The Major League Baseball non-waiver trade deadline came and went Sunday afternoon with several contending teams nabbing big-name acquisitions and some losing teams unloading big-cost talents.
Not surprisingly, the San Francisco Giants put themselves into the former category, but shockingly, the Oakland Athletics didn”t fall into the latter.
The defending World Series champion Giants made deals to get two offensive players with histories of playoff success in exchange for minor league prospects.
San Francisco picked up outfielder Carlos Beltran in a trade with the New York Mets last week, parting ways with top pitching prospect Zack Wheeler in the deal.
Though Beltran, a career .282 hitter approaching 300 home runs, has under-performed offensively in his first week-plus with the champs, Giants fans shouldn”t get too alarmed.
They need only look at the last time Beltran was traded in a free agent season.
The Kansas City Royals traded the then-young outfielder to the Houston Astros during the summer of 2004 and all Beltran did was lead Houston to within one game of the World Series by having one of the best postseasons in history (batting .435 with eight homers, 14 RBIs and a .536 on-base percentage).
If Beltran performs half as well for the Giants down the stretch, he”ll still be their most productive hitter.
Although he has only hit around .200 thus far in the orange and black, fewer than 10 games is too small a sample size. By the end of the 2011 regular season, Beltran will be universally considered a good pickup.
As will infielder Orlando Cabrera, who the Giants acquired on Saturday from the Cleveland Indians in exchange for outfield prospect Thomas Neal.
A career .272 hitter, Cabrera will stabilize the shortstop position for San Francisco late in the season.
He will also bring loads of postseason experience. Not only did he win a World Series in 2004 with the Boston Red Sox, Cabrera has made the playoffs six of the last seven seasons (with five different teams no less).
Unfortunately, the Giants have gotten off to a sluggish start since the new guys suited up, and the multi-game division lead has disappeared for now. But fans should remember it”s only early August.
By late September, Beltran and Cabrera will have bolstered the offense and the deadline deals will have made all the sense in the world.
The same won”t be said of Oakland”s largely inactive trade deadline.
The A”s were more than 11 games out of first place last weekend, yet general manager Billy Beane pulled the trigger on just one deal, sending submarine pitcher Brad Ziegler to the Arizona Diamondbacks — a move that could impact the Giants” run.
The A”s could”ve unloaded a lot of payroll by getting rid of players who”ve been disappointing (David DeJesus, Brian Fuentes) or most likely won”t be back next year (Coco Crisp, Hideki Matsui).
Beane”s been known to trade big talent halfway through a dismal season (think Matt Holliday and the aforementioned Cabrera in 2009), but for whatever reason, he didn”t make a splashy move this year.
Maybe he looked at an A”s team that was in the middle of a winning homestand last weekend and thought that keeping this group intact was the only way to creep toward respectability by late September — which coincidently is when “Moneyball,” a movie about Beane, is released nationally.
Beane might also have considered how badly he”s done in trades recently; nobody from the Holliday and Cabrera trades has had major league success, and few even remain in the A”s minor league system.
A”s fans are probably happy with the team”s lack of moves because it ensures the team”s best players who were no doubt on the trading blocks (Andrew Bailey, Conor Jackson and Josh Willingham) will remain in Oakland for now and maybe for future seasons.
Still, Oakland officials should have been more active sellers at the deadline if for no other reason than to save money this year that could be used to acquire talent next year.
Because of both teams” deadline decisions, San Francisco fans will soon be buying their team”s chances to repeat while Oakland fans will be selling their team”s chances going into next season.
Jeremy Walsh is a staff reporter for Lake County Publishing. He can be reached at 263-5636 ext. 37 or jwalsh@record-bee.com.
