Gennett Scoots to San Francisco

The Reds’ ongoing quest to trade away every player whose rights they do not control past 2019 continued Wednesday as Cincinnati sent Scooter Gennett, 29, to the Giants for cash considerations. The Giants, for their part, get a second baseman who has lost most of 2019 to a groin injury but has been one of the better second basemen in the National League since 2017, at least while healthy.

The immediate causus tradeus here is the nexus between Joe Panik’s poor performance for the Giants to date (his .231/.305/.312 triple-slash gives him a -0.3 WAR that’s better only than Starlin Castro among NL qualifiers at any position) and San Francisco’s aspirations for the future. The division is lost to the Dodgers, of course, but San Francisco clearly thinks they still have a shot at the Wild Card (we agree, giving them a 5.4% chance). Acquiring Gennett nods towards that chance while still not putting any real money or commitment on the line.

That’s because Gennett has been quite simply terrible when on the field in 2019. His contact rate is down five points, his strikeout rate is up nearly 10, and he has yet to hit a home run in 2019 after slugging 50 between the previous two seasons. That underperformance is almost entirely ascribable to the groin injury, to be sure, and that’s probably nothing that an offseason of rest and relaxation couldn’t fix, but the fact is the Giants have acquired Gennett for 2019 and he has been extremely bad so far this year. For San Francisco, then, there might still be time for Panik.

That’s especially true because it’s Gennett’s approach, and not just his results, that have been cause for concern in 2019. As Travis Sawchick wrote last year, Gennett’s breakout in early 2017 was the result, in large part, of an increasingly disciplined approach at the plate that allowed him to generate strong swings against the pitches he was most able to drive (the juiced ball didn’t hurt, either). This year though, Gennett’s swing rate outside the zone has jumped seven points even as his contact rate on those pitches has declined, and he’s seeing fewer pitches in the zone than ever before (40.3%, down from 42% last year and 45.9% the year before). All is not well in la casa Gennett.

Still, if Gennett finds a way to recover his form — and he’s been back since June 28th, and terrible ever since, so I’m not holding my breath — he would be a tremendous shot in the arm for a Giants club that’s just 2 1/2 games out of the second Wild Card slot and has enough pitching to hang around a little while longer. I’m not sure second base would have been the first place I’d have looked to upgrade this club if I really wanted to make a run at it — that’d probably have been the rotation — and the Giants’ slew of relief trades today suggest they’re not entirely in even as they’re not entirely out, either. Still, Panik has been bad this year, and Gennett, both the bet and its hedge in human form, is a low-cost way to try to fix that.

It’s a bit of a surprise that the Reds couldn’t manage to get more than cash in exchange for Gennett’s last few months under contract, especially when you consider that at least one contending team (the A’s) have an even worse situation than the Giants at second base. If Gennett had a strong 2019, he probably would have been in line for a fairly hefty pay-day next year, even entering his age-30 season and with a profile many teams won’t believe in. This year’s poor performance makes that substantially less likely, and so to some extent this might be an effort for the Giants to see what they have in Gennett in-house and then making a run at keeping him, replacing Panik, if they like what they see. Or, hey, maybe they actually want to win the Wild Card.