We know the Giants can be aggressive, because while most everyone else has been waiting around to see how the market develops, they've already signed three free agents. We know the Giants have some money, because it sure looks like they overpaid to get Edgar Renteria.
We don't know if the Giants have enough money to tempt CC Sabathia, but it's time for them to find that out.
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| CC Sabathia might just pass on the big bucks to fulfill his desires. (Getty Images) |
But however much the Giants can offer Sabathia, they need to put it on the table and find out if it's enough.
Why? Because the National League West is looking more winnable by the day, and with Sabathia, the Giants could well be the team to win it.
"The Giants are real close anyway," one scout said Thursday. "If they get Sabathia, they win the West, and they go deep in the playoffs."
The Dodgers won the division in 2008, but they're showing no inclination at all to spend money. It's already a given that they won't keep Rafael Furcal, and one person familiar with their plans suggested that owner Frank McCourt may not be that interested in re-signing Manny Ramirez, either.
As for the other three teams in the division, the Padres, Diamondbacks and Rockies are all shedding payroll this winter. The Rockies already traded away their best player, the Padres are trying like heck to trade their best pitcher and the D-Backs are in such a financial bind that they cut 31 front-office employees to save money.
Meanwhile, the most attractive free agent on the market is a Bay Area native who had two goals as he entered free agency.
We've heard over and over since the middle of summer that Sabathia prefers the West Coast, and also that he prefers the National League. If you eliminate the Dodgers, Padres and even the Diamondbacks, who's left?
The Angels are on the West Coast, and they do have the money. But they're not in the National League, and after telling people last week that they had shifted focus from Mark Teixeira to Sabathia, they spent the next few days denying it.
So why not the Giants?
Giants general manager Brian Sabean did conference calls each of the last two days to announce the Howry and Renteria signings, but he wouldn't even entertain a Sabathia question.
Asked whether he'd consider adding a starting pitcher, Sabean simply said: "Anything's possible. But our focus was on getting (Howry), then moving on to the small group of position players we have a chance on."
The Giants do need to do something about their offense. Renteria could help if a return to the National League revives his bat, and young Pablo Sandoval is leading the Venezuelan winter league in home runs.
That's not enough, we realize, and it may be that if they sign Sabathia, they have to consider trading Matt Cain for a middle-of-the-order type. If so, that's fine, and there's little doubt they'd be able to make such a deal.
Why not simply keep Cain and make a play for Ramirez or even Teixeira instead of Sabathia? It's not a ridiculous idea, and the Giants are said to be considering it.
But Ramirez is 36, eight years older than Sabathia. Teixeira has no real Bay Area connection, so there's no real hope of the Giants getting him at any kind of discount.
The other reason you hear for not going after Sabathia is that the Giants already spent too much money on one free-agent pitcher, Barry Zito. And that didn't work out well at all.
Very true, but Zito and Sabathia are hardly the same guy. Zito's velocity was already dropping in his final year in Oakland, while Sabathia remained at the top of his game this past year with the Indians and Brewers.
"When San Francisco signed Zito, I thought it was a big mistake," said one scout who closely follows the American League.
If the Giants simply don't have the money to get Sabathia, we'll accept that, and their fans should, too. In this economy, it's hard to demand that anyone spend $20, let alone $20 million a year.
And if they make a respectable offer and Sabathia decides to go to the Yankees for a few million more bucks, well, he wouldn't be the first guy to let dollars overcome desires.
From what we know about him, and from what we hear from others who know him better, he could well be the kind of guy who accepts a little less than the biggest offer out there to go somewhere he'll be happy. That place, we've got to believe, is San Francisco.
There's an opening here, and this is the time for the Giants to see if they can fit through it.
"They'd win the division," our Giants-loving scout told us. "Cain, Lincecum and Sabathia -- that's pretty devastating. And they've got a kid in A-ball (Madison Bumgarner) who they say might be another Sabathia."
Bumgarner might be another Sabathia, but he's 19 years old and just out of low Class A. He's not going to help the Giants win in 2009.
Sabathia can, if they can get him.
It's time to try.
