Evan Longoria is the latest player the Giants are rumored to have inquired about. You all know who he is. Some of you dreamed about the Giants drafting him way back in 2006 when the Rays took him #4 overall and the Giants got stuck with some guy named Tim Lincecum. He's been more or less the face of the Rays franchise ever since. The Rays seem to be entering another rebuilding cycle so the thought is Longoria might be available in trade. Here are some quick facts about Evan Longoria:
1. He's entering his age 32 season, which is not impossibly old for a guy with 5 more years on his contract, but it's not young either.
2. He has $86 M left on said 5 year contract.
3. He is coming off the worst offensive season of his career: .261/.313/.424, 21 HR, 6 SB. He's hit less than 25 HR's in 3 of his last 4 seasons.
4. He is durable. His 677 PA's last year were his lowest since 2012.
The Giants probably don't care about the back end of the contract, although they should. But even the front end is problematic as it would put them right back up against the CBT threshold which they just got breathing room on with the Matt Moore trade. The Giants would need the Rays to take back a bad contract or 2. The Rays don't seem that desperate to trade Longoria and would almost certainly demand additional prospects if they have to take back a contract.
In short, a trade for Evan Longoria is unlikely to happen and it should not from the Giants perspective.
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So, what are the Giants options for 3B for 2018? Let's start with internal options:
Pablo Sandoval is coming off a terrible couple of seasons. The Giants have him for league minimum salary with Boston paying the balance of his huge contract. Ha ha! Most of us still have that 0 for 50 or whatever it was from last August etched in our brains and don't really care if someone is paying the Giants to play him. Just no thank you. On the other hand, Pabs did have a small bounceback in September with a .233 BA and 4 dingers including the walkoff bomb in game 162 that cost the Giants the #1 overall draft pick in 2018. If Pabs can keep himself in shape and play like he did in September, he might be within hailing distance of Evan Longoria's value and a nice bridge to Christian Arroyo.
Last year at this time, Christian Arroyo was the Giants 3B of the future. He might still be, but his name keeps coming up in trade rumors. The problem is he kind of did a faceplant in his first taste of MLB, then broke his hand after being sent back down to Sacramento. He was supposed to get some of those AB's back in the Arizona Fall League, but hurt his hand again and had to have a metal plate inserted to stabilize the fracture. In the best case scenario, he needs at least 2 months to make sure the hand is fully healed and get some AB's under his belt in AAA. Personally, I think the Giants should be thinking short term for 3B and give Arroyo his chance when he is ready. Pablo Sandoval might be a perfectly good short term option.
If Arroyo is not the guy for the future, the Giants have another kid, Ryan Howard, who won't be ready in 2018, but might be by 2019 who could be an option down the road.
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What are some other possible external options for the Giants 3B situation?
The free agent market pretty much begins and ends with Mike Moustakas and Todd Frazier. Moustakas is young, but is looking for a huge long term contract plus he's tied to a Qualifying Offer which would cost the Giants a 2'nd and 5'th round draft pick plus $1 M in international bonus pool money. No thanks! Frazier hits lots of dingers and is projected by MLBTR to get a 3 year/$33 M FA contract. That would take a bite out of the Giants OF options but would be far preferable to taking on Evan Longoria's contract.
Other FA options include a second round of Eduardo Nunez, who is looking better all the time. Does Jose Reyes have anything left? If you are looking to buy a pig in a poke, Trevor Plouffe is still out there and can probably be signed to a minor league deal with a ST invite.
The Giants are rumored to have inquired about Maikel Franco of the Phillies. Not a lot of details available. Franco hit 24 HR's last year in a hitter friendly environment but was otherwise terrible as he seems to be uppercutting everything and hitting a lot of pop-ups. Maybe the Giants hitting coaches could straighten out the swing and maybe the Phillies would not demand Heliot Ramos in return, but this seems like a bit of a long shot with not a lot less risk than Pablo Sandoval.
Martin Prado is coming off a down season in Atlanta after 2 stellar ones. He is owed $28.5 M over the next 2 seasons. The Braves might be willing to take back a bad contract but Hunter Pence might be too much for the Braves and Denard Span not enough for the Giants. Plus there is the question of whether the 34 yo Prado is now on the downward side of his career.
Chase Headley just got dumped on the Padres. He is owed 1 year/$13 M. Yangervis Solarte is the guy I really want from the Padres, but they might not be eager to trade him. The Padres may well be looking to flip Headley and may be willing to take back a smaller bad contract to whittle it down a bit more. Span for Headley would give the Giants a short term bridge at 3B for a net of $4 M for 1 season. I'm not sure Headley is any better than Pablo Sandoval, but he would at least give the Giants another short term option and leave some $$ to address the OF.
Any other ideas out there?
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well welcome back Nick Hundley!
ReplyDeleteJ(SF)
ReplyDeleteHundley resigns for 1 year $2.5 Mill.
Glad it is finally done.
Richard in Winnipeg
Bobby get on the phone to SDPadres! Headley for Span win-win placeholder for Arroyo. Solarte you're thinking long-term and could let Arroyo go as part (?) of the deal. If nothing there, Nunez and his .300 average would work, although missing that power. Everything else too risky and/or expensive, the cheapest risk is Panda who could show up in Feb as a lean mean hitting machine, you never know.
ReplyDeleteTrade for David Freese. He's on the last year of his contract plus has an option year. He was 1.8 and 1.5 fWAR the past two seasons. He's not a plus defender, he's not a negative defender. $4.2 million in 2018, $6 million option for 2019 with a $500K buy-out. The Pirates could move Harrison to 3B and we could send them Pence or Span and a mid-tier prospect.
ReplyDeleteOK, that's pretty good, what's in it for the Pirates. They'd have to want the mid-tier prospect a lot!
DeletePirates are in desperate need of a reliever as they bungled and lost Naciso in a screwed-up waiver transaction and now have just one good, reliable reliever. Strickland would be excellent trade bait for that position. While many people hate him because they think he's a punk and, therefore, over-hype his failures while ignoring his successes, he's got good numbers. Law might be another. Same with Gearin.
DeleteA prospect they might take is Sam Wolff. We got him from the Rangers in the Moore trade. He had good numbers in AAA was thought to be a 40-man roster call-up, but got derailed late last year with injuries so he didn't get the call-up.
Say the Giants can fix CF or 3B pretty good but not both, and they have to pretty much stay in-house for the one that isn't fixed.
ReplyDeleteWhich would the arm-chair GM's do?
CF = Duggar. 3B FA or trade.
DeleteDr B, I’m unsure why you want Solarte, who hasn’t shown himself a very good fielder (going by defensive fWAR), slugger, hitter, or baserunner. He had a pretty good 2016, but was of marginal value in 2015 and 2017 with the Padres.
ReplyDeleteSolarte is close to an average defender and would be a huge upgrade on the status quo for a price that would enable the Giants to stay below the CBT threshold.
DeleteDavid Freese: why do we want this old mediocrity?
ReplyDeleteMaybe because he would be an upgrade on a negative fWAR?
DeleteMarty Lurie on KNBR this morning with Patrick Connor - "You can't give Bumgarner 5 for $150,000,000. Too many innings on that arm." I agree, and with the Yankees, Astros, Cubs and Red Sox looking to be super teams, the value of the best post season pitcher in baseball, with two years left on a team friendly deal, might never be higher.
ReplyDeleteSo, my answer for 3B is Gleyber Torres, who would look great is black and orange along with Aaron Hicks, Clint Frazier and Chad Green.
So
Geez that looks good. If they'd also take Span it'd be perfect! I think they want Hicks to stay in NY and play CF, but the rest of that would be great then the G's could go shopping for another SP and start the winning! Do it Bobby, do it!
DeleteIt sure does look good. My guess is they won't trade Madbum this off season since they won't commit to a rebuild. Hopefully they might consider a Madbum trade at the 2018 trade deadline if they are out of the race. I'm glad Hundley signed. I think they still need to cut salaries, and hopefully Evans can pull off an interesting trade or 2 to improve this team. Getting concerned about how little has taken place in trades and free agent front.
DeleteLG
I would argue that if you could get that kind of a return from a Bumgarner trade, it would be a bypass of the rebuild. I don't know if they could get Torres, Hicks, Frazier and Green back for Bumgarner, but if they could, the Giants would be immediately better.
Delete...as well as better into the future.
DeleteAgreed, it's the beatwriters who suggested a MADBUM or Posey trade signals a teardown of the roster. When the Yankees traded Chapman and Andrew Miller at the deadline 2 years ago for good young players like Torres and Frazier, they weren't that far out of it, but many baseball people give Brian Cashman credit for doing it since the Yankees got a lot better quickly. Not sure if Evans is bold or creative enough to make a move with Madbum yet. Sabean seems to have more of a sense of urgency to change the roster then Evans does. It's a little frustrating to read when Evans says he has no timetable for making changes to the roster. Nothing wrong with that but not sure if Giants fans would like reading that given their situation.
DeleteLG
I can't come up with a contract (extension) that the Giants could live with that even the most humble Bumgarner would consider.
ReplyDeleteCan you? jp
Let me add more thought on the Bumgarner situation. I think he is going to be very, very good over the next two years, and that will further drive up his price. I love the guy. He could leave the team now and still be among my all-time favorite Giants. But, an honest look at the Giants roster screams mediocrity, and I can't come up with an achievable move the Giants could make that would turn them into a contender - pretender yes, but not a true contender.
ReplyDeleteA Bumgarner trade now, makes so much sense.
Now, the trade for Longoria adds a couple wins to a team that looks oh so much like a .500 team to me..........on a good day.
ReplyDeleteUnless the Rays sent a lot of money back in this deal, the Giants now have another contract they will be able to bitch about in a year, or two. I don't mean to sound so negative, but I am just not seeing it.
Not sure why the angst:
ReplyDelete- The Giants haven't had a real third baseman since the good Pablo years and Longoria has been one of the top ones the last 10 years, including a GG last year.
- Speaking of GG, the Giants now have 3 out of the 4 infield positions occupied by them with Belt probably being close to being one.
- The Giants freed up money to make another move.
- The Giants are a better team today than it was yesterday.
Yeah, kind of sucks having to give up on Arroyo but there is a good chance that Longoria will be a more productive player the next 5 years than Arroyo would have been and that is our current window.
Even if we had signed Stanton, it is still going to take a series of moves to get us back to being competitive and I think people also have to get over the fact that even then, we are going to look different than the Rockies, the Dodgers,etc. There is still more than one way to be competitive and don't forget that the Giants are not that far removed from being a playoff team. A couple of good additions, folks staying healthy and returning to their normal production on we will be able to compete and that is all you can ask for.
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