The Giants are still talking to the Marlins about a Giancarlo Stanton trade

Let me remind you for the final time this week that the Giants got a compensatory draft pick in the 2007 draft when reliever Mike Stanton left as a free agent, and they refused to draft teenage slugger Mike Stanton with that pick. I’m still appalled, years later. They’re in this mess because they didn’t do the obvious thing at the time. We have to wade through rumor after dumb rumor because no one in the Giants front office believes in serendipity, dammit.

The Giants drafted Charlie Culberson instead, and all he did was get traded for Marco Scutaro, who helped them win a World Series. But still.

Anyways, there aren’t any super-new Giancarlo Stanton rumors for us to chomp on, but there are a couple of developments. The first is the name of an actual prospect surfacing:

I don’t talk about prospects a lot because I leave that to the smart people like Roger, but let me point out that I’m utterly obsessed with Ramos. I think labeling him as the no. 4 prospect in a bad system does him a grave injustice, and he will one day be in the top half of a top-100 prospect list. The ball sounds different off his bat, like someone dropping a slab of mortadella on a clean deli counter. He has tools. So many tools. And he’s ours, ALL OURS.

But, yeah, expect to trade someone like that if you want Giancarlo Freaking Stanton. I always return to the Miguel Cabrera trade, which reminds us that if you have a chance to trade for an under-contract young superstar, you shouldn’t overthink the prospects involved. For example, this was a real paragraph a long time ago:

Joe Girardi managed him with the Marlins and speaks highly of (Miguel Cabrera). The Yanks have already touched base about Cabrera with the Fish. It sounds like the Yankees will trade Melky Cabrera, but are very reluctant to trade Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, or Ian Kennedy.

In retrospect, trade all of them and the five prospects after that because he’s Miguel Cabrera, you fools.

While Stanton is young enough to make a Cabrera comparison apt, it’s still a very much imperfect comparison. Cabrera was inexpensive, and Stanton ... isn’t. Still, the odds of getting Giancarlo Stanton in his prime and wishing you had Heliot Ramos instead are longer than having Heliot Ramos and being glad you don’t have Stanton. I love the prospect. This isn’t a deal for Chase Headley, though, and there shouldn’t be any pet prospects.

Don’t forget that the best prospect the Giants have dealt since Francisco Liriano went over in the Casey McGehee deal. Feels like that should be mentioned somewhere.

So I’m very much into the idea of a Ramos-for-Stanton deal if it helps bring the contract down to the point where the Giants feel comfortable with it. But while I’m smitten with the young feller, it’s hard to imagine the Marlins keying in on him above every other prospect they have their eyes on. He’s the apple of my eye because my team’s farm system has two apples, a pear, six plums, and a bunch of dingleberries. The Marlins aren’t quite as limited.

However, this brings us to our next development, and has to do with something that I’ve overlooked too often: Stanton has an awful lot to say about where he goes. And he might want to be in California, where he can count on good ol’ In-N-Out instead of whatever slop Five Guys is peddling these days.

A baseball source said yesterday that he’s been told Stanton will not accept a trade to either the Red Sox or the Cardinals, another team linked early and often in trade rumors. Perhaps there’s some flexibility in that stance, but Stanton’s preference is a factor.

It seems funny to you that Stanton might want to come to the Giants. This is because you actually spent time — time you will never, ever, ever get back — watching this horrible team as it spun around the toilet and mercifully went down, never to resurface. But from his perspective, the Giants might be a legacy franchise with a strong commitment from their ownership. He might have heard how great the fans are from Barry Bonds, and he might have felt the love when he was playing in a ballpark that was mostly filled, even though the team were terrible and playing the Marlins on a weeknight.

He might be thinking something like ...

I don’t want to be too close to where I grew up. That would be weird. But maybe, you know, I could still be in California, playing for a franchise I respect. I’d like that. Also, I really enjoy spending time at the Exploratorium. So many fun exhibits. Such a good time to be had by all.

Perhaps! Either way, his no-trade clause does throw a wrinkle into my idea that if the Giants wanted to spend prospect capital instead of actual money, another team would outbid them with better prospects. In a vacuum, that might happen, but if Stanton doesn’t want to go to the Cardinals, Red Sox, et cetera, perhaps the Marlins will look at Ramos with the same adoring eyes that I currently do. It might be the best prospect on the table who still allows them to foist nearly $300 million on another team.

Ramos really is a tremendous prospect for my money, you know. I would be crushed if he were traded. But Giancarlo Stanton is Giancarlo Stanton.

I still give the Giants a 2.8301334-percent chance of getting Stanton, but we know they’re actively poking a stick at different scenarios, and there’s a chance that they might have enough prospects after all. This has been your last Stanton trade rumor until the next one. Thank you.