Giants Reportedly Trade for Carlos Beltran

The rumored news is that the Giants have traded for Carlos Beltran, sending Zack Wheeler to the Mets.  Out of his $6M remaining on the contract, the Giants will get a reported $4M from the Mets and pay the remaining $2M.  Because Beltran is a 10-5 player, he gets 24 hours to reflect on the trade, but reportedly will approve it, according to a report by Tim Brown of Yahoo.
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Giants Thoughts

Assuming this trade goes through, it is probably the biggest deal that Sabean has pulled off in a mid-season trade to boost their chances of making the playoffs and winning once in.  The second biggest is probably the one that netted us Ellis Burks, and I would call that a close second, mainly because Burks was not that good defensively, though an equal as a hitter.  Third would be the one early in his tenure when he acquired Wilson Alvarez, Roberto Hernandez, and Danny Darwin for a package of prospects.  I'm probably forgetting someone (I don't count the Jason Schmidt trade because he wasn't that good a pitcher when we got him, at least in terms of career accomplishments, he was just right on the cusp of breaking out), but I think those are the top three.

To fit Beltran on the 25-man roster, the Giants will need to move someone to the minors.  At first, I thought that Emmanuel Burriss was the one to lose his spot, but now I think Brandon Crawford is the one who would go, as he is only hitting .160/.236/.160/.396 for the past three weekends, and perhaps tellingly, Fontenot started the past two games at SS, despite facing RHP.  Also, on the bench, Burriss is a fast pinch-runner that could help the offense, but Crawford's main value (great value) is playing great defense at SS.  Then Crawford can work on his hitting in the minors playing regularly.

To fit Beltran on the 40-man roster, the Giants look like they will have to DFA someone.  Posey, DeRosa, and Sanchez are all already on the 60-day DL, so there is really nobody to move there, unless they are not planning on bringing back Bill Hall anyway, and since they cannot DFA him while on the DL (at least I think the rules are against that), they could move him to the 60-day potentially to open a spot, though I do not think they should be able to do that with him since he "only" got spiked.  If they actually have to DFA anyone, the speculation for a long time is that Alex Hinshaw was a goner.  I think he's the one who makes the most sense right now, unless there is some way they can manipulate the DL somehow.

They are saying that Beltran will remain in RF (reportedly is more comfortable there) and Nate Schierholtz will move to LF, where he has never played before in the majors, but has played it in the minors (along with some games in CF as well).  Nate is reportedly not comfortable playing LF, though.

In any case, the rumor is that Cody Ross and Nate will platoon in LF, which works two ways.  One is that Ross is a tweener, he kills LHP but is only adequate against RHP, so platooning him with a LHB like Nate would optimize his usage.  He will probably see a good amount of starts against RHP anyway, if he has been good against them in his career.

And the way Bochy has managed, whoever is hottest would get more starts anyway.  I would also note that the main reason Beltran got moved to RF is that the Mets had found a CF that they wanted to play so they moved him to RF even though he was still handling CF well defensively, even when he was having his kneed problems the past couple of years.  He could conceivably end up playing some CF if Torres continues to go hot and cold as he has, if Bochy can convince him to move around for the best of the team.

I see some people talking about how hot Nate has been, but he's doing what he has done for a number of seasons now, get really really hot for a while, then go really really cold for a while.  You can't win consistently with a hitter who does that to the extremes that Nate has done in his career.  So, while he got hot about a month or so ago, for the past two weeks, July 14-26, he has hit .233/.233/.302/.535 with no homers.  And while he was better against LHP in previous seasons than RHP, this season he is hitting .293/.336/.466/.802 against RHP and only .239/.280/.304/.584 against LHP, so a platoon actually would work this season if he can continue that.  He has been a bit of a tweener himself, like Ross, and a platoon should maximize his value, at least in this season.  Hopefully he can be more consistent a hitter next season and take a starting spot permanently.

Another way that this works is that Beltran has been having health problems the past two seasons and if he goes out again, the Giants will need both Ross and Schierholtz ready to take over.  Platooning should keep both of them from getting too rusty on the bench.

I am disappointed and resigned to losing Zack Wheeler.  He has of a lot of skills to like, particularly striking out batters and getting a lot of groundballs.  He is ranked among the best prospects in the majors, 30-40 range, so he is a very good prospect.  I have been worried that we will lose Lincecum to free agency and was hoping that Wheeler could allow the rotation to lose a Lincecum and not take a huge dip.  Now that will obviously not happen.

The Giants are giving up a lot to rent Beltran for two months, albeit, he would greatly improve our offense.  Had Huff been hitting like he did last season (or Posey not knocked into the 2012 season), I don't think that this trade would have gotten done (or even Burrell hitting), but with the offense running on fumes for a while, they felt the need to give it an additional boost.

I would have been OK with the status quo, the Giants even with Beltran will have a hard time taking the Phillies in the playoffs.  Why make such a big trade just for the hope of winning this season?  I would rather take the long-term view.   I am still hoping that the two teams will be the top teams and thus not play each other in the first round, and that the Phillies get upset in the first round by the wild-card team.  I have no problem with missing them that way.

But I do trust the Giants brain trust to make the decision on who to keep and who to let go.  If they are letting Wheeler go, then I have to think that he's not on their keeper list for some reason.  A reason that none of the prospect hounds apparently see because he's seen as a future top of rotation starter.  I would have rathered that the Giants would have worked out some way to pick up Colby Rasmus or another young player who would be boosting our chances to win for more than just this season, which Beltran hopefully is doing this season.

In any case, the only prospect that the Giants gave up who has gone on to become an elite level player is Francisco Liriano (Nathan was not a prospect when he was traded).  And his injury history makes him a bad player to have on your playoff competing team, because once he is out, your team is usually screwed for the season because you can't replace talent like that normally in your roster.  He was and still is a huge injury risk and the Twins playoff chances take huge hits when he's injured or performing badly, which happens seemingly every other season.  So Sabean has a pretty good track record, the best prospects traded away are Liriano, Keith Foulke, and Bob Howry, and Carlos Villanueva looks like he'll be joining the list some day.

I don't anticipate the Giants trying to resign Beltran except for maybe 1 or 2 seasons.  That should be doable for the finances, the pitchers will really be much more expensive going beyond 2013.  And if we hope to dominate this decade, they will need to retain as many of their top pitchers as they can (meaning Lincecum, Cain, and Bumgarner).  But with Boras as his agent, I expect him to go for maximum years and maximum dollars, and I don't think the Giants can do that and still hold onto their pitching, unless Neukom puts a lot more money into the team to pay for all that.  Plus, do we really want to commit big money long-term to an injury prone mid-30's outfielder like Beltran?

Still, exciting move - once officially announced - that should energize the team and the fan base.  Carlos Beltran gives us two switch-hitting elite hitters in the middle of the lineup, paired up with Pablo Sandoval.  If Beltran can go on a huge hitting spree, like the last time he was a pending free agent, that should win the Giants the NL West division title easily, and help us avoid the Phillies in the first round.

It could also help the rest of the players (and I'm looking at you Aubrey Huff) relax and play within their abilities, which is actually good enough if they could just do that.  The loss of first Posey, then Sanchez, plus Burrell's fade out, from the lineup has put a lot of pressure on the team's remaining hitters.  Beltran and Sandoval in the middle should make everyone else around them better, giving the other guys better pitches to swing at and thus be more successful.

Adding a great hitter like Beltran is always a good thing, obviously.  Though he is no guarantee of a repeat, he does greatly improves the chances of it happening.  He cost a lot but great hitters usually do.  As much as I like Wheeler, he does walk too many, and perhaps the Giants think that he will never solve that problem, because he doesn't dominate (that is, strike out a huge number) like you need to in order to mitigate all the extra walks that he gives up.  However, he does generate a lot of groundouts, so if he does figure out how to reduce the walks, watch out, he's going to be a great one.  And should a team get desperate to sign Beltran quickly, he could possibly sign early and give us those draft picks, though I wouldn't count on it.