The Giants are ‘strongest’ trade contenders for Billy Hamilton

The San Francisco Giants, who hit three home runs last year, are interested in Billy Hamilton, who hit negative-three home runs last year. While I love symmetry as much as the next person, I’m skeptical of this strategy. This seems like a great way to make a bad lineup worse. But we’ll talk it out, together.

The rumor du jour comes from Ken Rosenthal, who writes that the Giants “remain strongest on Hamilton,” and it was confirmed by the Cincinnati Enquirer, which describes the talks as “serious.” Hamilton fits in a lot of ways. He’s an absolutely brilliant defender, and his speed has only one equal. His arm is better than you think, though he’s more concerned about accurate throws these days. Those are three of the five tools! Sixty percent of the time, he has all the desired baseball tools every time.

The hitting, though. It’s rough. It’s extremely rough. Hamilton hit .247/.299/.335 last year, and to put that in perspective, that’s substantially worse than Gorkys Hernandez. Not only are those numbers worse, but they came at Great American Ball Park, not AT&T. Not only are those numbers worse, but if you take out Hamilton’s at-bats against the Giants, he drops to .240/.292/.293 for the season. I wish I were kidding, but those are real numbers. The Giants added more than 40 points to his slugging percentage in 32 plate appearances, and I’m laughing through the tears.

I’m getting to the part where I don’t mind this idea. Hold on.

No, like I wrote at the beginning of the offseason, Hamilton is still a worthwhile player. He just needs to be on a team that can hit with their other seven spots in the lineup. And after a swig from this here flask, I’m here to suggest the Giants can be one of those teams. I’m willing to trust Buster Posey, Joe Panik, Brandon Crawford, and Brandon Belt to be, collectively, a better offensive quartet than the average catcher-1B-2B-SS combination. It could be a secret strength, even if it requires Crawford to rebound and Belt to stay healthy. I don’t feel too homerish hoping for that.

In order to accommodate Hamilton, though, the Giants really can’t mess around with third base and the remaining corner outfield spot. For example:

CF - Billy Hamilton
2B - Joe Panik
1B - Brandon Belt
C - Buster Posey
RF - Hunter Pence
SS - Brandon Crawford
3B - Pablo Sandoval
LF - Denard Span

No.

2B - Joe Panik
1B - Brandon Belt
LF - J.D. Martinez
C - Buster Posey
RF - Hunter Pence
SS - Brandon Crawford
3B - Josh Harrison
CF - Billy Hamilton

Well, I’m not opposed to it. It’s just not bloody likely.

2B - Joe Panik
LF - Brandon Belt
3B - Manny Machado
C - Buster Posey
RF - J.D. Martinez
1B - Carlos Santana
SS - Brandon Crawford
CF - Billy Hamilton

That is completely off the rails on 17 different levels. The first is ...

2B - Jose Altuve
LF - George Springer
SS - Carlos Correa
C - Buster Posey
3B - Nolan Arenado
RF - Giancarlo Stanton
1B - Joey Votto
CF - Mike Trout

that doesn’t even include hamilton, which is the point of this post, please stop

ANYWAY, the point is that the Giants would really, really, really have to nail two of the remaining lineup holes. I’m not optimistic, but I’ll allow for the possibility. And in that carefully constructed reality, Hamilton on the Giants would make sense.

Something that would also make sense: Jarrod Dyson, who will make a similar amount of money in 2018 and wouldn’t cost prospects, but would field and run almost as well as Hamilton. It’s not like I insert Dyson into any of those lineups up there and think, ugh, no way. He is a fair comp for Hamilton, and I’d probably prefer him.

Still, if the Giants are serious about Hamilton, I’m fine with that. My question, then, would be what’s next? Because there has to be something next. There has to be something HUGE. There has to be something that makes me feel better about the sub-.300 OBP in the lineup, probably at the top because Bruce Bochy has very predictable faults.

If they can get around that, I’m cool. It’s not like Hamilton isn’t a super-fun player at times. And he’s still in his mid-20s, so it’s not completely outlandish that he learns how to hit just a skosh better.

It’s mostly outlandish, though, and Hamilton would likely make a bad lineup worse. But if the Giants could make the bad lineup kinda-not-bad with other moves, I’m okay with the idea. Color me skeptical, but it would be an INC on the report card until the end of the offseason. Hamilton could be a big piece of the Giants’ puzzle. They would just have to find the other 439 pieces before time runs out.