John Perricone writes to tell me he isn’t happy with the Freddy Sanchez trade. His thoughts are not very different from other Giants bloggers I’ve read over the last 24 hours. I would like to point one thing out to Giants fans, however:
YOU HAVEN’T WON A CHAMPIONSHIP IN 55 YEARS!
There are a few franchises that haven’t won in such a long time that they have an obligation to mortgage the future to win now when they are in contention. The Cubs, Indians, and Giants are the old school teams in this group, and the Rangers, Astros, Nationals and Padres fit into the new school group. Even the Mariners, who are only 32 years old, seem to realize they owe their fans a championship.
The Giants have great pitching. The Pythagorean formula tells us that run differences to produce a given winning percentage are smaller when when allowed are low. In other words, the Giants get a huge bang for their buck for small increases in their run scoring. Garko and Sanchez improve two weak offensive positions for them.
Right now, the Giants are scoring 3.95 runs per game, 15th in the NL and allowing 3.68 runs per game, the lowest in the NL. That’s good for a .535 predicted winning percentage, a little worse than their current .545. If these deal take them up to 4.1 runs per game the rest of the way, that would give them a .553 winning percentage, a 34-27 record the rest of the way and 89 wins overall. That gives them an extra win. In this tight playoff race, that might get them into the playoffs.
Once in the playoffs, the Giants can easily pitch Cain and Lincecum four times in a five game series and five times in a seven game series, especially with the extra days off built into the schedule. You don’t think that little extra offense might help these two win games 3-2 instead of leaving with a 2-2 tie?
The Giants see a chance to win San Francisco a World Championship. I won’t fault them for going for the gold.
Why shouldn’t I be angry by this deal? If the Giants (my “team”) were interested in winning a championship vs. fielding a mediocre team and hoping fans show up, they’d have signed…ohh…Adam Dunn and Orlando Hudson last year for peanuts and to short term contracts. Know what that would’ve done? Gotten a year of production out of each vs. our jokes in LF and at 2B AND we would have had pitchers to trade away for more than a platoon 1B (not a bad deal there) and an aging (and hurt?) singles hitter at 2B. These are cosmetic deals.
The Giants will remain competitive and Sabean will get his contract extension. More of the same…
If Freddy Sanchez really is the missing piece to win a World Series… well then it will really suck when I wake up and realize I dreamed it all.
David,
My unhappiness is directly related to how little we got for so much.
Sanchez and Garko had to be last on about any contending teams list of possible trade pieces. Both Josh Willngham and Adam Dunn –whom the Giants should have signed thos past off-season– are available, and if you’re gonna trade away top-level pitching prospects, you need to do more than incrementally upgrade your league worst offense.