Pedro Feliz declined arbitration as he seeks his fortunes elsewhere. Technically, he is not out the door yet because under the new CBA, the Giants are still allowed to negotiate with him and they are still interested if Feliz decides that he wants a shorter term contract (i.e. nobody is willing to give him a long one). At least they are not tied to him by arbitration because in that bloody process, even with all the crappy offense he has given us over the years, the process would probably award him ANOTHER RAISE from his $5.2M he got last season. Hopefully, if he is reduced to coming hat in hand back to the Giants, he would have to accept a pay cut contract.
Or better yet, he signs with someone and we get a compensation draft pick, it would be great to get another draft pick for next drafts.
What do you think about Inge? The Tigers are going to grant his request to be traded. He wants a team who needs a 3rd baseman. Considering they don't want to pick up any of his salary(approx. 3 yrs./$18m total left) and everyone knows he needs to be traded, they would seem to be negotiating from the weak point. Maybe he could be had for Fred Lewis or something.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of Inge, hence why I mentioned him before, but since someone noted their dislike and you brought him up again, I took a detailed look, and I don't like the reality of him.
ReplyDeleteLooking at his key indicator rates, he really strikes out to many times and don't really walk that much to mitigate that. So his OBP is horribly low and thus his value is only SLG and his defense, making him very Feliz like (except 20 HR is a stretch for him), only he already has a 3 year contract and Feliz wants one. One can guess that Pedro's agents saw Inge, saw Feliz, thought he should therefore get something similar, if not better since Feliz is better defensively as well as offensively.
The scary thing is that he plays at a very strong pitcher's park and yet his batting rate is much better at home than on the road. His OPS+ has been on a 3 year decline since his peak first season when he was 27 and now he is 30 years old (hitters often peak in their late 20's then decline), and seems pretty clearly to be on the downside of his career, based on that. He struck out way too much in 2007, but even before that, he really struck out too many times, only his "breakout" year did he strikeout an acceptable amount, but still not ideal for a major league hitter who hoped to be above average. In addition, despite a big leap in line drives in 2007, his batting average barely budged upward. Plus, his 2006 great year in homers was a fluke year where his HR/FB was way above the norm for his career (almost double the year before, 50% more than 2007). His 2007 appears to be more like his expected mean than any other season, meaning an OPS around 700, again, Feliz-like.
If they gave us Porcello in the deal for Inge, then I could see dealing one of our starters for him, but he is their "Morris" contract, only they have 3 more years and we had only one.
I say pass. I still like Frandsen at 3B, it's not ideal but at least he's starting and I think he is strong enough mentally to handle playing at a position that he might be weak at, i.e. he won't bring his fielding to every AB. But I have to assume the Giants are looking at 3B options.
Frankly, if our NL West competitors are that interested in Lowry, I would be willing to deal him if they gave us good prospects in return, like the Rockies could give us one of their 3B, Atkins or Stewart, plus Koshanshky, 1B, or Arizona could give us Chad Tracey plus a good prospect, or LA could give us Andy LaRoche and Chin-Ling Hu. I think that would be worth a shot, if one comes through, then we got even value, if both do then we hit the jackpot.
And I have to assume they are kicking the tires with the Indians on Andy Marte.