have seen some logic in that move. The same can be said for Adam Dunn. With his value dropping so significantly. Why not entice him with the idea of playing first for a year then maybe moving back to the outfield if things don't go so well? They need the offense so it would be worth the mediocre defense he'd provide.