As announced by the Giants, they have traded for Boston's Rafael Devers, acquiring him in a package headlined by once and future ace, SP Kyle Harrison, SP/RP Jordan Hicks, and prospects OF James Tibbs III and reliever Jose Bello.
Devers (only 28 YO) is in the second season of a ten-year, $313.5M contract, covering him up to age 36 YO season, and there is about $250M left on it. He hit .272 with 15 HR and 58 RBI in 73 games for the Red Sox this season and has been a great hitter (.859 OPS) for his career with the Red Sox (8.5 seasons).
ogc thoughts
Wow, what a trade! I've seen a wide variety of grades of this trade, but this is a huge win for the Giants immediate future. The Giants have been around average or below offensively the past few seasons, and needed a powerful cleanup hitter. That was the purpose of signing Soler last season, to get a good hitter for the lineup (it was basically average 1-9 in 2023, except for 4th, which was below .700 OPS, they basically had Neifi hitting cleanup), but he couldn’t do it and luckily was traded.
Devers now fills that role, the stud in the 4th spot, the hole in the lineup, though it has been fine this season, but Devers would be an upgrade anywhere he goes into the lineup. But he’s a great hitter which will allow the other hitters to fill out the lineup better: Lee as leadoff, with OBP and speed, Ramos second, Adames third, Devers fourth, Chapman fifth, Smith sixth (what an addition he has been so far! Echos of his 2020 season), Yaz seventh, then Bailey eighth and Fitzgerald ninth, as the secondary leadoff guy. Flores can platoon with Smith at first, Johnson with Yaz in RF, and with how poorly Fitz has hit, Schmitt will likely start to see 2B starts, because he's been hitting well, once Chapman is healthy.
Devers likely is the DH for the foreseeable future. He might chip in at 3B while Chapman is out and Schmitt is injured (he got hurt in the LA game), ior even 1B, it depends on how the conversation that Posey, Minasian, and Melvin will have with Devers to discuss his role with the Giants going forward.
There is talk about compromises and negatives of the trade. Him being DH taking away an avenue for bringing Eldridge up at some point, the neeed for him to DH if 1B is too much for him. His huge contract for a player who can’t play a position. A player with a body type that does not augur well for the back end of his contract.
This is champagne, first world problems that the Giants and their fans have never really dealt with before. If anything, this will lessen the Giants need to push Eldridge to the majors. Maybe Smith can grab and hold the role for this season and next. Devers is so good and only 28, so he should still be good for at least another 4-5 seasons, which should be the key seasons the Giants core will be developing and growing into their peak seasons. By the back half of the contract, the team might be blown up anyway due to injuries, plus the real estate projects might be delivering the cash flows that covers his salary, and not be as big a burden on the payroll budget. In addition, a portion of his salary was deferred for another 10 years or so after the contract ends, so it is spread out as well.
The Cost is Reasonable
To get you need to give. It was a tough cost in Kyle Harrison. He has the potential to be an ace level starting pitcher. Krukow talked about this on the radio, saying this. And per StatCast, his 4-seam fastball is one of the best in baseball! And he’s been an above average SP for most of his two seasons in the majors, at ages 21-23. The sky’s the limit, as they say.
However, that is all he has, his superlative fastball. Every other pitch in his repertoire is much below average. It was so good that he didn’t really work too hard on finding other pitches to make it even more effective. A recent interview with him asked him about adding another pitch, and his answer said it all: he doesn’t feel the need for another pitch. So he might have reached his peak already, if he’s not willing to improve his repertoire, a huge contrast with the news that Ray felt the need to add a changeup, a veteran who realized his weakness and sought to improve it, vs. Harrison, who was happy enough with where he’s at now.
So while I’m very sad to lose him, and I think he can still become an ace and make us sorry down the line, he’s known for at least two years now that he needs to add a better pitch to his repertoire to reach his potential, so he appears to be either stubborn or simply satisfied with where he’s at. He might not work on another pitch until he’s becoming a free agent.
We also lost Jordan Hicks in the trade. But at this point, his role with the Giants is up in the air. The bullpen is full of great relievers, and the rotation is full as well. Plus we have many prospects in the minors waiting for an opportunity, like Whisenhunt and Seymour, maybe McDonad too. If anything, his contract was thrown in to offset Dever’s contract that the Giants are taking on.
The Giants lost a couple of prospects as well. Tibbs was their first round pick last season and while his 2024 debut was underwhelming, he was making good progress. He could be a starter in 2-4 seasons, depending on his development, but he’s no sure thing prospect either. Belo I don’t know much about other than that he’s a promising pitching prospect who was an IFA. He’s a lottery ticket that apparently Boston liked that the Giants were willing to give up.
To get you give, and Harrison is a big give, Harrison was once the top LHP prospect in the Top 100, Top 20 in Top 100, and has been successful for two years as a MLB pitcher. I still think he can be an ace, but it might take a while still. Tibbs is another big give, he was a first round pick, viewed highly enough as a prospect that he was almost on a Top 100 list (KLaw). He was viewed as a good pick. And while Hicks wasn’t as productive as hoped for the Giants, he’s been a great reliever previously and should be good again, and he’s still young. But each has their warts as players, so it was reasonable (if not light) return for a player of Devers stature.
Defining Moment of the Posey Era
When Buster Posey took over, he talked about creating memories for fans.
"We’re in a memory-making business," Posey said.
Well, this move is making a ton of memories!
First of all, it's the biggest deal in Giants history. Biggest contract taken on with a player, blasting out Adames deal. And counting Chapman, Posey has signed or traded for over half a billion dollars worth of deals.
Moreover, it's the biggest trade deal ever made by the Giants. The Giants have a long sordid history of being the team giving up the better players. Gaylord Perry. George Foster. Jack Clark. Matt Williams. But this is the best player acquired in trade, and I can't think of bigger hitters acquired.
Bill Madlock and Vida Blue were the blockbuster trades of my youth. But Maddog wasn't at the same level, and Vida was on the back end of his career already, his drug habit likely the cause of that. The Matt Williams-Jeff Kent trade ended up great for the Giants, but on the day of the trade, it was the Giants giving up on an All-Star great hitter for a journeyman second baseman who had never been played a full season, plus a young pitcher. AJ Pierzynski trade was such a trade, but hardly a blockbuster, a mole hill to this mountain of a trade.
Hunter Pence was probably one of the biggest trades but he was damaged goods at that point, not hitting all that great for the Phillies, they were dumping his contract. The closest in terms of talent and high level of production would be the Carlos Beltran-Zack Wheeler trade, which Posey had referenced recently when the moves were made to DFA Wade and to make the other moves, which can now be seen as foreshadowing this trade, which has been in the work for weeks now.
Rebuilding is Over, Competitive Era has Begun
Most of all, this trade has telegraphed some things to the Giants fanbase. First of all, this means the Giants are in it to win it this season and for years to come. You don't make a seismic move in the middle of the season like this unless you are trying to win this season, or take on such a huge long contract unless you are going for it for the foreseeable future.
Second, that means the rebuilding period is over. While signing Adames in the offseason and Chapman before that are long contracts, the Giants still had significant questions about their youth to answer before they can say that they are competitive going forward and not rebuilding.
The questions were numerous and ran across the roster. Was Lee the real deal yet or need more adjustment time? Was Ramos the real deal, or that decline at the end of the 2024 his real talent level? Fitzgerald had the same question. And Schmitt took a step up in 2024, could he continue to rise? Was Harrison, Birdsong, and Roupp real deals? Whisenhunt, Black and others in the minors, to boot. Also was the bullpen of Walker, Doval, Rodriguez, Miller, real deals as well? That's why they signed veterans like Verlander and the bullpen guys to fill out the roster, as there were still questions about the young pitching, especially about their ability to perform as well as go deep into the season.
The start of this season showed that enough of them were real deals, enough to be battling for the division title this deep into the season, past the first third of the season. And this deal signals that the Giants believe enough of this team to give up some of their pitching depth (but crucially, not their key and best prospect, Eldridge, nor their best pitching prospect, Whisenhunt) and a couple of prospect assets to obtain the rare superstar level player to hit in the heart of the Giants lineup, which has been very missing for a long while now. The offense should be above average if everyone hits like they should.
Third, this shows how aggressive Buster Posey is as the lead executive. He mentioned Sabean's aggressiveness with Beltran, when discussing the Wade series of moves, but this move is bigger than any of the deals Sabean ever made, and Buster hasn't reached his first anniversary. It is up there with Sabean trading Matt Williams, in terms of seismic impact on the SF Bay Area, but that was a huge negative event, where fans were calling for the newly promoted GM to be fired, calling him an idiot, whereas this was a huge positive event, up there and beyond any blockbuster deal the Giants have ever made here in San Francisco. Most Giants fans are stoked and excited about this deal.
Buster Be Boss!
I was excited to see Buster hired, but now I'm fully on board, now that I can see more of how he is as an executive and leader. I was worried initially because change of leadership is usually a repudiation of all that happened before. Plus, Posey has never been an executive making roster impacting decisions, and thus very inexperienced.
And he has earned my belief with time. He apparently saw something that the team needed that Zaidi clearly didn't, as a leader, and thus made the move to ask for the job. This move is now reminding me of how the Warriors hired Kerr, they liked the team but now wanted the right leader to take the final steps. And he liked a lot of what Zaidi did, because he kept almost everyone at a significant position (or promoted in Minasian's case), as well as, more impressively, kept the Giants roster mainly intact, making small additions at the margins.
This gained from me a lot of faith that he saw the potential that I saw in this roster, as well. I felt that the team was just a few moves and growths away from entering the NextGen Giants competitive era. And the performance to date shows that the team was and is a competitive team, which needed a few more pieces, like Adames, Verlander, and now Devers.
I never thought I would ever be on board with Kyle Harrison being traded, but we've never traded for a player of Devers magnitude or contract ever before, this is new uncharted territory for Giants fans. Nor was it great to hear Harrison be happy with what he had, which is in sharp contrast with Webb and Ray, accomplished veterans with a ton more success, who both added pitches in the past year, because while they were great pitchers, they wanted to be even better, unlike Harrison. Hopefully he can figure it out with the Red Sox, I'll still be rooting for him.
Dawning of a new Era of Giant Competitive Baseball
All in all, it's a dawning of a new competitive era of San Francisco Giants baseball. We have a number of good hitters in the lineup: Lee, Chapman, Adames, Ramos, and now Devers make a formidable top of the lineup. Yaz, Bailey, and Fitzgerald will add some, sometimes, in the bottom of the lineup. Smith and Flores will likely platoon at 1B, and could provide good to great offense in the 6/7 position of the lineup. Schmitt on the bench provides an interesting developing bat, as well as able defensive backup across the infield, as does Koss, who despite limited backup playing time, and tepid bat, has provided 0.5 bWAR production so far due simply to his defensive play, a version of Stewart and Whiteside in the infield, not catcher. Plus now Eldridge is likely staying in AAA until his glove develops enough so that he's at least average defensively there. That's now a pretty good defensive as well as offensive lineup.
And, of course, there's the great pitching staff. So good that they could sent qualified MLB pitchers like Harrison, Hjelle, Winn, Beck, and Black to the minors on Opening Day. Starting rotation of Webb, Ray, Verlander, Birdsong, and Rouup, with depth of Whisenhunt, Black, Seymour, and probably Bivens and Hjelle, as well. Bullpen of Doval, Walker, Rogers, Rodriguez, Miller, Bivens, with Hjelle and the starters above, being options for the bullpen, if necessary, plus McDonald and others ini the minors.
The Giants have the second best ERA in the NL at the moment, and more importantly, second in RA in the NL, which my studies have shown that in the Wild Card era, teams in the first five RA spots have taken 75% of the playoff spots in the past 30 seasons. So the Giants are in a great position to not only make the playoffs, but also to go deeper into the playoffs, which my study also found.
And they look to be up there for at least the 2025-26 seasons, with Webb and Ray atop our rotation, and good young starters like Birdsong and Roupp, providing good to great performance in the back of the rotation. The Giants are 3-2 with Birdsong starting (3.24 ERA, 136 ERA+) and 7-7 with Roupp starting (3.99 ERA, 95 ERA+). As I've noted in my blog before, having an average pitcher, like Roupp has been (or Zito before), is an advantage to a team, because they often are facing other team's back of rotation starters, which these teams are often cycling through to find someone who is good enough, but often they are really bad.
Verlander might be retained for 2026, but Whisenhunt has been great so far in AAA, and Black and Seymore has been good enough in their careers before to deserve consideration and opportunities.
And the only question marks in the lineup are 2B, RF, and 1B, going into 2026. Fitzgerald hasn't been the answer there at 2B, so I expect Schmitt to get the chance to win the position if Fitz continues to fizzle. And if neither works, maybe a free agent like Ha-Seong Kim (Jung Hoo Lee's buddy). Yaz might be retained for RF, if no other team offers him a $10-19M contract a player of his performance level should get. Perhaps Matos or Luciano will seize the day, or maybe Bo Davidson continues to mash his way up the minors. Or Dakota Jordan rises to his five tool abilities.
Obviously, 1B is Eldridge's spot at some point. Hopefully Smith can be the answer there until he does, but Schmitt has shown a good glove there already, despite never playing before, so he could be an option there if Dom falters. And who knows, maybe Devers might play there part time, if he decides to be more flexible with his new team (or maybe not, but given his big boy body, the talk I saw with Boston fans is that DH is his future at some point, he will eat his way there, like Panda).
In any case, the Giants pitching staff looks like it will be good for the foreseeable future, and the defense and offense, as well, from the lineup, so let's see how this team can create memories for fans, as Buster is trying to do.
This trade is a huge memory, a time when the Giants are the ones trading for a great player, instead of the other way around, the gut punch of watching one of our stars traded away. This has been a great first season of the Buster Posey era as executive, and hopefully much more to come!!!
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