san francisco giants – I Spit Hot Fire

The Cost of the San Francisco Giants Acquiring Vladimir Guerrero, Jr

As I write this, the MLB trade deadline is tomorrow evening. The Giants stand at 2 games below .500. They’ve waited a long time for their starting pitching to come off injuries, and over the past two weeks, we’re starting to see how impactful former Cy Young winners Blake Snell and Robbie Ray can be. There are lot of rumors that the Giants will trade Snell, but as a fan, I think if you get a true superstar to galvanize the fan base and go for winning without taking two steps back as a team, you go for it.

I don’t typically think of MLB trades, but it’s so much more complicated to understand the dynamics of near and long term planning and salary management in baseball. But I’ve looked at past comparable trades for superstars including the Juan Soto trade to the Pirates to propose this package to the Blue Jays for Guerrero, Jr.

Marco Luciano or Bryce Eldridge
Carson Whisenhunt or Hayden Birdsong
Camilo Doval
Lamont Wade Jr
One other prospect from the top 5-15 list, Blue Jays choice.

In summary, the Giants would trade their #1 hitting prospect, their #1 pitching prospect, their (2023) All Star closer who has 3 more years of team control, and starting first baseman who has another year of team control, and one more top 15 prospect for one of the most popular players in the game who has one more year of team control. Birdsong has played pretty well in the majors so far, and Whisenhunt and Luciano are both at AAA. Eldridge may reach AA this year, so this is a good assortment of legit major league players and almost ready players.

Wade is a legit good MLB hitter, 20% and 40% better than the average hitter the last two years in OPS+. His main issue is injuries. He’s 30 this year but still improving. Guerrero replaces him directly. Doval just turned 27, throws 100MPH. His control can be his downfall, and I think the Rogers twins could replace him ably as the Giants closers. Someone like Reggie Crawford could become the Giants’ next Doval. The Blue Jays have their own All Star closer who has been injured most of the year and could keep both or trade one.

The Blue Jays only do this trade if they’re non-committal about the massive contract decision.

The Giants could then offer Guerrero 15 years at a backloaded $460M (and replacing the last arbitration year), the second largest contract in MLB history, $100M more than the current second place, Aaron Judge. Guerrero is only 25 years old and while not a good fielder (he does have a Gold Glove), this contract takes him to his 40th birthday. He’s only 6 months older than my crush Heliot Ramos, and is already a 4 time All Star. While $460M is no small sum, the average yearly value is just above $31M. 10 years ago, the most valuable per year contract was Ryan Howard at $24M. This year, 4 players including Judge, but not Ohtani since his payments are deferred, are making at least $40M per year. That’s over a 50% increase.

This is all to say, $30M in ten to fifteen years is likely going to feel more like today’s $20M towards the end of the contract with inflation and the expansion of salaries.

Heliot Ramos is Really Good

Just check out this graph at Baseball Savant:

He may miss the ball (13 and 12 percentile for whiff % and strikeout %) a lot, but he has a good eye (74 percentile for walks), so he’s patient, waiting for something to hit. When he connects, whew! All in the 90 percentile, meaning he is in the top 10% of players in: Expected Slugging, Average Exit Velocity, Bat Speed, Barrel % Hard-Hit %. He fields well (85 percentile in range) and can run (72) in sprint speed but is mediocre in actual baserunning (45 percentile).

Starting a Favorite Baseball Player Collection for $100

I’m all in on the the Heliot Ramos bandwagon. I’ve decided he’s my favorite baseball player and we’ll see how his career pans out. Right now, however, he’s on fire! (Note: the fun featured image for this blog post was generated by DALL-E/ChatGPT from text prompts)

Even though his BABIP (.414) is unsustainably high, his strikeout rate isn’t pretty (28.7%), and he’s had an up and down minor league career, here’s why I believe:

His WRC+ (offensive production compared to peers and leveled across playing environment) is 172, or 72% better than the average player. If he had enough plate appearances to officially qualify among league leaders, he would rank 8th in MLB.
Speaking of qualifying, it takes roughly 350 plate appearances for WRC/WRC+ to stabilize – basically if he’s still producing after 350, you can reasonably say, this is real. Today, he’s at 160 after 37 games.
He was a top talent, drafted 19th overall in 2017 – he’s not coming out of nowhere. He has also had a WRC+ of 130 this year in AAA before getting promoted (and staying) to the big club. I’ve gotten to see him play both in Sacramento and San Francisco.
His walk rate is solid at over 10%. His strikeout rate is 30% worse than average, but his walk rate is 26% better than average. In general, he’ll walk, strike out, or hit it hard.
He is a positive offensive and defensive player. He’s a good athlete – can run, throw, hit, hit for power.
He’s young (25 later in the season) and perhaps there are big holes in his swing that pitchers will start to pounce on. But I believe that because he’s had to earn his time through ups and downs (7 years in the minors), he should be mentally mature enough to figure it out.

Anyhoo, let’s move beyond self-justification and onto collecting! I started my collection of 37 Ramos baseball cards and a signed baseball, including 2 low serial number jersey cards, an autograph card, and 1 rookie card rated PSA9, for under $100 and all purchased in the last week.

Card(s)	#	Feature	Paid
2017 Bowman Draft Chrome 1st Bowman Prospect	BDC12	PSA 9	$14.73
2018 Bowman’s Best Autograph		Autograph	$3.77
2018 Elite Extra Edition Prospect Material #16/25		Jersey Patch / Serial	$9.90
2021 Contenders Prospect Ticket Cracked Ice #09/23		Jersey Patch / Serial	$12.35
33 Base Cards		Lot	$19.79
Signed Baseball		Inscription	$31.05
		Total	$91.59