O Catcher! my Catcher! our playoff trip is done;

The team has weathered every ace, World Series sought is won;

The stadium near, all cheers I hear, the Giants fans exulting,

While follow eyes the steady mitt, the batter grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the tears and the bowed head,

For on the plate my Catcher lies,

Fallen, injurèd.

O Catcher! my Catcher! rise up and hear the crowd;

Rise up—for you the banner's flung—for you the bugle trills;

For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Catcher! dear player!

This arm beneath your head;

It is some dream that on the plate,

You’ve fallen, injurèd.

My Catcher's cries subsiding, Dave Groeschner helps him rise;

My catcher does not know my name, he's never seen these eyes;

But he's my catcher, he's my saint, beloved for what he's done;

The walk-off wins, the stance, the swing, the ball flew to the sun;

My mind's eye once saw pitches framed,

But now I, in their stead;

See broken plate where Buster lies,

Fallen, injurèd.

There's a protracted discussion in the Mets series preview on the merits of a two-player deal in which the Giants acquire Jose Reyes and the Mets acquire Zack Wheeler.  It's migrated to the side of the page, so I'd like to offer this fanpost as a new avenue for exploration of this topic.  Hopefully this incites enough interest among the rest of the McCoven that this fanpost will end up being more than an extension of the 3-4-person discussion in the Mets series preview.

A quick poll follows at the end to gather the McCoven's general thoughts.

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This started as a comment on the front-page thread, but, yeah....

First words: Aubrey Huff is f***ing awesome, and I am glad he is a Giant, and as a fan, I would be pretty devastated if he were traded.  What follows is my hopeful-GM self speaking.

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        As the Giants’ spending draws its way to a close, with $22.75 million out of pocket, many McCoven are still trying to figure out where it all went.  Surely an expenditure of this magnitude must greatly increase the Giants’ chances of making the playoffs this year!  But this has not happened; the general consensus is that they are no more than 1 or 2 wins better than before.

            Especially in the wake of the Molina signing, I am willing to lampoon the offseason as a disaster.  There are a few commonly voiced objections to this view, which can be roughly categorized under:

1) At least players are being signed/Would you rather spend nothing on such a promising team?

2) Look at the players who took less to go to other teams: Sabean is operating at a competitive disadvantage, and the weak free agent market only exacerbates the problem

Concerning the first: if you gave me a choice between these free agents and signing 10 Duanel Jones-type players using the same money, I’d take the Duanel Jones’s.  At least one of the prospects, and maybe two or three, would become a solid player for us out of the farm system, and if he did, he would provide more value relative to salary over the course of his six years under club control than all five of the signees will provide over the entire duration of their contracts combined.  However, such a course of action would leave Lincecum and Cain bereft of support for yet another season as the window of opportunity closes.  Thankfully, one need not spend on mediocre vets or Duanel Joneses alone.  Which brings me to the second objection, and this question: how weak was the free agent pool and the trade market relative to the Giants’ needs, really?

For most of the offseason, I assumed, given the conventional wisdom that the 2010 free agent class was weak, that there weren’t many players available at a desirable cost who fit the Giants’ needs.  The assumption about cost was blown away after the Giants moved their payroll up to $100 million this year.  With the knowledge of how much they were willing to spend at the beginning of the offseason, it is easier to assess their performance.  My assumption about the weakness of the free agent market relative to the Giants’ needs was shaken a couple of weeks ago.  I was farting around, looking at the percentages of pitches the Giants’ hitters swung at in the zone and out of the zone, and then looked at the league leaders as a comparison.  This is what I found.

(these are the top 14 players out of 153)

Name              O-Swing%

Luis Castillo     12.20%
Marco Scutaro     12.30%
Nick Johnson      14.20%
Chone Figgins     14.90%
J.D. Drew         15.30%
Chipper Jones     15.40%
Bobby Abreu       15.90%
Mike Cameron      17.40%
Nick Swisher      17.40%
Jack Cust         17.50%
Kosuke Fukudome   17.80%
Grady Sizemore    17.90%
Denard Span       18.30%
Dan Uggla         18.70%

O-Swing% is the proportion of pitches out of the strike zone that the batter swings at.  These are the anti-Giants of 2008.  They know where the zone is.  They control the terms of the encounter.  They make the pitcher come to them, instead of going out and doing the pitcher a favor by swinging at sliders in the dirt or off their leg.

Statistical Aside: These players may be undervalued by WAR, which I believe doesn’t account for the impact a player’s at-bats have on pitch count.  A favorable approach will lead to more walks, which are counted by WAR as a function of OBP, but the benefits of wearing down a pitcher and getting into the bullpen faster are reflected in improvements to the hitting stats of everybody in the lineup, without giving credit to players whose plate appearances were of a longer duration.

The big surprise here was the proportion of these players on the free agent market or widely rumored to be available on the trade market.  A makeover of the lineup with regards to plate approach would have been the quickest path to a large increase in the number of runs scored, and looking at the league leaders, the Giants had a golden opportunity to make a radical shift in the identity of the lineup.

The available players:

Luis Castillo has 2 years and $12 million left on a contract with the Mets, would have been a 2B rather than the notionally superior, but injury risky, Freddy Sanchez (07/09 WAR avg: 1.5)

Marco Scutaro was a free agent who signed a 2 year, $12.5 million contract with the Red Sox; would have been a superior 2B to Freddy Sanchez (07/09 WAR avg: 2.5)

Nick Johnson was a free agent who signed a 1 year, $5.5 million contract with the Yankees; he would have been a superior 1B to Ishikawa, Garko, or Huff (07/09 WAR avg: 2.9)

Chone Figgins was a free agent who signed a 4 year, $36 million contract with the (Edit: Mariners ); he would have been an improvement at 2B, LF, and RF (07/09 WAR avg: 3.5)

Mike Cameron was a free agent who signed a 2 year, $15.5 million contract with the Red Sox; he would have been a superior LF/RF to any of our current options (07/09 WAR avg: 3.5)

Dan Uggla was shopped by the Marlins, who were in talks with the Giants over possible deals; he is owed $7.8 million next year and would have been a superior 2B (07/09 WAR avg: 3.4)

Any Cust proponents or people who consider Swisher/Sizemore within our reach in terms of trades are free to discuss their relative values/trade values.

The four best players in baseball last year at taking pitches outside of the zone were readily available last year, and several others in the top 20 who would have been substantial upgrades as well.  In addition, while it is very clear in the case of Huff and perhaps DeRosa that defense is being sacrificed for offense, two of these free agents have excellent defensive reputations both in the scouting community and when using UZR (Scutaro, Cameron).  With payroll space of $23 million, it would have been economically feasible for Sabean to overbid on any 2 of the 4 free agents- take your pick.  With four excellent targets, the chances that all will turn down offers to go play at Mays Field for less lucrative contracts is exceedingly small.

After adding Castillo and Uggla to the list, there are three 2B (one who can also play SS), one 1B, and 3 OF, a list of players that very neatly fits the Giants’ positional needs.

With the acquisition of 2 of the free agents and the insertion of Bowker/Lewis and Posey (after a 1-month Holm/Whiteside period with service time concerns) into the lineup, half of the lineup would have experienced a radical turnaround in the right direction, and with Swisher and Uggla on the trade market, the turnaround of 5 players would not have been out of reach.

As a fitting sendoff, I’ll give the O-Swing% rankings of the players that the Giants did sign this offseason:

Freddy Sanchez 31.1% (did not qualify)
Mark DeRosa 23.5% (74/153)
Aubrey Huff 26.9% (112/153)
Juan Uribe 30.8% (did not qualify)
Bengie Molina 43.9% (153/153)

Description: Just one of the many battle plans we could follow this offseason.

There is just something I find undeniably sexy about blowing up a roster. I look at what Neal Huntington has done to the Pirates with a mixture of awe and envy. However, like normal fans, I hate it when my team sucks, so a full rebuild is out of the question.

But there’s another option: the semi-rebuild applicable to grotesquely lopsided teams. What would it look like if we took the dynamite to the offense and left the pitching staff intact? The new lineup may even be better than 2009’s, and no matter what, our pitching means we will be some sort of a contender.

Game Plan
Aim for a top-10 offense in baseball in 2011.

1) Get rid of highly-paid veterans; cut costs to maximize options in the 2011 offseason (no free agent signings)

2) Open up as many positions as we can for our young (relatively) players and take inventory of their various skills by starting them the entire year: a season’s worth of statistics can go a long way in making personnel decisions en route to a top-10 offense. Also, many of these players are improvements over what we have now.
3) Use any compensation picks and freed up money from step 1 to draft players above slot. Preferably, find college hitters with a good chance to contribute soon and offer the money needed to sign them posthaste. This will get them on an affiliate quickly and put them on the fast track to the big league club.

Specifics:
Send off Molina and Winn; maximize draft pick compensation
Deal Rowand; it will probably be necessary to eat some of the contract
Start: 
LF Bowker 
CF Schierholtz 
RF Lewis 
1B Ishikawa/Garko
C Posey
Current minor leaguers who are possible ’11 starters include Neal, Crawford, and Bond; see how they handle transitions to new levels.

The 2011 offseason, we would have a ton of spending money. Priority: locking up Caincecum to long-term deals; an early hella-year deal with Sandoval is possible as well. SS and the positions (1B, OF) where the homegrown players bust will be open for premium free agent talents.

As I said, this is but one of the many paths possible this offseason. It is probably the most efficient way to a sure playoff team, but it most likely leads to another middling near-contention year in 2010. For those of us who are impatient, this approach is not desirable. But if the ultimate goal is a ring, and not just contention, this strategy is commendable.

Edit: From the first few responses I'm getting here many are seeing this as some large amount of roster turnover and as essentially a white flag strategy, giving up on the season to put players on the field who otherwise would not have played before.  However, almost all of these starters are the best we have in-house at the moment (Schierholtz being probably the lone exception).  Please recognize that the 'Semi-Rebuild Strategy' is defined much more by what it doesn't do- sign the free agents available this offseason and trade away pitching for hitting- than by what it does do, because the primary aim is extreme payroll flexibility next offseason.

How about this for a trade a week from now?

Three-way deal between Cubs, Giants, Padres.

1) Cubs acquire Aaron Rowand and his contract from the Giants
2) The Padres acquire Milton Bradley and half of his contract from the Cubs.
3) The Giants take on half of Bradley’s contract ($10.5 mil/2 years). The Giants acquire a player from the Padres.

Rationale:
Cubs get rid of Bradley; they’ve put themselves in this bad spot.
Giants are involved because Rowand’s contract helps offset money issues. We take advantage of the situation to offload a bad contract.
Padres actually want Bradley; they get him on the cheap.

I would start by asking the Padres if CF Will Venable or power-hitting 1B Kyle Blanks are available for this kind of deal, and would be willing to go as low as a marginal prospect in Low-A.  Thoughts?