MLB San Francisco Giants

Grading the San Francisco Giants’ Trade for Casey McGehee

Howard Smith-USA TODAY Sports

Howard Smith-USA TODAY Sports

I’ll say this for the San Francisco Giants trading for the Miami Marlins‘ Casey McGehee to play third base — he’s better than Dan Uggla.

You may recall that Uggla was one of the Giants’ seemingly 15,000 second basemen last summer, and was the worst of the bunch (two errors in four games, and the official scorers were nice to him). The Giants finally settled on rookie Joe Panik at second. That seemed to work out pretty well for the eventual World Series champions.

McGehee is also better than the other rumor I heard, which was moving Panik to third to replace the departed Pablo Sandoval, which would then mean that the Giants would have to find a second baseman again. And that was the original huge problem in the first place. So that would have solved things … How?

Playing a National League-high 158 games at third for the Marlins en route to the Comeback Player of the Year Award, McGehee led the league in fielding percentage and double-plays turned at the hot corner, was fourth in assists and committed just seven errors. Sandoval, by comparison, was second in assists, third in fielding percentage, fourth in double-plays turned and had 11 errors while playing third in 151 games, good for third in the league.

If McGehee’s season was a sign of things to come and not a one-year fluke, that’s a good thing. However, he’s four years older than Panda and had to go play a year in Japan after two really bad seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers, Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Yankees. It’s very questionable as to whether that fielding production is sustainable.

At the plate, you’d think that Panda holds a clear advantage, but in 2014, McGehee had 14 more hits (177 to 164), more RBIs (76 to 73), more doubles (29 to 26), almost double the amount of walks (67 to 39) and had a better on-base percentage (.355 to .324) in just about 30 more at-bats. But Sandoval led in home runs (16 to four), slugging percentage (.415 to .357) and runs (68 to 56).

In addition, the Giants wouldn’t have won the World Series without Sandoval. The numbers are fine, but numbers don’t mean guaranteed success. Ask the Oakland A’s and Billy Beane about that. Every number in the world that supports McGehee doesn’t tell you how much Sandoval meant to the Giants in every facet of the game.

The Giants have also made some really bad deals involving young pitchers. The Giants needed a catcher about a decade ago, so Brian Sabean traded for A.J. Pierzynski, who did not fit in the San Francisco clubhouse (he is widely regarded as very hard to get along with). To get Pierzynski, the Giants gave the Minnesota Twins some minor-league pitchers named Boof Bonser, Francisco Liriano and Joe Nathan. You may have heard of them. The Giants flat-out released Pierzynski the next winter.

The Pierzynski trade is widely considered as one of the worst in team history. It’s either that or when SF gave up future Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry because he was “too old” and he pitched 12 more years, and the guy SF received drank himself out of the game inside four years.

This time, San Francisco gave up two right-handed pitchers in Kendry Flores, once considered a top-20 prospect for the team, and Luis Castillo. If those two pitchers have careers even remotely close to Nathan and Liriano and McGehee lasts less than a season with the Giants, then it’s not a good trade at all. But in truth, anything’s better than Dan Uggla.

Grade: C+

Alex Drude is a Pac-12 writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @Alex_Drude. “Like” him on Facebook and add him to your network on Google+.

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