Giants Bolster Offense With Hunter Pence

Hunter Pence chose to play a sport where he's always wearing a hat to hide his antannae.

In a trade that has been rumored for a few days now, the Giants have acquired Hunter Pence for Nate Schierholtz and two minor leaguers, Tommy Joseph and Seth Rosin.

Pence should be a good addition for the Giants offense, which is tied for the fifth least runs scored in all of baseball with 408. Pence has been a consistently above average in his career. Aside from a fluky batting average on balls in play (BABIP) spike last season, Pence can be counted on to put up a Weighted On Base Average (wOBA) of somewhere from about .340-.350, and an OPS around .800. Defensively, UZR has Pence as a slightly above average fielder throughout his career, with about all of that surplus value coming from Pence’s spectacular throwing arm. Overall, this adds up to Pence being worth about 3-4 wins above replacement (WAR). The Giants have been getting about average production from RF this season, so this move should allow the Giants to gain about one extra win this season. If the Giants follow this move up by moving Blanco to center and sitting Pagan (Blanco is both better at reaching base and better on defense), then this move may allow the Giants two eke out an extra two wins this season.

Although the Giants farm system is usually regarded as below average and has been underperforming this year, the Giants were able to avoid giving the Phillies their top hitting prospect, Gary Brown, or either of their top pitching prospects, Kyle Crick and Clayton Blackburn. Seth Rosin, turning 24 later this year, has split time between the bullpen and starting rotation in High-A this year for the Giants. While his ERA is high (4.31), his peripherals show he should be performing better, and he probably has the upside of a back-end starting.

The last player the Phillies acquired, Tommy Joseph, is the most interesting part of the deal for them. Though he has only a .705 OPS in AA, he is one of the youngest players in his league, just turning 21 a couple weeks ago. While Joseph has strong potential, it is far from a guarantee he ever reaches it. Furthermore, it makes sense for him to be the player Giants choose to trade, because they will have little need for a catcher in the near future with Buster Posey dominating the league and the promising Hector Sanchez backing him up.

So while the trade seems like a good risk for the Giants, it does raise an interesting point: Just one year ago, the Giants also traded for a new starting RF, Carlos Beltran. The Giants gave up their top prospect, Zach Wheeler, to acquire him, but then allowed Beltran to walk in the off-season when he signed with the Cardinals for a 2/$26 million dollar contract. Now the Giants are giving up more prospects to acquire another right fielder who has worse offensive numbers the past couple seasons. Pence has a $10 million salary this season and will likely have a $13-15 million dollar salary next year, so the money is about the same as well. The moves may have been made this way because the Giants organization didn’t anticipate the offense being this bad, or as a knee-jerk reaction to the upgrades the Dodgers are making. Either way, the decision to trade for Beltran, allow Beltran to walk, then trade for Pence was an inefficient use of resources.

Overall though, this individual trade was a good one for the Giants. It makes them a better team for this season, next season, and shows that if necessary, ownership will allow for increases in payroll to make the team better.