but I think he might be a great example of a player you should trade. Closers are often way overvalued in baseball and if a team is willing to give up good prospects for him, I’d definitely think about it.

Say the Giants do trade him, you’ve got some guys who might be able to take over in Hinshaw, Romo (when he gets healthy), maybe even Sadler.

I love Wilson but if a team comes offering a legit position prospect for him at the deadline, I’m probably moving him. That’s if I was Mr. GM

I also think that “closer mentality” is one of the most overrated concepts in baseball. You have to mentally tough, I’m sure, but growing scary facial hair or getting tats on your arms isn’t going to make you more effective.

I wouldn’t say you can’t trade Brian Wilson, but I would like to see him stay. Perhaps I am blinded by the joy of not having a closer who takes a dump on the mound every time he goes out there a la Armando Benitez.

Relievers tend to be overvalued in free agency, but usually not in trades. Additionally, I don’t trust Sabes to get equal or better value back for Wilson. The Giants are building a good bullpen, which will be key to the next good giants team. Pitchers like Merkin Valdez, Erick Threets, Billy Sadler, Alex Hinshaw and Sergio Romo will build a great bullpen, but having a dominant closer is key. For all the gripes about wilson’s ERA and propensity for avoiding 1-2-3 innings, we forget that he is in his first year as closer and he has the ability to be dominant in that role. Stacking the bullpen is probably the best way the Giants could contend sooner than 2012.

I don’t want to deal Wilson.

But if we got a great offer for him, then I’d certainly consider it.

Just a small point, but there is a reason the Giants closer has so many save opportunities. It is the unfortunate combo of bad offense and good pitching. The Giants offense will never run away with a game (Ok, rarely). And the Giants starting pitching will usually keep the in games (See J-Snatch’s performance on WED). Since the Giants are the league leaders in 1 run games, it follows that their closer should get many chances.
All of that being said, Wilson is VITAL to the team. Imagine this team if the Giants closer had only converted 8 of 16 saves, instead of 14 of 16. NOT GOOD. Trading Wilson would make J-Snatch and Timmy cry, and would just kill Cainer.

I would prefer not to trade Wilson but if a legitimately good prospect or young position player was offered for him, we’d be insane not to take it.

I know he’s pitched better than this but he does have a 5.49 ERA and a 1.62 WHIP so far this year. (FIP is 3.87) Anyway, my point is that he hasn’t exactly been lights out this year.

Don’t trade Wilson unless someone’s offering a GREAT positional player (or can’t-miss AAA prospect). Even then I’d be reluctant to do so. This is his first full year closing and he’s looking like the next Robb Nen, right down to the scary WHIP. To a certain extent, his hair-raising innings can be ignored since he’s not blowing saves left and right a la Mando and he’s still getting a feel for the role. The Giants will have a much better sense of what they’ve got with him at the end of the season, so trading him now would almost be like abandoning an experiment halfway through.

Just put in Lincecum as the closer. Closer problem solved.

Signed,
Ralph Barbieri circa 2007

Reliver wins added stat, Brian Wilson is 17th in the majors. That’s pretty good.
Saves (and even save %) is a pretty silly way to measure usefulness, but at leas BWs saves have typically been of the 1-run variety.

He’s saved 14 of the Giants 19 wins… he could end up with 55 saves or something. If that’s the case, I would consider trading him for multiple prospects.

I mean, if we trade him, that will open up a roster spot in the offseason for a multi-million dollar contract for a Todd Jones type.

And who doesn’t want Todd Jones on this team?

At the trade deadline contenders are going to be looking to fortify their team for the pennant drive and playoffs. Brian Wilson could be a valuable commodity for a team with an aging closer AND looking for an 8th inning set-up guy for the 2008 season who could be the closer for the 2009 season. These are the teams GM Sabean could demand a king’s ransom. If Sabean gets that offer then make the dealio because SF will be dealing from a position of strength.

Since I think “closers” get paid way too much, I’m for keeping Wilson around. He’s cheap, under our control and we can live with some growing pains (WHIP, etc.) for a little while. I thik he’ll be dominant within a season or two and I want that to be in a Giants uniform. That said, if some team is willing to do something stupid in trading for him, I’ll listen if I’m the GM.

Generally, reliever/closer types are probably dime a dozen (see Doug Jones) but Wilson has a few things going for him that I like. One is that he wants to be closer. While I don’t believe the closer mentality either, I do think that to a large extent you have to want it too. Wilson and Taschner have that attitude. Another is that his arm has been rated as a plus arm according to a Giants note blurb sometime this season (Cain, Lincecum, Valdez, and Wilson). Thirdly, his out pitch is the cutter that Mariano Duncan uses – he learned it from watching Duncan on TV showing it to the audience – and he has been successful with it. Given that all, I would prefer to keep him.

That said, it depends on who the other team is giving up.

However, I think my threshold would be higher than xanthan, because BP research has shown that having a great closer is crucial towards winning in the playoffs, particularly winning it all. And you can list all the nice looking pitchers we have in our system, but you all saw what happened once we lost Nen and how hard it was to replace him. So it would take a lot, A LOT, before I would trade Wilson, probably a top rated 3B or top rated power hitting SS. I doubt any teams would offer that up to us and I don’t mind, I would rather keep him, we still have him for another 5+ seasons, he’ll be seasoned by the time we need him to close in the playoffs, instead of trying to win with a young unproven closer.

To the question about why Wilson isn’t starting, I think the answer is staring you in the face: we already have Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Correia, Misch, Zito, plus Lowry and last year we had Morris. One reason why he started out relieving was because he had TJS right around when we drafted him, so he had just recovered from the surgery when he started his pro career for us. So, of course, he relieved so as to keep the strain on his arm down. For most of his time in the minors, the reports were that the Giants brass did not know what to do with him, there was still some thought that he might start again. And given what they did with Russ Ortiz (reliever in minors, starter in majors), they have no problem doing that if they wanted to.

But he took to closing, in fact, appears to love closing. And we need a closer but not so much a starter, even last season, we had Lincecum coming up and really no space for another starter. So they left him as a closer. Plus, we really need a closer, so closer he is.

Regarding his curve, yes, the scouting report when he was drafted was that he had a great curve, but he basically forgot about it after his surgery. In a Q&A with fans, someone asked him about that and he said that he does throw one but maybe since the person asked he’ll think about it. Did not say why he dropped it, but perhaps he blames it for needing TJS in the first place, else why kill a pitch that was considered good. In any case, he focused on other pitches, both because of the surgery and because he was a reliever now and felt that if he’s going to get them out, he’s going with his best pitches. And he apparently perfected the cutter that he “learned” from Duncan (his progress with the pitch apparently accellerated when he came up and was able to talk with someone on the Giants staff who knew Duncan, don’t recall who that was (Sabean?).

“Nathan didn’t show many signs of what he was to become when Sabean traded him”

Why do people keep trying to sell this bullshit?! If you wanna make yourself feel better about trading a perennial All-Star closer for a 2004’s Douchebag of the Year, then say Nathan was injury-prone. Say he was a converted infielder, and Dr. James Andrews claims they never stay healthy. Say AJ was an All-Star, and Sabean had no idea he’d implode with the Giants. Say it looked like a great trade at the time. Say whatever you want… BUT DO NOT SAY NATHAN NEVER SHOWED SIGNS HE COULD BE GREAT! IT IS A LIE!

Thankfully, unlike you, the numbers from Nathan’s 2003 season do not lie:

12-4 W-L
2.96 ERA
1.06 WHIP
5.81 H/9
9.46 K/9
142 ERA+

Those numbers are dominant. He was more successful vs. RHB than anyone is baseball except Gagne, the Cy Young award winner. His stuff was nasty. He was called a future closer by his manager. If you want to argue that was the time to trade him because it appeared his value would never be higher - as Grant did at the time - that makes perfect sense and I can’t argue. But claiming Nathan was some completely unknown quantity - or worse, some stiff - at the time of the trade is just a huge load of crap.

/rant