The Giants Need More Than Just Giancarlo Stanton
If the Giants weren’t 2017’s biggest disappointment, it’s only because the Mets lived their own waking nightmare. The Giants remain a popular product, but with popularity comes expectations, and the Giants have been garbage for a year and a half, in large part because the home-run spike seems to have passed them right by. Fast-forward to the present day, and the Giants find themselves in a situation of some urgency. They want to maintain their market share in the region, and they could stand to add some dingers. The Giants haven’t hit many dingers. They don’t want to spend another year in the basement.
It seems like the stars are aligning almost perfectly. When the Giants have needed help the most, there has become available a certain player, a certain dinger-hitter and league MVP, a lineup-changing colossus who’s rumored to want to play out west, around where he grew up. It’s no secret the Marlins are looking to trade Giancarlo Stanton, and it’s no surprise the Giants are deeply involved in the mix. Nothing has yet actually happened, but the two current favorites would have to be the Giants and the Cardinals. They’re the suitors who’ve been most aggressive.
And yet I’m not sold the Giants make such great sense. One can speculate only so much about a move that would be undoubtedly complicated, but the Giants don’t find themselves in an enviable position. Acquiring Stanton could be an awfully dangerous commitment.
I don’t want to approach this from just the normal, rational perspective. By which I mean, I don’t want to talk only about payroll and WAR. Fan sentiment is its own kind of rational, and it’s extremely rational for any team to want to add Giancarlo Stanton to the outfield. Stanton is one of, I don’t know, 10 or 20 players who could be a draw on their own. Stanton is one of those come-to-the-ballpark attractions, and if the Giants landed Stanton tomorrow, I imagine there would be a surge in season-ticket sales. The Cubs could improve their rotation by signing Alex Cobb, but if the Cubs signed Alex Cobb, there would mostly be a shrug. It’s fine. He’ll probably help. Cool. A team getting Stanton would be a team acquiring excitement. Baseball is entertainment, and Stanton is one of its premier entertainers. The 5-WAR version of Giancarlo Stanton makes more memories than the 5-WAR version of Jason Heyward.
The Giants have every reason to want Stanton. Most team would have every reason to want Stanton. And the Giants do want to improve, given that they’re not positioned so well for a rebuild. The trouble is in the particulars. Giancarlo Stanton is expensive, and the Giants don’t seem to be very good.
As a reminder, Stanton is due $295 million over the next 10 years. He has an opt-out clause after 2020. That is a humongous contract, but then, Stanton is a humongous player with humongous value. What is Stanton actually worth? As Ken Rosenthal noted in a column the other week, industry perception is that Stanton would sign for something similar were he a free agent today. In other words, while you could quibble a little bit on either side, Stanton has a value north of his contract of something like zero dollars. I’d say he’s a little better than that, just because he is a singular talent and there’s value in having him for yourself, but the surplus value is limited. And the contract is the reason why the Marlins want to move Stanton in the first place.
So as you already understand, the Marlins can probably move Stanton for big-time salary relief or for big-time prospects, but not both. Now look at this from the Giants’ side. The Giants, like every team, have some good prospects, but theirs isn’t considered a deep or strong farm. They’re also right up around the luxury-tax threshold, which they’d like to drop below. Just based on this little paragraph, the Giants might not be able to satisfy the Marlins’ requests. Not as much as another club, like, for example, the Cardinals. This could come down to how strongly Stanton wants to play in California.
The complications are still even bigger than that. None of us know how Stanton is going to age. He just had himself a heck of a season. Maybe he’s going to age gracefully. Maybe he’s not! We do know that, the way these things usually work, these mega-players provide most of their value up front. You want Stanton for the next three years; you don’t really want him for the last three years. We should consider, then, how the Giants are positioned. And there’s a quick way to do that. It’s far from perfect, and the picture is going to change as the offseason evolves, but let me show you a snapshot. Based on our team depth charts and the Steamer projection system, here is the current National League, by projected 2018 WAR, which correlates pretty strongly with wins.
The Giants, in yellow, show up in tenth place. They’re in fourth place in their own division. Of course, there are tiers, and they’re not that far from the Rockies or Phillies on either side, but the Giants are nowhere close to, say, the Dodgers. They’re also a good distance behind the Diamondbacks. Note that the Giants are two places lower than the Marlins, who are trying to shed. They have their own internal reasons for that, but this is just for some perspective.
Now let’s imagine a Stanton trade. I can’t sit here and guess the particulars, but let’s say the Giants get Stanton without subtracting much from the major-league roster. For this plot, I’ve just swapped the Marlins and Giants’ right-field projections.
Congratulations, Giants: you’re better! The trade moves them up to eighth place, just ahead of the Rockies. The Giants start to look like a legitimate wild-card contender, and, as we’ve known for a while, wild-card contenders are World Series contenders. But, eighth place. Five teams make the playoffs. One of them gets eliminated almost immediately. The Giants would still be behind the Diamondbacks. They’d still be well behind the Dodgers.
And they’d be more or less out of money. There would hardly be any way to further upgrade, unless ownership were content to blow past the luxury-tax threshold again. Which, hey, it’s possible — the Giants have been a revenue machine. Theirs is a popular brand. But getting Stanton might cause the Giants to have to shed elsewhere. Maybe that means they dump Brandon Belt. I’m not really sure. They’d be limited, is all. The Giants would be left with very little flexibility, a roughly .500 team hoping the other good or decent teams underachieve.
The farm system, again, isn’t so promising. It has its pieces, but you figure a Stanton move would leave it somewhat depleted. The Giants would have to include some prospects if they didn’t assume Stanton’s entire contract. With a weaker farm, the Giants would be left with fewer future reinforcements, and while Stanton is going to be 28 next year, and while the same goes for Madison Bumgarner, Belt will be 30. Brandon Crawford and Buster Posey will be 31. Johnny Cueto will be 32. Jeff Samardzija will be 33. It’s hard to believe the Giants are on an overall upward trajectory. If anything, 2019 might be even more of a challenge. Even with Stanton, the Giants’ core would be aging, and the system isn’t overflowing with the promise of nearer-term help.
It’s not entirely bleak. The Giants aren’t the Tigers; the 2016 Giants made the playoffs. It’s not as if the Giants should give up on getting better, and there is reason to hope for a considerable turnaround in the season ahead. The Giants are better than what they most recently showed. You could even argue they should just lean into this, assuming the future could be rough no matter what. Maybe you could say the Giants should try to get as good as they can right now. There would be some amount of sense to that. But it’s important to recognize where the Giants are, and where Stanton would leave them. Stanton would make them better, absolutely, but he would deplete the organization of some flexibility and talent. He would also leave the Giants still flawed, still maybe the third-best team in their own division, with all the other teams in the NL still just getting their offseasons started. What if the Giants took Giancarlo Stanton away from the Cardinals? What if the Cardinals then responded by getting Josh Donaldson? For the Giants, it would be maybe their one bullet. It probably wouldn’t solve every problem.
I imagine Stanton will get traded. I imagine he’d like to play out west. In that event, there’s a good chance he ends up in San Francisco. Some things, Stanton would make a hell of a lot better. Other things, he’d be powerless to fix.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
As a Dodger fan, I enjoyed this article enormously.
It is interesting how tough it is proving for the Marlins to move basically a market value superstar, though.
As a Giants fan, I enjoy deciding which World Championship cap to wear each day. Enormously.
Each year … those caps will become increasingly more faded – just like your team
those dodger hats from 1988 must be faded into nonexistence at this point
Oh man… I’m concerned for you. I sure hope that the old wives tale of hats straining your hair follicles and causing your hair to fall out aren’t true!
LOL….thank you for your heartfelt concern. I like faded caps just fine, ray. Funny you mention it, bleu, but the snow on the mountain DOES seem to be melting. Of course, at 61, that’s not too shocking. Still, it did seem to accelerate beginning in 2010. And my concern for YOU is finding a tech who still remembers how to service VCR’s so you can watch your 1988 tapes. Whew, that’s gotta be tough these days. Happy Thanksgiving!
Off the field, it’s a tough spot for a new ownership group. If they just get salary relief and a few B prospects, then it’s just business as usual and you disenfranchise fans right off the bat with a move right out of the Loria playbook.
If you get prospects you can at least sell it as a move towards The Future, but then it better be a huge haul to move someone as exciting as stanton and there just aren’t many teams with that kind of farm system.
Baseball ops is hard enough, but adding in the marketing challenge that is baseball in southern FL and it’s a hard problem.
Is it “tramps like us” or “Trumps like us”, because that part of the thread reads like a bunch of Trump tweets. This is something I’d expect to see on the Yahoo comments section, not in here.
“What if the Cardinals then responded by getting Josh Donaldson?”
Even though it would make Giants fans sad, this remains obscene content.
How about a trigger warning before you traumatize us Jays fans, eh Sullivan?
Off-topic, but man, Steamer really hates the Brewers. The Reds, I could understand being higher rated. They’re a couple of decent starters away from being… something. But the Braves and Phillies too? The young talent hype is strong.
Noticed this as well….more specifically, Steamer sees regression from Travis Shaw, thinks post-April Thames is the real Thames, and doesn’t think much of Manny Pina or Keon Broxton with the bat
All of that seems likely
Projections probably don’t think much of Jimmy Nelson either
Chase Anderson is projected for about half the value he put up last season too. Jeez, Steamer.
I can imagine Stanton telling the Marlins, “I’m only going to the Giants; figure it out.” If that happens, the Giants don’t even need to offer to pay all of his salary, let alone send prospects back. Without any clear insight into Stanton’s preferences, we can’t know very much about where this market clears.
I supoose that’s theoretically possible, but I certainly wouldn’t expect the Marlins to tell the Giants. Also, they aren’t obligated to trade him. If I were in that spot as the Marlins management, I’d say fine. Stay two years and then opt out.
Stanton would obviously prefer the Dodgers… he is from Los Angeles and the Dodgers are a much better team. There is a 0% chance he told the Marlins that he will only accept a trade to San Francisco.
It blows my mind that people actually have this opinion. The Marlins will not just give Stanton away, no matter if he says “I only want to be a Giant” or not.
Unrelated tangent: Buster Posey is 31! It feels like he went from “wait he’s still only 26” to “oh crap he’s 31?” overnight. With the way catchers can fall off a cliff, it’s likely that the best catcher of the past decade (it’s not close) won’t see the HOF, which would be very sad.
It’s possible he won’t make it. Likely? Seems a bit strong.
That’s only because catchers are undervalued by HofF voters. The best player on three world championship teams should get there on that alone.
I hope so!
there’s at least a fair chance he makes the switch to first base in a year or two, extending his career and allowing him to pad his stats. Under that scenario, peak value would have to matter more to voters than career. And he does have an MVP and 3 WS championships. And the Bill James HOF test question, “was he considered the best in baseball at his position for several years? Don’t count him out yet.
The james-inspired “HOF Monitor” on baseball reference puts Posey right around David Wright, Adam Dunn, and Brian McCann. All fine players but I doubt any of those comps make it past the first ballot. Catchers are severely underrated in the hall.
Hopefully the rings and voter turnover by the time he’s eligible will be enough to get him in.
Posey is still productive and at a 68
Dunn is retired and got to 75
Wright is basically retired and is at 74
McCann is at 67 and hasn’t had back to back 2+ rWAR seasons since 2010-1
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Looking at the point system. Lets say he sticks at catcher and averages 100 games there into his late 30s.
1500 total games at catcher will tack on 30 points. Assuming he can do that without his career average dropping below .275 [at .308 now], then 15 more points.
Even if he does nothing else to acre points for the HoF Monitor, he’s at those things don’t come with *any* other points, he’s already now at 113
If he does play that long, a pretty good bet for 2000 hits, four more points. Perhaps a bit of a long shot being at .308 now, but if he keeps it over .300, that’d be 8 points.
He’s been to five of the last six all star games- if he ends up at 2-4 more that is another 6-12 points.
Five of his seven full seasons have come with an AVG over .300, 2-3 more of those and he adds 5-7.5 points.
In four of those seasons he’s been at 33-39 doubles. HoFM gives a point for seasons of 35+, so maybe a decent shot at a couple of points there.
I’m not going to predict any MVPs or even the Giants making it to the World Series or even taking a division, but any of those would add a bunch of points too.
Seems like the Pirates would move up in Steamer projections just about enough to justify it. Trade Polanco and Kingham and Tucker and get $5-$10M back for the next 6 years.
I assume the Giants went over the competitive balance tax threshold again in 2017, which would be the third consecutive year, putting them in the highest tax bracket of 50% of every dollar above the threshold. I also expect that the Giants will exceed it again in 2018, (and it’s easy to imagine they might do so in perpetuity). Apparently, though, the Giants are a rich team, and with an average ticket price of $73 in 2017 (https://www.barrystickets.com/blog/mlb-ticket-prices/), they are somewhere in the middle of the pack, meaning the market could conceivably bear a significant increase in ticket prices, particularly if the team on the field was winning–and exciting, as Jeff notes.
The Giants have apparently offered a trade to the Marlins for Stanton. According to Jon Paul Morosi and Joe Frisaro of MLB.com, who attribute the details to Craig Mish of SiriusXM, the offer includes Joe Panik (2B), Tyler Beede (SP, SFG #3 prospect), and Chris Shaw (OF, #2) in exchange for Stanton (RF) and Dee Gordon (2B). Panik is first-year arbitration eligible while Beede and Shaw are both yet to make their MLB debut. Is it reasonable to imagine Panik might receive approximately $3 million in 2018? Stanton is owed $25 million in 2018, plus $52 million over the next two seasons and $208 million over the following seven if he does not opt out, with a $25 million option or $10 million buy-out for an eleventh year. Gordon is under contract for $10.8 million in 2018, plus $27.1 million over 2019-20, with on option for $14 million or a $1 million buy-out in 2021. If this reported offer is accurate, it must mean the Giants management is willing to significantly exceed the luxury tax threshold.
The Giants want to field a winning team; the Marlins want to dump $50 million in salary in 2018. Jeff is also right in noting that the Giants need more than one piece in order to really compete next year. What if the Giants front office and ownership said ‘to hell with the tax’ and made a deal with Miami to enable their entire salary off-load in one trade? So then, some silliness and fun with math.
With a deal that may likely enrage almost everyone, I propose the Marlins swap:
RF Stanton ($25M in 2018 / $295M total outstanding),
2B Gordon ($11M / $38-52M),
CF Yelich ($7M / $43-58M),
LF Ozuna (Arb-2: perhaps $10M in 2018?),
SP Volquez ($13M), and
SP Chen ($10M / $52-68M)
in exchange for:
2B Panik (Arb-1: $3M?),
OF Shaw (MLB minimum),
OF Slater (min),
OF Parker (min),
OF Williamson (min),
OF Span ($11M in 2018, plus $12M in 2019 or a $4M buy-out),
3B Jones (min),
SP Beede (min),
SP Moore ($9M in 2018, plus $10M in 2019 or a $1M buy-out), and
RP Crick (min)
When the dust settles, the Marlins would have $50 million off the books for 2018 and $15 million more in 2019 (if the options are declined), and they would have a crop of cheap and serviceable, if not all especially good, younger players. The Giants would have a new OF and lineup that could make the team a winner immediately and saddle it with about a half a billion dollars in financial baggage. Ticket prices get jacked up for SF fans, and they’ll pay it happily for a winner; the several Marlins fans in the world get hosed, which is inevitable anyway, while the new Marlins ownership laughs their stingy laughs and even gets another kickback by way of the fatter share of the competitive balance tax paid by the Giants.
And the even year magic is restored. (Full disclosure: I don’t care what anybody has to pay, I just greedily want another WS championship–and more greedily, MOAR after that–for my SFG.) (Big smile.)
That’s acting like the Marlins are idiots. Also, the Giants use dynamic pricing; they already know what maximizes revenue and they lost their sellout streak last year. You can’t just raise prices to raise revenue, it doesn’t work like that.
Marlins ownership has stated they want to move $50 million off their payroll for 2018. Stanton would make up half of that. How are they going to shed the rest? Moving Gordon would be another $11M. So who does that leave?
Nobody is going to want to take on Volquez’s $13M, or Chen’s $10M (plus another $42-58M for 2019-20/21), or Prado’s $13.5M (plus $15M for 2019), or Ziegler’s $9M. That only leaves Yelich and Ozuna as tradeable salary at full price plus something in return.
Regarding your comment, “You can’t just raise prices to raise revenue, it doesn’t work like that.” Sure, that’s correct if you are a 98-loss team, but if you are 98-win team, maybe it does work.
and then you woke up
Your trade idea…yikes.
However looking at some of the players from the Morosi rumor:
Beede had a terrible season in AAA in 2017. His AA season prior to first season in AAA reminded me of someone:
Tyler Beede:
2016 AA: 8.25 K/9 3.24 BB/9 0.55 HR/9 2.81 ERA 3.48 FIP 3.58 xFIP
2017: AAA: 6.85 K/9 3.22 BB/9 1.16 HR/9 4.79 ERA 5.02 FIP 4.63 xFIP
2016 was Beede’s second year of AA. Reminds me of someone…
2013 AA: 8.26 K/9 2.21 BB/9 0.82 HR/9 3.22 ERA 3.08 FIP 2.77 xFIP
2014 AA: 5.79 K/9 3.23 BB/9 1.08 HR/9 5.38 ERA 5.16 FIP 5.02 xFIP
That is Zach Lee, btw.
Obviously, they are different pitchers, but Beede’s value is not looking tremendous at the moment.
I don’t see the Marlins biggest or 2nd biggest piece coming back in a deal being a 1st year arbitration player for a team that wants to drastically scale back their payroll, either.
Shaw seems like a nice piece, but not crazy valuable.
I imagine the Marlins would get many better offers from other teams.
My original post was meant somewhat tongue-in-cheek, which I thought might be apparent with phrases like ‘silliness and fun’, ‘half a billion dollars’, ‘Marlins fans…get hosed’, ‘stingy laughs’… The point being that Marlins ownership is intent on screwing their fans over by shipping out at least one of the game’s best players in order to cut so much salary that they essentially want to turn their franchise into a 98-loss team–so they may as well do it with the Giants players who just lost 98 games. Obviously, the Giants have nowhere near enough talent to land Ozuna in a trade, and the only way it might be conceivable, though still completely improbable, would be by taking on all the other contracts the Marlins want to shed.
If Miami wants to dump as much money as possible, STL would make more sense. They’ve got more payroll wiggle room and can also offer a couple of top pitching prospects. They’ve been reported as interested in Ziegler, and don’t have many “sure” arms in the rotation, so it’s easy to see a trade that includes Stanton, Ziegler, and Chen. That’s ~$50 million by itself. STL could shoulder all of that if they wanted to and give very little in prospect value, but including a couple of top prospects would make that offer incredibly difficult to turn down.
I want to see Stanton play in a hitters park…
Even adding Stanton the SFG would need a rebuild. The ML roster sucks, the farm system sucks. If Stanton would play for a rebuilding team then go ahead, if not then forget it.
Gotta say that, even as a Giants fan, I’ve been watching for awhile now and wondering how long they’d keep kicking the can down the road. They can come in 4th place in the NL West with or without Stanton, but that contract could easily become a millstone. The last straw for me was hearing Heliot Ramos’ name in Stanton rumors. They finally have a prospect who could be really good and they might trade him already? Bullshit. Do it right, don’t just duct tape a contender together for another year. Houston, the ChiSox and Yankees, Braves, and (yes, dammit) the Dodgers should be the models.
I don’t see Stanton going to the Giants. I also wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t want to be traded unless it is to the Dodgers. I think people are overestimating his desire to win and underestimating the importance of where he lives.