Keep, Risk, or Deal: A Giants Prospect Trade Game
Which prospects are likely to stay and which might go?
Photo Credit: Kirk Nawrotzky | Richmond Flying Squirrels
Recently, one of my There R Giants readers responded to a post by asking me who I thought might be potential trade chips for the Giants during the 2022 season. I made a little mental note of the comment, though, “yes, this will make a great post somewhere in June or July.”
Then the Giants moved Prelander Berroa in a deal for Donovan Walton, and I realized that I might need to bump up my timeline or Farhan and Scott would scoop my entire list!
So yes, it’s May and I’m going to talk about trades because the Trade a Day pace we’re seeing from the Giants front office has taught us to think about Trade Season as lasting about 365 days long. The front office has made ten trades since the last week of March. They’ve claimed, waived, traded, placed, selected, optioned, recalled, or designated a player 84 times already since opening day [Note to self: make sure to re-check transaction number before publishing post]
There are a couple of things we can learn from that dizzying pace. One of them is, of course, that the key to a happy life is to get somebody who pays the kind of attention and focus to you that Farhan Zaidi gives to MLB’s transactions page. But a second lesson is that the Giants’ front office absolutely treasures the value that can be found in an open and revolving 39th or 40th spot on the roster.
Every time a player was placed on the COVID IL this month, the move was almost immediately followed by a trade or a waiver claim. In some cases, the player claimed was almost immediately waived himself (a la, former Dodgers LHP Darien Nuñez, who was then signed to a minor league deal and placed on the minor league 60-day IL while he recovers from Tommy John surgery). The open spot created by the Mauricio Dubón trade was almost immediately filled by the six millionth deal of the month with Seattle (bring aboard Stuart Walton Ford or somebody like that). The club admittedly fetishizes depth and views a revolving door at the end of the 40-man roster as a great mechanism for building that depth.
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