The last Giants front office was mostly allergic to trades that instantly improved the starting lineup or rotation. They preferred to rifle through the Mariners’ fridge and ask, “Are you gonna eat that?” over and over again.
The new front office might not have the same mindset. They might be much more aggressive, especially considering Buster Posey didn’t draft or sign any of the prospects in the system.
Over the next week, we’ll look at some players the Giants could target in a trade, but our first order of business is to talk about the players they could trade away, starting with a tidbit from Andrew Baggarly:
Although the Giants are not resolved at present to trade off their major-league roster to create more financial flexibility, they plan to explore it, with arbitration-eligible players like LaMonte Wade Jr. ($4-5 million), Camilo Doval ($3 million) and Mike Yastrzemski ($9-10 million) among the names in play to be moved.
That’s a hitter who led the team in on-base percentage by nearly 50 points, a reliever with a special arm at his lowest trade value in years, and an outfielder who has been one of the 10-most valuable Giants every season for so long that the first time he did it, Jeff Samardzija lead the team in WAR. If you frame their contributions like that, getting rid of them seems like a funny way to make the team better.
Let’s explore each player individually to see if there’s any logic behind trading some of them, and we’ll start with the incumbent first baseman, Wade.
Why a Wade trade is plausible
Alternate subhead that would never make it past editing: A Giants trade of Wade could aid, but they’d be more swayed by what he’s paid and how few games he’s played.
I’m always told to be more concise, but then I write the whole thesis of an article in one sentence, and they don’t like that either. Make up your mind.
Late Night LaMonte is easily one of the Giants’ best nicknames of the last 20 years, up there with Baby Giraffe (Brandon Belt), Panda (Pablo Sandoval) and The Tigers’ Biggest Problem, For Some Reason (Mark Canha). It would have been one of the best nicknames in franchise history if he were .004 seconds later with this swing. But there’s more to him than past late-inning heroics. Over the last two seasons, he’s been worth nearly five wins, and he has some of the best plate discipline in baseball. He helps lineups score runs, and he’s done it for a while.
That doesn’t mean that Wade is a perfect fit for the Giants, though. He’s put home runs into the water, but he doesn’t quite have the left-handed power you want at Oracle Park. That’s a minor concern, considering how much he gets on base; you’ll take the 10th-best on-base percentage in baseball, even if it comes with just a couple home runs. Wade has more than enough power to help the Giants at home.
But not all on-base percentage is created equal. You might think this is about Wade’s paltry RBI total, but you can ditch that concern. Wade had 34 RBI in 401 plate appearances, which seems bad. Except he came up to the plate with 205 runners on base, and the average MLB player with 401 plate appearances should see 237 runners on base. Wade saw 13 fewer runners on second and eight fewer runners on third than expected, and he drove in 16.6 percent of the runners on base for his at-bats, which is close enough to the 19-percent league average to be a statistical hiccup. He’s not uniquely terrible at driving in runs.
No, all OBP isn’t created equal because the ostensible benefit of having a runner on base so often is to drive him home. It’s one thing to push runners along, station to station, but it’s more ideal to have the on-base wizard score a run himself. This is a problem with Wade for two reasons:
1. He’s one of the slowest players in baseball, with a 7th-percentile sprint speed. It wasn’t much better the season before, when he was dealing with fewer lower-half injuries.
2. The Giants don’t have an especially powerful middle of the order behind him, so there are fewer opportunities for him to simply trot around the bases.
Since the Giants moved into Oracle Park in 2000, only 11 players have reached base at least 150 times in a season but scored runs less often than Wade. Four of those 11 were catchers (Posey, Benito Santiago, A.J. Pierzynski and Bengie Molina). The only one with any speed at all was Grégor Blanco, but he did it in 2013, when the Giants hit just 107 home runs.
(You can look at the entire list here, if only to appreciate that Barry Bonds reached base 376 times in 2004, which is extremely funny. Also note that Matt Chapman had one of the highest ratios of times on base to runs scored, which is a testament to his speed and baserunning.)
This is less of a problem for teams with power and ballparks that are friendlier to hitters. The Yankees and Astros ranked 28th and 29th, respectively, in Wins Above Average from first base last season, so they would love to get anything out of the position. They also should have the kind of power later in the lineup that would make Wade’s speed less of an issue. He’s much better on a bloop-and-a-blast team instead of a bloop-and-a-bloop-and-a-bloop-and-a-bloop team.
There’s also the matter of the Giants’ incredible shrinking payroll, but Wade is in his second arbitration year, and he shouldn’t be too expensive, with a projected salary of approximately $4.7 million or so, per MLB Trade Rumors. That still might be the difference between a free-agent pitcher at the top of the market and a No. 3 or 4 starter. It’s an artificial concern, but it’s real to the organization.
Finally, Wade’s health is an obvious concern, as he’s had three different IL stints of longer than 30 days since the start of 2022. He’s still only 31, so it might be something that can be helped with a different offseason regimen, but it’s something to consider.
Why a Wade trade doesn’t make as much sense
Yes, Wade has missed a lot of time with injuries. Yes, he’s typically a player the Giants want to hide from lefties, although he’s been perfectly fine against them over the last two seasons. And, yes, he wasn’t the same player after coming off the IL last season, with a .333/.470/.426 line in 166 PA before the injury and a .213/.316/.352 line in 235 PA after it. He is an imperfect player.
But all of those details are a part of the larger story, which is that Wade has been a 2-win first baseman over the last two seasons, and he’s about to make $5 million or so. With that in mind, ask yourself a few simple questions. Can the Giants find more production from the position internally? Can the Giants find comparable production for a comparable salary? Or is there a way to use that $5 million elsewhere on the roster to make the Giants a better team overall?
I’m skeptical on all counts. Bryce Eldridge reached Triple A when he was 19, but we’re still talking about a 20-year-old hitter with 17 career games above A-ball. If he forces his way onto the 2025 roster, it’ll be a happy surprise, not something to plan an offseason around.
And if it’s not him taking over, you’re in the Wilmer Flores/David Villar zone, where expectations should be tempered. And if there were a lot of exciting free-agent first basemen to sign at a reasonable price, there wouldn’t be as much trade interest in Wade anyway. The whole reason teams would be interested in him is that he offers a chance to help an offense at a much more reasonable price and commitment than Pete Alonso or Christian Walker.
If it’s a pure rebuilding year for the Giants, then this is less of a concern. Maybe they’re more interested in clearing a space for a midseason Eldridge promotion and getting a prospect or two along the way. My guess is that the Giants still prefer the veneer of semi-plausible contention, with a roster filled with average-or-better players that has at least a chance to compete if a few things break their way. It’s hard to find a better fit for that kind of plan than Wade. He’s fine. He’s relatively cheap. He’s here. Focus elsewhere.
Another team would have to convince the Giants, in other words. The package of prospects would have to be too tempting. We’re not in PTBNL land here; Wade still has value to his current team, and they would need to see an offer they couldn’t refuse. Which isn’t something that another team is likely to offer, even if they were awful at first base last year, like the Astros and Yankees.
The smart money is on Wade staying put, and that’s not a bad thing. He doesn’t chase, and he hits the ball hard when he does swing. That seems like a player who is the least of the Giants’ many worries.
(Top photo: Christian Petersen / Getty Images)
