El Lefty Malo is AWESOME: Rowand and Tejada DFAed

El Lefty Malo is AWESOME!  Read his post on what he thought the Giants need to do.

And the Giants appeared to listen to him, though not to the letter (sub Tejada for Cabrera) by DFAing Rowand and Tejada.  Arguably, this is a bigger message sent since Tejada is paid a lot more than Cabrera.  But I think his open pouting and discussion of such regarding the bunt helped Giants management push the button easier on that one.

Rowand's lack of production made his release an easy one, $14M or not, as Baggarly reported that he was openly campaigning for getting out of SF, a circumstance that probably made the decision for Giants management that much more obvious as well.  He has reached the true point of "sunk costs":  at least last season he was a viable talent off the bench, producing some value as a player, and for the first half of this season, but for a number of months now he has been even worse than replacement value.

They were clearly "addition by subtraction" type of moves.  That's nearly $20M wrote off, so Zito could be gone sometime next season as well if he's not producing or even if he's not in the starting rotation, since the Giants could go with Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Sanchez, Vogelsong in the rotation.

Sabean says that he will try to trade both of them today so that they can hook on with a playoff contending team; Rowand is hoping to rejoin the Phillies, but I don't see the Giants doing that one, I don't think that they want to see him haunting them in any way.  I also don't see any team wanting to even give up a low level prospect for either of them, much cleaner to wait for the end of the 10-day period and sign them then.  Nobody will be crying that they didn't pick these players up in time to make the playoff roster, as defiant as Tejada's statement was the other day about contributing to somebody's playoff efforts.  But if Renteria can get a job somewhere, I'm sure Tejada will as well.

Meanwhile, the Giants activated Pat Burrell and purchased the contract of Brett Pill, rewarding his great season so far in AAA, plus his willingness to play a number of different positions.  As much as I would hope that Pill mashes, the history of players his age who hit well but not that great in AAA is not encouraging, they normally don't come up here and do much of anything.  But I wish him all the success he can get, and who knows, he could be the exception to prove the rule.  I certainly would not have thought that Crawford could keep his strikeout rate so low in the majors, or his walk rate so high, so there's always that.

I assume part of this move was to enable Burrell to be available for the playoffs should we be able to fight our way in.  And at this point, you roll the dice and see what you got with Pill, there is really no one else high in the system worth that shot.

Baggarly also noted that there is still an open 40-man spot with this move.  That opens up the possibility of bringing up another player, such as Bill Hall or Marc Kroon.  Sentimentally, I would go with Kroon, but objectively, Hall is probably the more logical move because he can play multiple positions and has been hitting OK in the minors, though not great, at least if he were still a major league caliber hitter.  If he were, he should have been killing the ball.  Still, he's been a major leaguer, and it wasn't that long ago that he was hitting OK (last season), so you might want to take a chance on that.  But at this point, I would go with Kroon, would make great story, might juice the clubhouse by his inspirational story, which Hall would not provide.

Nice offense today, just what this team needs, 4 runs, that is all we ask for, daily, and our pitching can win with that.  Appears that the shock of the move got some of the hitters moving, though really, Jeff Keppinger and Mark DeRosa has been hitting lately, and of course, Pablo Sandoval has usually been hitting.  Fontenot had a nice game too, as did Chris Stewart, whom I've liked since he came up to the majors for us.

However, neither Carlos Beltran or Cody Ross did much of anything to help, though perhaps Ross is now afraid that Burrell will take his ABs away.  Sigh: he should realize that it is his poor hitting that is taking away his ABs, not the OF situation, Bochy would start him a lot if he were hitting as well as he was for most of this season, and not the sad numbers he has put up since Beltran was traded for.   Beltran has been hot for the most part lately, but have been coming up small when we needed him, like in yesterday's game, he could have tied the game with a base-hit and got us back in the game with a timely hit.

And, of course, Madison Bumgarner gave us a great game.  Hopefully it is a start for the rotation, seems like a statement game by him:  try and top this, ladies.