The Aubrey Huff Dilemma
by Aaronstampler on Jul 18, 2011 6:32 PM PDT
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As I type this I would wager that most -- maybe as high as 90 percent -- want the Giants to call up the organization's top prospect, 1B Brandon Belt, and to greatly reduce Aubrey Huff's role, either to platoon status where Huff would start against lefties only, or to bench him completely and reduce him to pinch-hitter extraordinaire.
It certainly is difficult, perhaps even foolish at this point, to mount any kind of defense for Huff -- he has been a complete disaster this season. However, I think the issue of bringing Belt up and benching Huff is a complicated one, and I'll try my best to explain why after the jump.
At the risk of sounding naive, I really do believe the Giants brass when it comes to their stated intentions for Belt. They don't view him as some glorified AAAA player like Manny Burriss or Dan Runzler, forever doomed to be taking the back-and-forth Fresno shuttle until they run out of options. I think they regard him, if not as highly as they regarded Buster Posey, just a notch below that and are convinced he's going to be a big part of their future in upcoming seasons. When they broke camp with him on their roster I think they fully intended to have him be the starting first baseman the whole year and while it wasn't too surprising that the youngster struggled early and had to be sent back down for more seasoning, I think the team's brass was still a bit disappointed that they had to take that step.
I think Bruce Bochy and Brian Sabean don't want to look at Belt as some pinch-hitter or fill-in starter. I think they agree that when he comes up next time, they'd very much like it to be for good, and as a full-time regular. It's the only way he'll ever develop to his full potential, if he ever will.
Is it that simple though?
At the beginning of the year there were more options. Not only did Cody Ross start the year on the DL, but there were only two guaranteed outfield spots. Nothing was ever promised to Pat Burrell, whose defense was so below par that it was always understood that he'd have to hit early and often to hold down his job. Belt started the year at first and Huff was in right, where he was atrocious. Once Ross came back, there was some thought that Cody could play right and Huff in left, but really by then Belt was hitting so poorly that there wasn't much of a reason to justify playing him over Burrell and he was sent down.
Now Burrell is on the DL and almost completely out of the picture (though his stats aren't that bad, really). It would seem the time is right to call Belt back up, right?
Well...
Look at this lineup. It's the one that most MCC members want, barring trades for Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes or whoever else that's assumed to be on the market.
C - Whiteside ($425,000)
1B - Belt (> $300,000)
2B - Fontenot ($1,050,000)
SS - Crawford (> $300,000)
3B - Sandoval ($500,000)
LF - Ross ($6,300,000)
CF - Torres ($2,200,000)
RF - Schierholtz ($432,500)
You add that up and the whole lineup is making about $11.5 million this season, or about as much as Huff is making by himself. Add to that Aaron Rowand's $13.6 million and Miguel Tejada's $6.5 million and now you've got nearly $32 million dollars wasting away on the bench. Add to that Barry Zito's $18.5 million if and when Jonathan Sanchez comes off the DL to take back his spot in the rotation and that's over $50 million of Brian Sabean FAIL.
I just don't think it's very realistic for them to bench so many expensive players. It makes them look like idiots for signing these guys in the first place. Now obviously Sabean deserves credit for having so many useful cheap players, but on some level they do exacerbate all the missteps he's taken on the free agent market. You bench Huff and all of a sudden damn near half the Giants payroll is tied up in guys that they're not using most games.
That's not to say Belt doesn't deserve to be called up. I think if everything was equal he should be up here, proving he belongs. But back in April that didn't mean benching Huff, which was, at the time, an unthinkable notion. It was simply a matter of moving Huff to a corner outfield spot. Now not only can you bench Ross, who's done nothing to deserve that fate, but really you can't sit Schierholtz either, not when he's been one of the few bright spots in the lineup while also helping on the other side of the ball by being one of the few plus-gloves on the team. It sure would be convenient if Belt could play catcher or in the middle of the infield (or if Huff could) but he doesn't.
So, if I'm reading the situation correctly, fans here want Huff, a guy who's signed through 2012, to be benched, even though we have no guarantee whatsoever that Belt will be any kind of improvement -- the early returns in April, albeit with only 66 plate appearances, weren't very promising.
What would that mean going forward? "Hey Aubrey, I know we benched you for the last 60 games of 2011, but since we couldn't deal you in the off-season we're hoping you'll compete in spring training for the starting left fielder job. Yeah, we were hoping Cody would be playing here too, but we couldn't afford to re-sign him because of your salary."
Or what if Posey returns but with the limitation that he can only be a first baseman from this point forward, pushing Belt to left field. Where does that leave Huff then? Either as an awful 35-year-old right fielder playing six innings a game in front of a grumpy Schierholtz who'll be wondering what he did wrong, or on the bench alongside the similarly eight-figure compensated Rowand on the bench. Fabulous.
I think what I'm trying to say is that the best move for the organization is one that we haven't seriously considered at MCC, and one that will make me even more of a pariah here than I already am. I think the team should strongly consider trading Brandon Belt if they can get Jose Reyes for him. I think it makes sense on a number of levels. No matter how promising Belt's bat is, teams can always find first basemen and corner outfielders easier than quality middle infielders and catchers. For all we know our first baseman of the future is, by necessity, the guy with the cast on his left foot.
I think we made our bed when we re-signed Huff. Obviously now it looks like a bad signing but it was still one we had to make at the time and one I won't blame Sabean for making at all. For better or worse we're married to Huff for a while longer. And while Rowand and Tejada and Zito have all taken their turns being frozen out of the picture here and there, there are only so many guys we can sit without making the team's brass look like a ship of fools.
If we can somehow get Reyes even as a rental, I think we can do enough to convince him to re-sign here long term. We'd have the payroll flexibility first of all, thanks to all these sellouts, and I think he would like the clubhouse and the winning culture of the team after playing for all these dog Mets teams for so many years. He'd probably like the relaxed media environment too.
The fact is we really don't know whether Belt will be good anyway. I know we all want him to be the next Will Clark, but odds are he won't be. He plays a very easily-filled position and his situation plugs up quite a few other guys. If we can use him to shore up our hole at shortstop for a few years and give our team a legit leadoff hitter to boot, why not do it?
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I don't think it makes you a pariah. Nice pre-defense, though.
But I honestly just don’t know how the team could possibly justify trading this:
Once more, coming to you by proxy.
my whole argument is that if they really believed in those numbers they should’ve A) never re-signed Huff or B) never re-signed Ross. It seems to me that they made their choice and now Buster’s injury and Schierholtz’s emergence only complicates things further.
It’s hard for the organization to say “Belt’s our guy” and then justify that with the other moves they made.
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
by Aaronstampler on Jul 18, 2011 6:56 PM PDT up reply actions
I don’t think we have to come to the conclusion that they don’t believe those numbers. It seems more likely than not that they do believe those numbers, considering how quickly they’ve advanced him and how eager they were to get him on the 25-man roster out of the gate.
I think their expectation with Huff was that he could transition easily to the outfield. The fact that he can’t has complicated things. But not terribly so, as a year of Belt in AAA was always a desirable outcome.
I think their reasoning for re-signing Ross also had little to do with Belt. As recently as 2010, the teams outfield depth consisted of John Bowker. That the team has overstocked on outfielders since then speaks more to their desire not to caught empty-handed more, I think, than it does to any notion they have that Belt’s numbers may not be real.
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by howtheyscored on Jul 18, 2011 8:17 PM PDT up reply actions
as a year of Belt in AAA was always a desirable outcome.
Only in the context of Huff and Burrell hitting enough to justify keeping him there. In the current situation, there’s very little desirable about it.
VAE PVTO DEVS FIO
It may be little desirable for the MLB team right now, but I think there’s plenty of reason to believe that it’s still plenty good in terms of Belt’s actual development, and always has been.
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by howtheyscored on Jul 18, 2011 8:53 PM PDT up reply actions
It’s good for him to play everyday, but I don’t think it’s better for him to do it in Fresno than the majors. Probably not to start the year, and definitely not now that he’s spent 42 games destroying PCL pitching.
VAE PVTO DEVS FIO
I don’t know that it’s better or worse for him, for him to be at Fresno. But if it is worse, it’s the worse of two good options.
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by howtheyscored on Jul 19, 2011 12:36 AM PDT up reply actions
Maybe with respect to offseason planning. As of right now, though, I think you’ll agree that any option that features Belt in Fresno and Huff as the unchallenged starter is not a good one.
VAE PVTO DEVS FIO
I was speaking with respect to Belt himself, that even if his development is better off in the majors now, which it may or may not be, it’s still plenty well off at Fresno.
With respect to the team, it seems like an obvious disadvantage to have Huff’s current bat in the lineup every day over most people.
I tried to make the distinction between what’s good for the ML team right now and what’s good for Belt right now. There is a bad choice for the ML team right now, and it would be having a .650 OPS player at first base for the rest of the season (which assumes Huff does not improve, which he may, though it becomes easier to assume that he won’t with each passing week). I don’t think there is a bad choice for Belt himself. There is a good choice and a better one, and I’m not entirely decided on which is which.
Once more, coming to you by proxy.
by howtheyscored on Jul 19, 2011 8:42 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
I don’t think its the worst thing in the world for belt to be down in Fresno for a while longer. It was extremely small sss but it seems that pitchers had found a hole in belts swing, and could reliably get him to ground out weakly to second consistently. The batting eye was definitely there, but he’d played only 13 games in AAA before this year and he’s got barely over a full season in the minors cumulatively. I’m sort of with you that its not awful he’s down there right now. They’re not in a dire position of need for offense at this second.
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I agree Re: Ross
I mean coming into this year the starting OF was Burrell (released last year) Torres (spent a long time in AAA) and Nare (looked like a 4th OF).
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One quibble: they didn’t “re-sign” Ross. They simply didn’t non-tender him. There’s a difference between actively re-acquiring or extending a player and not throwing him away when you have control of him for a reasonable price. While they did come to a financial agreement with him that allowed them to avoid arbitration, saying they “re-signed” him is not accurate. They had control of him and they kept it.
As for how all of that reflected on Belt, I assume their feelings about Belt were “he’s a great prospect but he’s only had one season in the minors.” The old rule of thumb (which Sabean will repeat frequently when discussing prospects) is you usually would like to see a player get 1000-1500 ABs in the minors, so I’m sure they were originally creating their roster with the idea of getting at least half a season for Belt in Fresno.
MY DAD WAS WRONG!
MY BOY NEEDS TO THROW HARDER!
I wouldn't trade Belt for a rental
I get why the org re-signed Huff and while it didn’t necessarily make a ton of sense at the time (giving a multi year deal to a 33 y/o coming off of a season that was likely an outlier with a near ready prospect at the same position) Huff was basically the face of the castoffs and misfits WS team.
Also, I think if the Giants don’t trade for Beltran I could see Belt getting a lot of PT as the regular LF with him, Torres, Nate, and Ross getting regular starts as well since he’s crushed the ball at AAA and the Giants do need an offensive boost.
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This is pointless
And someone who is unfamiliar with the concept of a sunk cost. Signing Huff to a 2 year deal was a bad idea, and the solution to that bad idea is not to trade away cheap assets – its to cut bait with the failing one.A
Jonathan Sanchez. He's left-handed, like Barry Zito. His fastball breaks 80, unlike Zito.
I understand my solution isn’t perfect by any means, but yours isn’t realistic either. The Giants, as an organizational philosophy, don’t seem to believe in cutting bait. If they did they would’ve done so with Zito, or at the very least with Rowand. They stand by their guys to the bitter end and find ways for them to get starts, at-bats, platoons, etc.
Bochy has found ways to get Rowand like 270 plate appearances already, and while injuries to all the other outfielders and Torres’ reduced production have played major roles in that, Rowand hasn’t gotten those ABs because he has been, you know, good, but pretty much solely because of his salary.
Barring some ridiculous trade where somebody takes Huff off our hands, or some freak injury that lands him on the DL for a long stretch, I can’t envision any scenario where Huff isn’t getting over 400 ABs for the Giants next year. Assuming that Belt is on board and a regular, that means we’re either gonna lose Cody or Nate so he can play in their stead. While that might be an acceptable tradeoff for most people to get Belt’s bat in the lineup, the point I tried to make is that if Buster’s injury reduces him to a first baseman, then things will get even more complicated.
I wasn’t advocating trading Belt because I dislike him or am convinced he’ll be a bust. My viewpoint is that while I’m confident the Giants will have plenty of competent options at 1B and the corner outfield spots between Huff, Posey, Belt, Ross, Schierholtz and a host of free agent options, I’m not at all confident they will have a slick-fielding shortstop who can also hit, as those tend to be pretty rare. I’m also not confident they’ll have a real leadoff hitter.
Reyes seems to me a rare player with a combination of talents that would ably fill holes we’ve had on our ballclub and will continue to have, unless you believe Torres can revert to his 2010 self at the age of 34 and beyond, and that Crawford can hit well enough to not be a complete liability on offense.
Obviously the ideal solution would be to deal Huff, but I don’t think we can. There are lots of guys we’d love to be rid of financially, but we’re stuck with them for better or worse. Belt fills some needs for this ballclub, but if he can be used to fill even bigger needs, I think a trade for him isn’t so crazy.
It’s probably moot anyway, since the other person pointed out, the Mets don’t need someone like him. I was just saying that if they happened to demand him of the Giants, that it shouldn’t be a reason to hold up a potential trade. I guess we’ll just have to hope Crawford will develop and that Torres has another good year in him or that either Ross or Schierholtz can play center.
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
by Aaronstampler on Jul 19, 2011 1:50 AM PDT up reply actions
Your fundamental flaw is that you think the Mets would want Brandon Belt. Have you looked at their roster? They have plenty of young depth for the position. Before making a statement like Belt for Reyes. Which by itself probably wouldn’t be enough for Reyes. Consider what the Mets need. It is not BB.
by Andrew Crispell on Jul 19, 2011 9:21 AM PDT up reply actions
LOLREYES
You had a great logical argument going here…until you mention Reyes. Now you read as more of a troll then me.
by Andrew Crispell on Jul 18, 2011 9:35 PM PDT reply actions
HAHAHAHAHA
I was doing fine till the trade Belt line. You went from well-reasoned to complete loon in a sentence. Huff is here for next year. Belt will be here for four years beyond that.
Back on the market.
by positiveuphemism on Jul 18, 2011 10:52 PM PDT reply actions
Yup
Had me until trade Belt.
Seth Rosin can hit the side of a barn with a baseball. From space.
Giants baseball: We're stupid enough to WIN that (TM)
isn’t it kind of early to call Runzler a glorified AAAA player? he climbed 4 levels in 2009 and showed some promise in 2010 before he got hurt….
by repeat_in_2011 on Jul 18, 2011 10:57 PM PDT reply actions
Huff isn't going anywhere
And neither is Belt. Search your heart, you know it to be true.
First, Posey is going to catch. He’s not going to play first unless he absolutely cannot be a C (which probably means his career is over), and even then I think they’d rather move Pablo back behind the plate and put Buster at third. Hell, I bet they’d try him at short before they put him at first long-term.
Second, the Giants need Belt on the team. They need his cheap production to have a respectable offense while Lincecum is making $25M+ a year. No Belt means a serious loss in offense.
Third, Reyes isn’t signing an extension, partly because he said he wasn’t, but mostly because Scott Boras is his agent and Scott Boras loves free agency. Parting with a A prospect, our #1 guy in a weak system, and a top 20 MLB prospect for a three-month rental is unbelievably stupid. The things you talked about don’t matter enough for him to stay here; if the Giants want to pay his asking price in FA they could get him, and maybe he’d knock $5M off the deal if he really liked it here, but I’m not betting Belt’s future on that $5M and not having to give up draft picks. Not to mention his salary would preclude us from keeping one of Lincecum or Cain unless Neukom says yes to a $160M payroll.
Fourth, I doubt the Mets are content to accept Belt as the only piece of that trade because of the presence of Ike Davis and Jason Bay, who are blocking 1B and LF. They can trade Reyes to another team who needs him just as badly and get prospects that better fit their needs; for the Giants to trade Belt as the centerpiece of a Reyes deal they need to sweeten the pot because from the Mets’ perspective just Belt isn’t the best deal they can get. Now we’re trading a top MLB prospect and MORE for a rental.
Fifth, the Mets said they’re not trading Reyes, and they want to extend him, which they pretty much can’t do if they trade him (“Hey, know how we traded you last year? We want you back!”). This means their leverage is even higher because it’s not a Adrian Gonzalez situation where the Padres eventually couldn’t walk away from every deal and the buyers knew they only had to beat two draft picks to have a shot at getting him.
Sixth, Reyes is not a great candidate to acquire. He’s batting .354 off a .375 BABIP which is inflating his stats; his patience and power really aren’t that good. The speed and defense are there, certainly, but he’s not as good as he’s looked so far. That doesn’t matter to the Mets, of course, because they can sell him as being that good; in other words, this is selling high for them and that is automatically bad for the buyer.
If I think of anything else, I’ll post it (I’m forgetting at least one), but I think six good reasons is plenty.
Seth Rosin can hit the side of a barn with a baseball. From space.
Giants baseball: We're stupid enough to WIN that (TM)
One quibble
Boras isn’t Reyes’ agent. I believe Peter Greenberg represents him. Boras did call Reyes, but they just talked (unlike his former terammate, K-Rod).
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Right
K-Rod is the one who switched agents.
Seth Rosin can hit the side of a barn with a baseball. From space.
Giants baseball: We're stupid enough to WIN that (TM)
The problem with the 'Money on the Bench' argument is this
You’re paying the exact same money no matter where the players play. If Huff starts every game this season, and if he sits every game this season, he makes the same amount of money. It’s a sunk cost.
In that case, which makes Sabean and the front office look more dumb? Continuing to play Huff while he’s been one of the worst players in the league this season, or benching him in favor of Belt, who there is hope for in this season? I agree that we don’t know as a fact how good Belt will be, but we know exactly how bad Huff is, and Belt can’t be much worse. If he somehow is, that’s fine, just put in Huff again – maybe the benching will motivate him. The fact that the Giants have this option and are not taking it is making them look more stupid than anything else.
Also, I am firmly against trading for Reyes as anything other than a rental (and, of course, firmly against trading a bunch of prospects for a rental). If we sign Reyes to the contract he’ll demand, we will NOT be able to lock up Timmy, MadBum and Cain. Reyes has a history of injuries, and besides, his success this season just screams ‘contract year surge’. Some team is going to give him as much or more than Carl Crawford, and that team will regret it for the next 7 or 8 years.
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by Tim Lincecum's Bong on Jul 19, 2011 6:32 AM PDT reply actions
I disagree with that for a few reasons. First, I think it’s a phallacy to talk about locking up “Timmy, MadBum, and Cain.” Bumgarner is under control for 5 seasons after this year. He’s not even arb elegible until after 2013. Probably the need to lock him up won’t be arising until after whatever contract they sign Cain to next year is expiring.
Second, Timmy’s FA year is after 2013, at which point Zito’s monstrosity will finally be off the books. Also coming off the books after 2012 is Rowand’s $12 mil, Huff’s $11 mil and Wilson’s $8.5 mil (at which point I think they should seriously consider letting him test the market if they haven’t looked to trade him already). Coming off the books after this year is Tejada’s $6.5 mil, Ross’ $6.3, DeRosa’s $6, and Affeldt’s $4.5 (unless they pick up his 5 mil option for 2012 which seems unlikely). That’s about $73 million in annual obligations that will be gone by the Timmy hits FA, which about $41 million of it disappearing after next year and $23 mil disappearing at the end of this season.
If there’s also room for the payroll to increase, that’s a lot of money to play with.
As for Reyes himself, in his last three fully healthy years he was a 6.1, 5.8, 6.4 win player. Along with this year that will make four 6-win seasons in the last 6 years. That’s actually a better track record than Crawford had going into FA (although Carl had had his best two seasons immediately prior to hitting the market). And for those who think Reyes is a constant injury risk, his games played since 2005: 161, 153, 160, 159, 36, 133. This year he’s played 80 with about 65 games left. So it looks like his second least active year of the last 7 is 133 games. Not exactly fragile. By any measure he’s been one of the great players of this century and he plays in a position of huge need for us. And he’s still on the right side of 30. That’s a contract I think they have to think very very seriously about going after.
MY DAD WAS WRONG!
MY BOY NEEDS TO THROW HARDER!
by Roger on Jul 19, 2011 7:55 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
You could say that the idea of “locking up Timmy, MadBum, and Cain” makes him hard.
Also, Oxford Comma!
Obviously any links in the above post are probably NSFW
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Kudos, You are a sick, sick man, but you are very good at it -- wcw
I think you mean “phallusy”.
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by howtheyscored on Jul 19, 2011 8:46 AM PDT up reply actions
I think there are two implicit but incorrect assumptions there.
1) …we know exactly how bad Huff is… We know nothing of the sort: we know how bad he has been so far this season. There is no presently known reason to believe that Huff has suddenly, over the winter, become a completely different ballplayer than he has been all his career, and that career is a pretty decent one. If there were an adduceable reason, that would be another matter, but lacking any evidence for one, the only reasonable expectation is that at some point he will return to being the established Aubrey Huff. (Granted, men in slumps sometimes pick up bad habits from pressing, but that is not usually serious and can be worked through.) His recent appearances have been modestly encouraging, not so much by results as by being crisply hit balls up the middle; put them in play well and eventually they’ll fall in.
2) …maybe the benching will motivate him… That implies that he is not at present “motivated”, meaning (I guess) somehow slacking off. I think either or both wildly, wildly unlikely.
No one not named Jean Dixon can know whether Huff’s output will pick up, or when; but the only reasonable bet is that it will, and it could be at any moment.
Professional baseball analyst since 1980.
Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehn.—Goethe
That said, Huff has been mostly pretty bad (especially for a 1b) for the last 6.5 seasons. He had a great three and a half months last year, and was very good in 2008. But most of the rest of the time from opening day 2005 to now he’s been some degree of bad.
MY DAD WAS WRONG!
MY BOY NEEDS TO THROW HARDER!
Well which one is the outlier, this season and 2009, or 2010 and 2008? Trick question of course, since the answer is probably both, but what kind of resurgence are we waiting for? If the answer is a return to league averageness, then I’d argue that Belt’s upside probably justifies playing him anyway.
VAE PVTO DEVS FIO
It would be . . .
. . . a return to Huff averageness. Experience shows over and over again to those willing to learn from it that the best evaluator of any player not over 35 is his career stats to date (unless there are special and obvious reasons to discard some data, such as playing—or trying to play—through a serious injury). Huff’s career worth is not outstanding for a first baseman, but it is decent. For those who insist in thinking in terms of OPS, it would be around .810.
Professional baseball analyst since 1980.
Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehn.—Goethe
The weird thing...
Huff never seems to return to his own averageness over the course of a season. His career OPS+ is 114, yet only once has he finished a season in that neighborhood (108 OPS+ in 2006). Otherwise, his history is either far exceeding his career average or coming nowhere close.
I’m willing to believe some of it is due to being banged up. Just watching him run the bases, he looks pretty stiff (TWSS) compared to last year.
The thong is, it happened.
by Goofus on Jul 20, 2011 8:40 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
Guys let's trade Carlos Santana for Casey Blake
Obviously any links in the above post are probably NSFW
The baseball gods do not always punish the wicked but they will not just allow people to spit in their faces -- Joe Posnanski
Kudos, You are a sick, sick man, but you are very good at it -- wcw
trading 5 years of Belt because we have Huff for one more makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
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by jponry on Jul 19, 2011 8:55 AM PDT reply actions 1 recs
and trading those 5 years for 2 months of Reyes makes even less sense
Matt Cain: He'll save children, but not the Dodger children.
I call him gerald. he’s a pristine white handkerchief, though? nediB eoJ Joe Biden ‽ Joe Biden.
by jponry on Jul 19, 2011 8:56 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
I don't like the 2 months part
I’m fine with the idea of trading Belt for a shortstop solution, but I don’t like the expiring contract and the inevitable shop around.
All trades should be considered in terms of overall lift, and if it means you can’t get anything for the guys you’d least mind losing, then you have to consider parting with the better ones.
"The two worst things in football are: 1) They think that a 30-year old professional athlete has to be locked up in a hotel room, with a curfew, the night before a qame; and 2) They're right."
- Cowboy safety Cliff Harris
Exactly
You can throw in a lot for those guys. Belt and Vogey!
"The two worst things in football are: 1) They think that a 30-year old professional athlete has to be locked up in a hotel room, with a curfew, the night before a qame; and 2) They're right."
- Cowboy safety Cliff Harris
let's trade the best 1B prospect in the game
so the worst 1B in the game can continue to play. Sounds like a fantastic plan.
Obviously any links in the above post are probably NSFW
The baseball gods do not always punish the wicked but they will not just allow people to spit in their faces -- Joe Posnanski
Kudos, You are a sick, sick man, but you are very good at it -- wcw
Silver lining on bad contracts:
At least when they end, you don’t say, “How are we going to be able to re-sign this guy?”
As for (my son) Huff, I think it’s too early to cut bait, but probably not too early to bench him. I think he’s showing signs of life. The ball he hit in the 1st was smoked but right at Kemp. Leave Burrell in DL limbo for a while and have Huff and Rowand form a PH-backup OF/1B platoon with Belt at 1B and ROss-Torres-Nate in the OF.
I think Huff’s troubles in the OF are being a little overplayed. On the plays everyone remembers, they were tougher plays than he had in any of his OF chances in 2010. I have no doubt he could play acceptable left field if needed.
The thong is, it happened.
.286 OBP Goofus
There’s no sign of life there. He’s been perhaps the worst hitter on the Giants, at the absolute bottom of the defensive spectrum.
Jonathan Sanchez. He's left-handed, like Barry Zito. His fastball breaks 80, unlike Zito.
Statistically the worst qualified first baseman in the National League
If the 1B prospect in baseball that made the opening day roster cannot replace the worst MLB player at his position, then something is seriously wrong.
I mean, basically (yes, I know there is a difference between current production and projection, but by all acounts, Brandon Belt is detroying AAA and can only going to get incrementally better with more time in minors), this line of thinking says not a single minor league 1B has any shot of making the MLB roster because even the best should not replace the worst.
Obviously any links in the above post are probably NSFW
The baseball gods do not always punish the wicked but they will not just allow people to spit in their faces -- Joe Posnanski
Kudos, You are a sick, sick man, but you are very good at it -- wcw
And the idea of trading the best 1B prospect in the game
so the worst starting 1B in the league can continue to play, while no additional money is being committed (all spent already) sounds like such a horrible horrible plan.
Obviously any links in the above post are probably NSFW
The baseball gods do not always punish the wicked but they will not just allow people to spit in their faces -- Joe Posnanski
Kudos, You are a sick, sick man, but you are very good at it -- wcw
not bashing belt
but freddie freeman contends as well as tops 1b prospect
by big logs Johnson on Jul 19, 2011 11:59 AM PDT up reply actions
Yeah, it's him and it's not close
Twitter Blog (Infrequently Updated)
Writing about the MLB Draft at MLBBonusBaby
by Gobroks on Jul 19, 2011 5:56 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
Goldschmidt?
Adopted father of Chris Lincecum, without whom (quite literally) Timmy would not exist.
I noted earlier (i guess later since it's down below)
that I consider Hosmer and Freeman up for good and no longer minor league prospects. Belt was in the Minors at the time and is the best 1B prospect in the minors. Yes I consider him better than Yonder Alonso.
Obviously any links in the above post are probably NSFW
The baseball gods do not always punish the wicked but they will not just allow people to spit in their faces -- Joe Posnanski
Kudos, You are a sick, sick man, but you are very good at it -- wcw
He's good, but not at Hosmer's level
Twitter Blog (Infrequently Updated)
Writing about the MLB Draft at MLBBonusBaby
Agreed on this.
Obviously any links in the above post are probably NSFW
The baseball gods do not always punish the wicked but they will not just allow people to spit in their faces -- Joe Posnanski
Kudos, You are a sick, sick man, but you are very good at it -- wcw
Whatever the signs of life his swing is or isn’t showing, he’s sporting a .286 OBP and has barely 1/3 the walks he from last year. Either his approach, or the approach of pitcher’s to him has changed for the worse. And actually, it happened around this time last year because his second half numbers in 2010 were pretty bad, as well.
MY DAD WAS WRONG!
MY BOY NEEDS TO THROW HARDER!
The point everyone is missing is this…
The debate isn’t whether Belt should play over Huff. I might be dumb, but even I know that Belt should play, at least until he proves that he’s not any better.
My point was we know Huff will play. It’s how the Giants operate. When a guy makes the kind of money Huff makes, he plays, unless he’s on the DL. Unless you have the power to fire the general manager, or at least radically change his thinking, that part of the equation isn’t going to change.
What I’m trying to say is that for 2012 when it comes to 1B-SS-LF-RF, that Huff-Reyes-Ross-Schierholtz sounds better to me than Belt-Crawford-Huff-Schierholtz. And if Posey can no longer play catcher, then we’re looking at Posey-Crawford-Huff-Belt and all of a sudden you have a pretty defensively awful corner outfield situation.
Obviously if we can’t re-sign Reyes, then yeah, my trade idea looks bad. All I’m saying is in a hypothetical situation where giving up Belt gives us Reyes for a few years I’d prefer
Huff-Reyes-Ross-Schierholtz to Belt-Crawford-Huff-Schierholtz. And I’d really prefer it to Posey-Crawford-Huff-Belt, with a crappy catcher to be named later.
But yes, we obviously cannot guarantee that Reyes would re-sign, and more to the point, I recognize that the Mets very well might not even want Belt. It was more of a hypothetical thing.
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
It is within reason for the front office to try to look good.
It does not mean we should accept it and “move on” and find the next course of action, however illogical it is, to fit with this increasingly hypothetical assumption.
I am still holding out hope that the front office is not as retarded as you illustrated and is willing to let the best hitting 1B prospect in the game (I assume Hosmer and Freeman are up for good already) rot while continue to play the worst hitting 1B in the game. You might not see it that way, but you will not convince me to just accept this is the way it is.
And if it really is the way it goes down, then I will only complain louder, not look for ways to work around that train wreck of a decision process.
Obviously any links in the above post are probably NSFW
The baseball gods do not always punish the wicked but they will not just allow people to spit in their faces -- Joe Posnanski
Kudos, You are a sick, sick man, but you are very good at it -- wcw
You know what's even better than Huff-Reyes-Ross-Schierholtz?
Belt-Reyes-Ross-Schierholtz. The idea that we have to trade Belt to get Reyes in 2012 is just flat-out wrong; giving up Belt now to get Reyes at BEST buys us a few million in a discount and means we don’t have to give up a pick at the back end of the first round (which isn’t that big a deal anyway). Belt is worth a hell of a lot more than a late first round pick and a few million.
The flaw here isn’t that getting Reyes is a bad idea (though I’m not convinced it’s a good idea considering cost), it’s that acquiring Reyes now somehow keeps him here for 2012, or even significantly affects his 2012 destination. It doesn’t. Reyes is almost certainly going to be a free agent; in fact, the team that has the best chance of signing him is probably the Mets. But even they only have a good chance if they show him the money.
Seth Rosin can hit the side of a barn with a baseball. From space.
Giants baseball: We're stupid enough to WIN that (TM)
When you've invested a lot of money in a player, it's natural to give him more of a chance to turn it around
It’s a sunk cost, but no one likes write off a big loss completely. I think trying to “look good” doesn’t figure into that much when the choice is a guy like Belt, who management can take credit for developing.
It also makes sense to give Huff a longer rope when you factor in Belt’s service time and lack of AAA experience. If you’re convinced he’s the real deal and future of the franchise, you want to make the most of the years you have him, which means getting him as close to 100% big league ready as possible before buring service time and making sure he has a role when you call him up.
The thong is, it happened.
I don’t know about this.
Rowand and Renteria rode an awful lot of pine last year, and Zito was left off the post-season roster.
If Belt makes the decision easy for the Giants, I don’t think they’ll fight it.
Jonathan Sanchez isn’t likely to be traded unless the Giants fall out of contention. Jonathan Sanchez isn’t likely to be traded unless the Giants fall out of contention. Jonathan Sanchez isn’t likely to be traded unless the Giants fall out of contention.
Mark DeRosa is more than the sum of his tendons.
This article started out as reasonable and then rapidly went off the rails. Much like with Rowand, the Giants are stuck with Huff for the time being, and there’s no way they’ll release him. However, they also have shown more backbone with roster management than in the past, with Zito surprisingly left off the post-season roster last year as a good example. They were also willing to drop Rowand down to the bottom of the playing chart at the start of the year until he proved healthier than the rest of the OF. I find it highly doubtful that the Giants would be desperate enough to trade their #1 prospect for 65 regular season games (plus the postseason) of a soon to be overpriced SS with the #1 agent you don’t want holding you over a barrel (and imagine the sunk cost logic involved in not re-signing the guy you dumped your young future potential superstar to rent). Management is wise enough to know that they have enough residual good will from last year to avoid making a desperation move like that. Regardless, Belt is too similar to Ike Davis and not nearly proven enough in the OF to make this a trade the Mets would engage in anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
Eliminate that pesky Dominatrix in one easy step. Step 1: Tell her you're a Cubs fan!
Keppinger and Belt are here!!
Giants have acquired Jeff Keppinger from the Astros for two pitching prospects. Also and more importantly, Belt has been called up and is in the lineup for tonight!! I guess this kind of renders this post a moot point?
The Baseball Gods do not always punish the wicked
but they will not just allow people to spit in their faces. Remember this day, folks.
Obviously any links in the above post are probably NSFW
The baseball gods do not always punish the wicked but they will not just allow people to spit in their faces -- Joe Posnanski
Kudos, You are a sick, sick man, but you are very good at it -- wcw
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