Rowand for Fukudome? Yes, Please.

First of all, I'm gonna apologize for not posting anything over the last couple of weeks. With finals going on for both of us, we decided to take a break. But we're back and ready to go with the news this morning that the Giants and Cubs have discussed an Aaron Rowand-Kosuke Fukudome trade, according to Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com.

It's no surprise that Rowand is being shopped - he has a huge contract, isn't good, and as the roster currently stands, it doesn't seem like there is room for him. And this particular rumor is especially appealing because almost everything about Fukudome is better than Rowand. His 2010, which wasn't too far off his career numbers (.259/.368/.410/.778), looked like this: .263/.371/.439/.810 in 429 PAs. Fukudome strikes out quite a bit (20.8% career) but his career walk rate (14.7%) is very good. Rowand had an OBP under .300 last year and has a career walk rate of 5.6%. It's pretty clear who the better offensive player is.

I've always assumed that when getting rid of Rowand, the Giants would have to pay most of the salary and get nothing back in return besides a crappy reliever. As I mentioned above, Rowand pretty much has to go because the Giants have too many outfielders - Burrell, Torres, Ross, Schierholtz, Rowand, DeRosa, Huff/Belt. Getting rid of Rowand for nothing would solve the outfield overcrowding problem. But adding another OF like Fukudome means another outfielder would have to go, most likely Schierholtz. Luckily, Fukudome isn't terrible on defense and defense is really the only reason Nate is still around. As a right fielder, he's fared pretty well according to UZR, with scores of 6.0 in 2008, 7.8 in 2009, and dropping off a bit in 2010 at -4.4. He is 33 and isn't likely to improve much on defense, but he won't clog up the outfield either.

I thought maybe the only other player the Giants could get in return for Rowand would be one with a bad contract. While Fukudome does make $13.5 million (way too much), it's only for one more year and his contract is actually better than Rowand's, which has 2 years and $24 million left. For this reason, I can't understand why the Cubs would do the deal. Crasnick does say the trade is a long shot. Maybe the Cubs want to save money this year? The Giants would probably throw some money into the deal, but it still seems weird. In the end, all the evaluations of Fukudome as a player don't matter because we know these two things: he's a better player with a better contract. And Rowand would finally be gone. Please make it happen, Sabez.

FJM Friday: Helllloooo, Marchman...

So sorry about skipping Fire Joe Morgan Friday last week. Anyway, here we are, on a day the Giants could clinch the division, and Tim Marchman of SI is here to tell us we shouldn't be excited. Go for it, Tim!

This year's NL pennant races are the kind that could one day inspire songs: dour songs, about futility and lack of meaning, sung by moping teenagers.

Huh?

In theory, this has not been an especially dull race. In practice, September has been a month of listing apathy.

I'd say that in PRACTICE, it has been a very exciting month, and that it is your THEORY that states otherwise. No?

Teams winning out on the basis of being less mediocre than others will never be any more compelling than a bicycle race run on flat tires.

Bicycle races with flat tires sounds GREAT. Much better than normal bicycle races. I think this statement bothers me more than anything else in the article, because it at least SEEMS to be suggesting that the great runs by the Phillies and the Giants in September are just those teams being "less mediocre" than their rivals. The Phillies finally got everyone healthy, and are clearly the best team in the league. And the Giants, well, the Giants pitching staff has had one of the most impressive runs of superb pitching in the history of baseball. That's not mediocrity. That's excellence.

...take BR's SRS stat, which adjusts run differential for strength of schedule and rates teams by how many runs per game better or worse they are than an average major league club. By this measure, the 95 win Phillies are as good as the 87 win Red Sox, the 88 win Reds are as good as the 77 win A's, and the 88 win Padres are as good as the 82 win Blue Jays.

I have a hard time thinking that the A's are as good as the Reds, or that the Red Sox are as good as the Phillies. But still, I get it: the AL is better than the NL. So? The amazing Yankee dynasty of the late 1990's won the division with 87 wins in 2000. Were they a mediocre team? There are countless other examples through the 100+ year history of AL/NL baseball which show teams much worse than the 2010 Reds going to the playoffs. And there have been just as many collapses that are far worse than the Padres this season. Your sepia-toned view of the teams of yesterday is inaccurate.

NL partisans will protest, but there's lot of reason (sic) to think that a team like the A's would do quite well if dropped into the Senior Circuit next year.

Please don't do that. The Padres are boring enough. The last thing I wanna watch is Wade LeBlanc pitching to Mark Ellis.

The 2nd point is that the irrelevance of the Dodgers, Cubs, and Mets, 3 teams with enormous natural advantages -- makes for a huge, sucking void in the standings.

Those teams might be irrelevant THIS year, but each of them has had very recent success. The Cubs were a 97 win team in 2008. The Dodgers played in the last 2 NLCS. And the Mets were one of the best teams in the NL from 2006-2008. Of course, the real point here is that there is no precedent for THESE teams making baseball exciting. The Dodgers, like the Giants, are one of the most storied franchises in baseball, but just like the Giants, they have had as many miserable seasons as great ones. And the Mets and Cubs? Posterboys of painful mediocrity for most of the 20th century. When they are not in the NL bracket, they are not missed.

...it takes villains to make heroes: How much more meaningful would a Reds division win be if it came over a bullying Cubs team, vaunting over the money minted along Clark Street?

I understand there might be a rivalry between the Reds and the Cubs (though certainly not at the level of the Cardinals and Cubs), but still, I don't think the Reds fans care one bit about sticking it to Chicago. I mean, the Reds are the oldest franchise in baseball history, and have had periods of ENORMOUS success. They don't need to prove anything to anybody. Certainly not the Cubs.

Broad equality among teams, with none standing out as especially good or especially bad, and a diminishing of the power of big city clubs are essentially the goals of the apostles of competitive balance. In the ideal game of the parity preachers, all teams would be average, with some just being slightly less average than others. Each year, there would be hope and faith for all, and each year a cluster of slightly above average teams would trip into October questing for a large trophy.

I don't know who these "apostles of competitive balance" are. I do know that many people, quite rightly, protest the fact that Boston and New York won 13/14 AL East titles from 1994 to 2007. People want every team to have the chance to be great. That's all. Of course they can't all win at the same time.

As baseball's races this year show us, though, a game actually built on this line is on par with roach fighting, without the illicit kick -- one has interest in the spectacle, but unless money is involved, less in the outcome. A great race needs great teams; it needs the swagger of wealth; mostly, it needs the prospect of a team playing spectacularly well and still losing out on what it wants.

I don't see the races this year as being akin to a roach fight, although I've never seen a roach fight. In fact, it is insulting to hear you say that. Did you watch the series the Giants just played in Colorado? It was magnificent. It was great baseball. So sorry the fucking Mets weren't playing.

CHC 2, SF 0: BLAHHHHHHHHHHHH

Jonathan Sanchez good, not great. Offense sucked majorly. Read the post below this. It's nice. BOOM. Done.

SF 1, CHC 0: Poseyed

So, Carlos Zambrano showed why the Cubs overreacted by sending him to the bullpen earlier in the year and why it was silly to think that the Cubs would ever trade him for Aaron Rowand. Remember that rumor? Zambrano struck out 8 batters tonight and held the Giants to 0 runs, but he also walked 5 guys and threw 116 pitches in 6 innings. It was up to the Chicago bullpen to give up some runs to the Giants.

The bullpen also pitched pretty well for the Cubs, but they still got poseyed. Buster will do that to you. In the 8th inning, Posey hit a solo shot to center field that barely cleared the fence and finally put the Giants on the board. That was all they'd get and all they'd need. Ramon Ramirez, Sergio Romo, and Brian Wilson combined for 3 innings of perfect relief to close out the game.

Matt Cain was fantastic. What else is new? Cain struck out just 2 Cubs, but he only allowed 4 baserunners (2 H, 1 BB, 1 HBP) and 0 runs in 6 innings. He was pulled early after just 82 pitches because Bochy needed some offense yet again. I'm not sure that makes much sense because if the starters can't score what's a bench guy gonna do? Might as well keep your great starting pitcher in the game. Oh well, it didn't matter. Like I said, the bullpen was very good. Did you know that the Giants' pitching staff has allowed 3 runs or fewer in their last 15 games and it's just the 3rd time a team has done that in the live ball era? I'll end the recap with that really cool stat.

Game Recap: SF 10, FLA 9

There's so much to talk about from today concerning the Giants, so let's begin at the end. Andres Torres "singled" in the 10th inning with the bases loaded and 1 out, to give the Giants a 10-9 victory. In the 10th, Rowand, Renteria, and Schierholtz singled to load the bases, and Torres hit a fly ball over the heads of the drawn in outfielders. This came on the heels of Brian Wilson blowing a two run save in the 9th inning. Wilson gave up a game tying ground rule double to Dan Uggla on a 3-2 fastball. There was a lot of discussion on Twitter about Wilson and Posey's pitch selection, but if hindsight tells us anything, it's that Uggla should have just been intentionally walked.

Of course, Wilson should have never entered this game. The Giants took an early 4-0 lead in the first inning, when 6 Giants collected singles. They increased the lead to 7-1 when Juan Uribe tripled in 2 runs, and then scored on a wild pitch. Then, in the 6th, Andres Torres hit a 2-run splash hit to make the score 9-2. Up to that point, Jonathan Sanchez had pitched well, but he fell apart in the 7th inning. After a 3-run HR, Denny Bautista came in to relieve Sanchez, and promptly gave up a 2-run bomb to Dan Uggla, to make the score 9-7. It felt like one of those games where the Giants had scored early and fallen asleep, only for the Marlins to come storming back. When Wilson faced Uggla with the tying run on base and Wes Helms on deck, it should have been obvious to walk him. In 3 games, he's hitting .500 with 4 home runs.

But the Giants won the game, and they can thank Andres Torres. Torres, who looked like he might have been cooling down last week, went 4-5 with a long HR and 3 RBI's. Jonathan Sanchez's meltdown in the 7th inning did not help his trade value, although it probably doesn't matter. The Giants don't appear poised to make any big deals before Saturday. Bullpen help is likely, and maybe a mediocre hitter is Sabean has steady phone reception. The Giants were apparently in on the Scott Podsednik negotiations before he was traded to the Dodgers. Thank God we didn't get him. If you need to know why we don't want Scott Podsednik, just visit the now-defunct firejoemorgan.com and search his name. However, Jorge Cantu is still a threat to join the team.

Last thing: On Andres Torres' game winning hit today, Kruk & Kuip mentioned that the Marlins were wondering if Schierholtz had safely reached 2nd base. By rule, if there is a runner at first, he must touch 2nd base before the winning run counts, otherwise the opposing team can get a force out at 2nd, nullifying the run. This is interesting because there is an infamous situation in Giants' history involving this very rule. In 1908, the New York Giants and Chicago Cubs were in a pennant race, and played each other on September 23. With the game tied 1-1 in the bottom of the 9th, 19 year old Fred Merkle singled, moving the winning run in Moose McCormick to 3rd. Al Bridwell singled on the next pitch, scoring McCormick, and winning the game for the Giants. But Merkle, who was on first, went to the plate to celebrate instead of reach 2nd safely, and the Cubs shortstop complained to the umpire. The umpire ruled in Chicago's favor, and play continued until the game was called due to darkness (remember, 1908). At the end of the season, the 2 teams were tied for the pennant lead, and replayed the game, the Cubs winning 4-2. They would go to the World Series and beat the Detroit Tigers. The Cubs have not won since. But the Giants believed they were robbed of a pennant because of an umpire enforcing a rule that was often overlooked in those days, and it remains one of the most controversial plays in baseball history.

Big Z a Giant?

In our second installment of "Trade rumors that will be forgotten and never mentioned again due to their obvious unlikelihood in hindsight", the Giants have been mentioned in a Carlos Zambrano article by Tim Dierkes over at mlbtraderumors.com. In his effort to find a team with overpaid players that could be traded for Zambrano, Edgar Renteria and Aaron Rowand have been proposed. If traded, their combined salaries would be $36 million, which means the Giants would take on $9 million extra with Zambrano.

When I first saw this, I thought, how could the Giants possibly pull off getting Carlos Zambrano for Edgar Renteria and Aaron Rowand? Then I thought, why would we trade for a pitcher? Then I thought, Renteria and Rowand? How? Is Zambrano having that bad of a year? Is he that horrible of a human being? You have to be a horrible human being to be traded for Aaron Rowand's contract, right?

If this trade is possible, which I seriously doubt, there is no question the Giants should go for it. Zambrano has a career 3.58 ERA, 9th best among active pitchers with enough innings, and he has never had a year with an ERA over 4.00. He's 29. His ERA is 5.66 this year, but if you disregard his Opening Day start, where he gave up 8 runs in 1.1 innings, it's 4.47. Is this a pitcher that should be banished to the bullpen, with the track record he has? I understand the character issues Zambrano brings with him, but I'm willing to take that risk if it means getting rid of Aaron Rowand's playing issues.

Lincecum, Zito, Cain, Sanchez/Bumgarner, Zambrano?