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Good morning, McCoven!
/deep and prolonged painful sigh
I mentioned it as a joke earlier this week, but it seems we are, in fact, doing the Brandon Belt off-season trade rumors song and dance all over again.
John Shea wrote about it for The San Francisco Chronicle. No disrespect meant, but it really just dusts off all the old talking points (moving Buster Posey to first base, etc.) and sprinkles in one or two new ones. This is not a knock against Shea, it’s the kind of article that will get a bunch of eyeballs because it’s basically what a certain (not insignificant) portion of the fan base wants to hear. Trade Belt!
I’ll save you some time. Imagine you’re in your car listening to THE sports leader. A caller gets on the line, and interspersed with all the old talking points about why the Giants should trade Belt, they keep mentioning “And look what Zaidi (guarantee they mispronounce it) did with Mark Melancon! Why can’t they do that with Belt?” And either you’ll be nodding along or shaking your head. We know the drill by now.
That’s not to say that it isn’t more likely to happen this year. It’s a new deck, anything’s possible. But at a certain point, the topic of a potential trade of Belt has lost its knee-jerk reaction for me. Shea even lists a half dozen other players that could be trade targets, but they aren’t in the headline. I think I might be surprised or even upset if they did trade him, but I find it hard to get worked up about it one way or another anymore in terms of a hypothetical to be rolled out every year.