Nothing Happened Yesterday
….Nothing will happen today. Or tomorrow.
I’m not sure if I can remember a less interesting off season. Not just for SF but all of baseball. Even the Stanton thing ended weirdly.
Great to see Timmy yoked out but I’m not interested in him anymore. Not sure what all that working out did for his hip but I doubt it would give him back the elasticity needed to have the motion he had as a kid.
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
thx to xoot for that F/G column (and comments below it) on lux tax. Penalties for exceeding it have obviously made $$$ teams hold off on signings of big salary players, even while their revenues have gone up dramatically. The Yanks signing Stanton, as F/G also suggested few days ago, makes you wonder how small market teams can compete with LA BOS CHI. KC was competitive for brief while and now everyone from that era is gone, and they are looking up at the Tribe.
It is just so much fun every morning to check the trade rumors and then again after work and see absolutely nothing happened…is happening…or will happen…
All I have learned this off season is that Jeff Garcia as a 49er post game personality is bizarre. Dude’s weird.
Brisbee just retweeted someone named Murray about a SF trade “in place”–with the rays.
MLBTR saying it’s Longoria for Arroyo. F-ing Booby is such a tool.
Span and arroyo + no names for Longoria. Everything Giants do is geared to stay under the luxtax…
Longoria has 5 years left on his deal. Those last 3 are looking dicey to me, just when arroyo could be hitting stride. At first blush this looks like getting rid of a bad one year deal to take on a dubious 5 year deal. At least Span is gone. What a bust Span was…
I know I should just let this go, but I can’t.
What numbers were you expecting out of Span? A gold glove and a battling title?
He was a C list free agent brought in to hit .275 and play a decent center field. He has pretty much done that.
No to Longoria. No to any trades. Sign Cain and then its all about retooling the farm system and seeing if we can compete for the wild card in the meantime.
Big time bust. That’s the only upside I can see out of this deal. Arroyo will probably turn into an all star.
Flav’s headline didn’t age well. 🙂
lulz, I had the same thought.
Last thing I wanted….move by dumb asses
Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports that the Tampa Bay Rays have traded Evan Longoria to the Giants.
The entire parameters of the deal are not yet known, but Denard Span is reportedly being shipped to the Rays to offset some salary and to keep the Giants under the luxury tax. Jeff Passan reports that infielder Christian Arroyo is heading back to the Rays in return as well.
Longoria is coming off his worst season as a major leaguer, having hit .261/.313/.424 with 20 homers in 2017. He’s also still owed $86 million through 2022. Still, he’s not far removed from being an above average bat at third base and should improve the Giants lineup. Especially given that the Giants had Pablo Sandoval penciled in at third base.
Longoria — Eduardo Alfonso redux?…
Edgardo
Boom. Let’s hope not.
Wow. At least they finally made some noise. Hate to see Arroyo go, but at this point, at least the line-up should be better.
It should? That’s debatable.
San dog…Spam was not an average defender in CF. He was rated as the #1 worst defender in baseball 2 years in a row. Was absolutely a POS last second signing to shore up a crucial position heading into a competitive 2016 season. It reflected that mgmt had no game plan and with this Longoria trade continues to just attempt another piece it together strategy.
Was this deal better than just signing Frazier and keeping Arroyo? Time will tell but I am predicting not…
Evan fucking Longoria? Jesus H. Christ. The guy didn’t do shit hitting in a hitter’s park.
And by my count…I have the current payoll roughly at $184 mill after this trade and signing Hundley. Leaves roughly $16 mill for 2 OFers. My post yesterday for Bautista at $7 mill and Dyson at $5 mill may be more likely $10 mill for Bautista. As long as it is one-year for both…I can see it or something like it in play…
This team is lead by a cadre of fools. What a pathetic deal.
look at this shit from our new 3rd baseman
Isn’t he 3rd base?
yeah i just wrote it quick and I was mad so I screwed it up
That looks like a reaction to the Bucs missing a last-second FG vs. the Falcons on Monday.
Unbelievable. Way to kick off your career with a new team. What a dipshit.
Wow. That really sucks. Arroyo was too quick to give up on for a backside-of-the-career-guy.
Plus every Krook and Nanny? Fuck. Why not throw Panik and Samarj into the deal?
Well, at least they didn’t trade for an aging, slow honky. Oh wait a minute……
Zach Britton tore his achilles in off-season work-outs.
Obviously the Giants and Rays don’t meet often, but it looks like Longoria has never played a game at the Phone Park.
Well, the good news is Eva Longoria’s home runs went mainly to LF:
http://www.hittrackeronline.com/detail.php?id=2017_118&type=hitter
as someone here noted already: great deal. SIX YEARS AGO.
Tropicana was ranked 24th the last two years in ESPN’s park factors ratings. Someone else pointed out he had middling seasons in 2014-15, bounced back in 2016. And there’s the GG. If his OPS+ is again around 100, Longoria is an unexciting, mid-level upgrade for 2018.
his contract is not much more onerous than Crawford’s–two more years, just a bit more money per year (even in today’s dollars, vs. 2021 dollars)
Arroyo was a sub .200 negative WAR player last season
Here it is . . .
In a prescient-sort-of-way, I said y’day, more or less, I won’t miss Doughboy.
Bleep!! This was beyond stupid. This is going to be an unmitigated disaster. I’m glad spam is gone, but holy crap this was a terrible deal. They gave up way too much for this guy. Spam and Arroyo should have been plenty for taking on that contract
What a downer right before Christmas.
I’d rather have Eva Longoria!!
when I researched Longoria last week and this weekend, best piece on him I found was on FG, I think. It traced his downturn in 2017 to more ground balls per PAs, lower launch angle, lower velocity off the bat, etc. Let’s hope the analytic geniuses in the Giants FO know somethings we don’t.
Overall, I guess the brain trust is aiming for a .500 season in 2018.
i think you called this, didn’t you?
yes, reluctantly, last week as soon as I saw that the rays were shopping Longoria. The LF-LCF spray charts soothed my unease, slightly.
Chuck, I was just looking at the park overlays as well. Longoria pulls a lot of balls so he’s a fit in that sense. His wife’s hot too so there’s 2 positives already!
Well, good luck to Arroyo. I like the kid. I hope he becomes a fucking batting champion.
my bad, I should have checked the date on that tweet it was from two days ago
Unless this
Looks like 60-40 against the trade. Not sure ANY deal short of Otani + Stanton satisfying BF and some of the rest, but this guy is good. Of course, the problem is how3 long he will be good.
Would you call getting Bruce a significant move?
Does not appear that flappers are happy about this trade. At least he is not 35 years old and the Giants give home a 3 year deal
I’ll give Sabean/Evans this: they said they weren’t going to do a big tear-down rebuild. So, given that, this is the kind of move that is about the best we can hope for.
I’m not totally against this move. Longoria’s swing is a good fit for the park, he’s not Todd Frazier and it ensures Sandoval has a bench role at best. Dumping Span is an unexpected bonus.
And there it is from Sabes, sorry Blade & snarkk:
Exactly. They don’t know how to do it. Keeping that in mind, I’m glad they aren’t trying a re-build.
Giants East is setting up..
Arroyo& Duffy( if healthy) manning 3B&SS..
Is Tampa the only team Booby can trade with?
Yeah, i think the Longoria Nooooo tweet was in regards to the missed TB FG on Monday night . . .
As far as Span goes, I certainly expected more than the soft-hitting sub-decent CF we got. Crazy thing is his best power years were here.
Not dead-set against the deal either, I just think it cost us way too much for a 32 year old guy who is likely on the decline. If they had kept Arroyo, sure.
Jay Bruce? If he dead-pulls them, fine.
Looks like 7-8 wouldn’t have gotten out of here.
Does the chart take into account the height of the RF wall?
If nothing else, this deal shows that they weren’t taking the cheap way out (Panda/Arroyo) at 3rd base…
No hard feelings about Span. Seemed like a good dude who did the best he could with what he had left. I think the Giants were tricked into signing him by that post surgery video he put out that showed him doing an impressive vertical leap or something like that…
I think you might be right Loo
Too bad they don’t have hurdles in the basepaths.
I’m sure it does, Loo, as far as the wall goes.
Arroyo = Duval. He’ll prolly hit 28 dingers next year.
So is Panda out the door? I hope not.
He’s cheap insurance at 3rd and 1st and maybe a decent bat off the bench…
agree, keep him.
Out the door and out of the league as I have said before.
I doubt it. Unless Panda comes to camp REALLY overweight and can’t play a lick.
Then he’ll go to Oakland.
It would behoove (moooooooo!) him to come to camp in reasonable shape.
Seeing Jay Bruce’s name tied to SF here and other places but the club needs a CF and lead off hitter so I’d be mildly surprised to see him sign in SF. He’s old, hits LH and not good defensively. Wait, who am I kidding. He sounds like someone Booby would like.
I keep seeing references to the “sunset” of the CBTax after 2021, an event that’s supposed to justify everyone’s efforts to get under the threshold now. So I looked at the 2017-2021 CBA and found, at the end of Article XXIII:
I. Sunset
There shall be no Competitive Balance Tax in place following the 2021
championship season, and the Parties expressly acknowledge and
agree that the provisions of this Article XXIII (except those concerning
the collection and distribution of the Competitive Balance Tax proceeds
for the 2021 Contract Year and the assessment of any associated
penalties for exceeding the Base Tax or Surcharge Thresholds) shall
not survive the expiration of this Agreement.
So payrolls will be under the tax level in 2018 and then begin to rise every year after, rich teams again leading the way.
Seems like Jackson is the best fit left on the market.
Signing Lorenzo Cain makes even more sense now.
If we’re doing a reset instead of a rebuild, I don’t get why we traded Matt Moore. I know he was awful last year, but lefties with his upside are rare. If his problems were in his mental approach, as many on the Flap have posted, why not let Curt Young work with him and see if he responded to a new approach?
totally agree with you.
I think Moore’s a lost cause. Rags worked miracles on a lot of pitchers, some old, some young, but couldn’t seem to get through to him.
Bochy pulling Moore out after 8 innings against the Cubs in Game 4 is arguably Bochy’s biggest blunder as Giants manager. Had Moore pitched the Giants to victory in the 9th inning, who knows what happens in Game 5 and beyond, and who knows how Moore’s history with the Giants might have played out differently.
It’s possible Moore could have collapsed in the 9th inning, but it’s unlikely. He was really on that night.
The only silver lining was the Cubs knocked out the Dodgers in the next round.
Don’t they lose picks for signing Cain? Don’t see it.
they seem to be all-in on re-setting (not re-building) especially if they sign Bruce. I don’t think they give a shit about losing a pick at this point….
Agree on the resetting but their draft position is quite valuable. It’s the only way they get good low cost arms while wading through the payroll nightmare over the next 5 years.
Their gonna go cheap on the Centerfielder if they land Bruce.My guess now cause their going to need a guy that can fly to cover all the ground in the CF Grand Canyon plus to help the nonexistent speed of Bruce in LF and the ever breaking down Pence part time player only,As much as BF’s boy Billy Hamilton would be a good fit, he’s to young for the Giants lol, and I say Jarrod Dyson (33)will be the guy and cheaper too,still fast, not Ham are Gordon fast but defensively a major upgrade they need in CF.
Can the giants please keep or acquire players under 32 years of age? Keereist. Longoria will be cold at ATT and hit 20 dingers for the season, tops. Are we going to have a longoria hr prediction contest? Arroyo betr turn into Mr linguini with bat, else this trade suxxx balls. I think he will be a good bat eventually. His glove is just fine…
And no more damn left batting OFers!!!
Hell, he hit 20 last year, in a dome. I’ll be stunned if he gets that many this coming season.
More or less, I am “wait and see.” Regardless of how Longoria performs, this barely moves the needle, insofar as the Giants performance/record next season. We still need 3 outfielders; 2 more bullpen players (and come on – go back to Loo’s photo of Melanoma’s post surgery “C section” scar. Put a fork in him – he’s done); and, probably 1-2 pitchers that don’t have “rookie” in front of their names.
After everything is said and done this off-season, the Giants might make a run at .500 . . . But that’s only if the dead weight of last season (Belt, Crawford, Bum, Cueto, and Smarg) play better than they did last season; and Posey again plays outstanding ball.
A lot to ask for. Color me doubtful.
The past two seasons, after the AS break, Posey has hit a total of 5 HRs. Combined. That is crazy for a #3, #4 hitter at his pay grade…
Yeoman’s work for sure, but as you pointed out, the dude needs a break once in awhile (not just going to 1st).
Couple the aforementioned with age, realistically – how much longer can he perform at an All Star level?
That’d be crazy for Nick Hundley.
Finally found it . . . “Have no fear, Scarman is here!”
Sabean on any long-term concerns: “We’re not the type of organization or fan base that can go through a rebuild. We need to press the reset button and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
What does this even mean? The Giants will never go or have to go through a rebuild because they’re “not that type of organization?” And the fan base? Sounds like bullshit to me.
Agree LJ. Unadulterated bullshit.
Longoria is married to a playmate. Props for that.
.
Bochy was on that happy hour show saying he still plans to bat Posey in the clean up spot.
Funny, since that purge of coaches that Bochy obviously approved, hardly a mention of “Bochy should retire” anymore. I was up for him to retire after 2016. Looks like he’ll man the helm at least thru this next aimless season ….
Seems like he and the front office didn’t want him to exit on such a low note.
Probably correct. But what happens if 2018 is also a “low note”? …. I really don’t know what management thinks is miraculously going to happen with this team in 2018…
So where’s the high note coming from this year?
Boch will be so far under the .500 mark now when he gets into the HOF it will be embarrassing.Yeah like Chuck mentioned:I’m sure he could give a flying fuck, but I personally would not want to go in to Cooperstown with 2-3 shit sandwiches years to finish up with..
Getting into the Hall of Fame is a big deal. It’s not as big a deal amongst fans anymore, but within “the industry” it’s a huge huge honor. If Bochy gets in (and he should), he’s not going to care about what the regular season numbers look like. 4 World Series appearances and 3 championships should make him a slam dunk.
Casey Stengel sure did…
Speaking of coaching for a real long time, I read recently that Bill Hodges, the headcoach at Indiana St. when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson met in the NCAA championship game, is now coaching at a high school in Florida. He coached at several different colleges over the years. I visualize him telling his high school players that he coached Larry Bird, and them saying: “Who’s that?”
there’s a high school in SF that has a huge banner on the wall inside the front door: “I couldn’t run, I couldn’t jump, so I learned to pass and shoot. Larry Bird”
I don’t hate Bird as much as I used to.
Well, I’m ok with this deal, especially because it’s going to lead to more deals apparently.
Everyone had enough of Span and Arroyo didn’t exactly dazzle. Just hope they don’t do anything really stupid like settling for Gorky in CF. Still think it’s gonna be Gomez if he’s comes cheap for 2 years…
I’m still believing it’ll be Austin Jackson. 🙂
We’re fucked going forward . . . You only need to understand grade school arithmetic. Hello wilderness years!
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“Regardless of how Longoria performs, this barely moves the needle, insofar as the Giants performance/record next season.” Yep, and even if they acquire Bruce and LoCain Jackson, the Director of Run Prevention still has a daunting task. 776 runs allowed in 2017. To appreciate how stunning that is, even with the increased offense across MLB, here are the runs scored/allowed ratios of the past several SF seasons:
2012: 718 Runs, 649 Runs Allowed
2013: 629 Runs, 691 Runs Allowed
2014: 665 Runs, 614 Runs Allowed
2015: 696 Runs, 627 Runs Allowed
2016: 715 Runs, 631 Runs Allowed
2017: 639 Runs, 776 Runs Allowed
There was a 3% rise in league scoring between 2016 and 2017. Treating the 2016 numbers as a reasonable baseline for expectations heading into 2017, SF’s line might well have looked more like
736 runs scored, 650 allowed.
The complete collapse of the offense was exceeded in scale by an even more atrocious . . . run prevention regime.
The historical numbers may also hint at why the organization was caught flatfooted. If the front office had been truly objective/bold/visionary, the team could have been retooled as early as winter 2014.
Exactly . . . Read this – which basically substantiates what we’re saying about Longoria being a “gnat” move.
http://syndication.bleacherreport.com/amp/2750281-evan-longoria-trade-means-giants-have-no-choice-but-to-go-on-big-spending-spree.amp.html?$deeplink_path=article/bleacherreport.com/articles/2750281-evan-longoria-trade-means-giants-have-no-choice-but-to-go-on-big-spending-spree&$fallback_url=http://syndication.bleacherreport.com/amp/2750281-evan-longoria-trade-means-giants-have-no-choice-but-to-go-on-big-spending-spree.amp.html&_branch_match_id=469775964666510524
Not sure why everyone so against this trade. Arroyo didn’t play well, everyone hates Span. Longoria is a pretty good player who makes us better. Short of a full tear down this is the next best thing..
Only a good move, if more (good) moves to follow. This team was the worst in MLB, not named the Tigers. Adding a 32 year old 3rd baseman who’s seen his best seasons in the rear view mirror, is a band-aid at best.
Nevertheless, who knows? Maybe they have a plan to get 3 outfielders, 1-2 pitchers, and 2 pieces for the bullpen???
Ever the persnickety editor, even at 0740, please note the proprietary name: Band-Aid. Good morning [non-proprietary]
I blame Google, which provided the spelling w/o capitalization. LOL
damn Goggle!