Save This Franchise: No Band-Aid big enough for these Giants
3B Frandsen (OK, I know who he is -- a nice player with some upside. But will his bat play here? That said, it's almost impossible for a single player to hurt a team as much offensively as OBP cretin Pedro Feliz did in recent seasons) or Feliz (if he accepts the Giants' offer of arbitration, which the team is likely praying he won't)
SS Omar Vizquel (one of my favorite players of all time, but no longer nimble at age 40. Here's a question: If Ozzie Smith is a Hall of Famer, how isn't Omar Vizquel one? Omar was as good defensively and considerably better offensively, even if he did play during an era when players had a bowl of Stanozolios for breakfast every morning)
OF: Randy Winn, absurdly miscast as a team anchor, will start somewhere or other. As for the other slots, your guess is as good as mine. Nate Schierholtz, one of the Giants' few half-OK prospects, could claim one of the corners with a good spring training. Maybe a zippy Dave Roberts/Rajai Davis platoon?
In conclusion: Ouch.
Totally non-helpful and semi-realistic suggestions:
1. Do not, under any circumstances, trade Tim Lincecum or Matt Cain. Don't even consider it, unless the player offered in return is Albert Pujols, David Wright or Grady Sizemore. Light yourself on fire before you part with them, because the end result will be the same.
The teams that appeared most desperate at the winter meetings -- the White Sox, the Cardinals -- were the ones without cheap, almost-ready arms. The Giants have two top-shelf guys. Even with the usual young-pitchers-get-hurt caveat, Lincecum and Cain have to rank among the top 30 assets in the game today. That the Giants would mull trading one of them straight up for Toronto's Alex Rios -- a fine player, but about to get quite expensive via arbitration -- suggests an almost willful blindness to current market trends.
2. Fight the temptation to slap a Band-Aid atop a deep wound. Rightly chastised for having allowed the roster to fall into a state of offensive disrepair, GM Brian Sabean is shaking the trees for someone, anyone to play the outfield corners. Word on the street -- and by "street," I mean "the must-read Pete Abraham Yankees blog " -- suggests that the Giants are taking a look at Hideki Matsui.
Yes, he's affordable, owed something like $26 million over the next two seasons. But as any Yankee-watcher knows, Matsui has slipped considerably during the past two years, his bat slowing and his legs rendering him borderline useless in the outfield. So while he would certainly fit in with the Giants, he's nothing more than a quick fix on a team brimming with them.
3. Bring back Barry. It will never happen, of course, after the bridge-burning contest he and the team staged last September. But from a pure baseball perspective, one that doesn't take into account public relations or the legal system, there's no better bat on the market.
I'm probably talking here to every team with a corner-outfield need, to be honest. Bonds' trial won't start until after the 2008 season, so that's not an issue. He's no longer asking for $17 million per season, so cross that off the list. Yeah, he's a tough sell, owing to his utter lack of charm and humility. At the same time, guys like Shawn Green and Geoff Jenkins are being considered for everyday gigs; they should be just as much of a tough sell owing to, you know, their utter lack of talent. Bonds can clearly still hit and, while he's not exactly as lithe as a ballerina out in left field, he's no worse than Adam Dunn or Chris Duncan.
You'd think that baseball organizations would have learned by now that fans tend to enjoy winning baseball and will overlook just about anything, such as the borderline sociopathy of the 1986 Mets, when their team is kicking ass. So a few people threaten to cancel their season tickets when Bonds is inked? Big deal. They will come back, along with thousands more, when the wins start piling up. Memo to baseball fans: Winning the exact way that you envisioned it in your dreams -- the way the Red Sox did it in 2004, basically -- rarely happens. You're going to have to swallow a little vinegar along the way.
Bonds is vinegar, except in San Francisco. You'd think the Giants would be worried about a massive fan exodus, at least in terms of ticket sales, now that there's no home-run chase to lure them to the park. I have it on good authority that fans aren't going to snap up tickets to see whether Ray Durham can reach a ball hit 18 inches to his right, no matter how alluring a destination Faceless Telecom Corp. Park is on a warm summer night. Dammit. Dammit.
OK, rant over. I'm going to go dunk my head in the sink now.
4. Mentally gird yourself to the possibility that things will get worse before they get better. The practices of most Northeast-based teams notwithstanding, there's no shame in a full-fledged rebuilding effort. Ask the fine people of Cleveland how they feel about the way the Indians were slowly, methodically built back into a long-term contender. There's no reason the Giants shouldn't be able to follow that same recipe.
Odds of becoming the next Colorado Rockies: 750 to 1. If everything (read: health) breaks just right, the Giants might be able to ride their trio of starters to the cusp of mediocrity. Still, even if the Cain/Zito/Lincecum/Lowry quartet combines for 880 innings (a longshot, given how daintily Lincecum will be handled) while keeping the ball away from the Giants' mostly club-footed defenders via strikeouts aplenty (unlikely, unless Zito miraculously regains some of his bat-missing moxie and Lowry refamiliarizes himself with the strike zone), they don't have a chance unless the offense produces some runs. When all is said and done, you still have to outscore the other guy. Baseball's quirky that way.
The only rational thing for the Giants to do is blow up the fort. Blow it the #$@& up, with great vengeance and furious anger, and rebuild around the pitching core. Win-now hasn't worked in recent years; it's time to give win-later a try.
