New feature: Explain to Grant Just How He’s Wrong, Stupid, and Ill-Informed. Today’s topic after the jump! Or you could just skip to the comments and explain away. Your choice.
Stipulation #1: Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, Pablo Sandoval, Buster Posey, Angel Villalona, Madison Bumgarner, and Tim Alderson are off the table. Everyone else in the organization is fair game.
Stipulation #2: All or nothing. If the Giants can’t replace 3/8ths of the lineup, they shouldn’t give up any prospects for rent-a-players. If the Giants can make an honest-to-goodness major league lineup using rent-a-players, do it as long as it doesn’t violate stipulation #1.
Stipulation #3: For players who are not free agents for three years, Tim Alderson and Angel Villalona are back on the table.
I’m not going to go through a list of names and officially rosterbate, but I’m caught in the middle of two philosophies:
a. The Giants should focus on building a sustainable contender.
b. Any team that makes the playoffs has a chance to win the World Series, and the Giants have two top-o’-the-rotation-to-you starters right now. There are no guarantees the pitching situation will be the same in future years.
Stipulation #1 satisfies "a." for the most part. It doesn’t completely blow it out of the water, at least.
I’m worried about trading Nate Schierholtz and Jonathan Sanchez for Adam LaRoche, to give one awful example, not doing anything else, and falling short of the playoffs because this offense + LaRoche isn’t exactly an automatic contender. I’d rather fail spectacularly, whiffing on the playoffs after an honest attempt to add three hitters and build a lineup that doesn’t feature Bengie Molina as the cleanup hitter.
Now it’s your turn to Explain to Grant Just How He’s Wrong, Stupid, and Ill-Informed. You can also throw something in about my body odor, but that really wouldn’t be relevant to this specific post.