Giants-Pirates Trade Rumor
According to mlbtraderumors.com, the Giants and Pirates have been discussing a possible trade for Pirates 2Bman Freddie Sanchez, and to a lesser extent 1Bman Adam LaRoche. However, what the Giants really want at 1B is a right-handed hitter, since Travis Ishikawa bats left-handed and has been playing fairly well of late.
With the Giants now beginning to hit, their biggest hole (or at the least the hole that isn’t already plugged by an over-paid, untradeable star like Edgar Renteria, Randy Winn or Aaron Rowand) is at 2B. The Giants are playing Juan Uribe there of late, and his .711 OPS is an improvement on the likes of Emmanuel Burriss, Kevin Frandsen and Matt Downs, but isn’t close to Freddie Sanchez’s current .832 OPS.
Freddie Sanchez has a $8.5M option for 2010 that appears likely to vest, which is not entirely outside the Giants’ ballpark. However, I would bet that if Sanchez is the Giants’ 2Bman in 2010, there will be a drop off in his performance, since he’ll be 32 next year.
Most likely, the Pirates would want Jonathan Sanchez, and either Fred Lewis or John Bowker, plus maybe a third minor league throw-in player, for Freddie. If I were the Pirates, I’d rather have John Bowker, since he’s three years younger than Lewis.
Any such deal would probably not happen until the week before the trade deadline, as the Giants see how their offense is doing and whether Freddie Sanchez continues to hit.
