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The San Francisco Giants’ offseason plan thus far has been to keep their championship team intact. General manager Brian Sabean has re-signed Jeremy Affeldt, let formerly suspended outfielder Melky Cabrera depart via free agency and continued to negotiate with free agents Marco Scutaro and Angel Pagan.

Other names the Giants have been linked to such as outfielders Michael Bourn, Nick Swisher, Shane Victorino, Ichiro Suzuki and second baseman Hiroyuki Nakajima appear to be fallback options in case Scutaro and Pagan get away. 

While Las Vegas thinks the Giants are the best bet to sign Josh Hamilton, the reality is that they have stayed away from large free-agent contracts since the signings of Barry Zito in 2006 and Aaron Rowand in 2007.

The team will likely stick to short-term deals as they’ve done in recent offseasons with the signings of Edgar Renteria, Randy Johnson, Javier Lopez, Miguel Tejada, Juan Uribe, Mark DeRosa, Freddy Sanchez, Pat Burrell, Jeremy Affeldt, Aubrey Huff and others.

The best bet for a long-term contract would be Buster Posey, who is in line for the type of contract extension that the team gave to Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner during spring training last season.

The Giants have won the World Series twice in the last three seasons; therefore, they just need to bolster the roster through free agency rather than rebuild the entire team. The core of the team is intact, but they do need help in the outfield, at second base and in the bullpen.

Here’s a breakdown of 12 possible free-agent acquisitions for the Giants this winter.

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The San Francisco Giants went through the first half of last season with a platoon at second base that consisted of the light-hitting Ryan Theriot and the non-hitting Emmanuel Burriss.

Theriot hit .270/.316/.321 in 384 plate appearances, and Burriss hit .213/.270/.221 in 150 plate appearances. They combined for just 17 doubles, one triple and no home runs.

The midseason acquisition of Marco Scutaro turned the position from a weakness into a giant strength. Scutaro hit .362/.385/.473 in 61 regular-season games after the trade, and .328/.377/.391 during the postseason. He earned NLCS MVP honors and delivered the game-winning hit during the clinching game of the World Series.

Burriss has been outrighted to Triple-A, while Scutaro and Theriot are both free agents. The Giants want to bring Scutaro back, but if he does get away, they’ll have some other options in the free-agent market this winter. However, unlike the robust outfield market, the pickings are slim at second base.

If Scutaro leaves, the Giants can turn their attention to Japanese free agent Hiroyuki Nakajima, former Giant Jeff Keppinger or Kelly Johnson. Macier Izturis would have been a nice alternative, but he recently took himself off the market by signing with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Let’s examine four of the remaining free-agent options at second base.

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Was Matt Holliday‘s slide into Marco Scutaro in the first inning of Game 2 of the NLCS a dirty play?

While Holliday’s intent was almost assuredly not to injure Scutaro, the fact is that Scutaro did have to eventually leave the game because of the collision. Scutaro‘s status is in question for Game 3 as he deals with a hip strain and sore knee suffered from the collision.

Still, even though Holliday slid late and hurt Scutaro, he doesn’t come across as a dirty player, and the Giants players and coaches didn’t think it was a dirty play.

Holliday said that he wished he had started his slide earlier, and Giants reliever Jeremy Affeldt, Holliday’s former teammate in Colorado, vouched for Holliday’s character after the game.

So, the question of whether it was a dirty play really comes down to your judgment on Holliday’s intent. Based on everything I’ve read, it seems that Holliday accidentally slid late; therefore, it wasn’t a dirty play. If he had sharpened his spikes before the game a la Ty Cobb and spiked Scutaro, that would be dirty, but that’s not what happened.

However, the better question might be if that was a legal play. Giants manager Bruce Bochy was adamant that the slide was illegal.

There’s reason to think Bochy‘s assessment is correct. The rulebook states, “In sliding to a base, the runner should be able to reach the base with his hand or foot.”

By the time Holliday finished his slide, his arms were taking out Scutaro‘s legs, and thus he was not in a position to touch the base with his hand or foot, in my judgment.

The rulebook goes on, “A runner who, in the judgment of the umpire, contacts or attempts to make contact with a fielder with a slide or roll block that is not a bona fide effort to reach and stay on the base may be called out for interference and, when appropriate, a double play may be called.”

Holliday’s slide may have been an attempt to hit the base and stay on it, but it failed miserably, as he started the slide at the base and by the time he was finished he was not in position to be able to stay on the base.

Thus, had the umpire judged the play as I did, calling an automatic double play for an illegal slide would have been quite reasonable. Alas, the umpire did not make that judgment, and his judgment ultimately was the final verdict on the legality of the play.

In my mind, it was an illegal slide, but the umpire judged that Holliday could have still contacted the base with his hand or foot even while his body was annihilating Scutaro and appeared to be nowhere near the base.

So, the play was ultimately legal because the umpire deemed it so. It was also a clean play in that Holliday doesn’t seem like a malicious player and no one on the Giants has called it a dirty play (to my knowledge). He should have slid sooner, and he admitted as much.

It’s a shame that Scutaro was injured on the play, and it will be a bigger shame if he misses any more time or can’t play as effectively going forward.

Personally, I do think the play should have been ruled illegal, and I also think Major League Baseball needs to do more to protect players from these types of collisions around second base and home plate. 

Dave Cameron of FanGraphs suggested today that MLB should institute a rule in which base runners are ejected for making contact with fielders the way that Holliday did in Game 2. This type of rule would go a long way to preventing the type of collisions that injured Scutaro last night and catchers like Buster Posey and Carlos Santana in brutal home plate collisions in recent seasons.

The players are the commodity. They are the reason fans go to games, and doing everything to keep them healthy should be of vital importance.

If Posey’s career had ended in that brutal home plate collision last year with Scott Cousins, we all would have been deprived of watching one of the greatest offensive catchers to ever come along. Is losing someone so valuable worth it because home plate collisions have always been a part of the game?

In my mind, that makes about as much sense as preventing minorities from playing because that’s the way it used to be.

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The San Francisco Giants are now champions of the National League West for the second time in three years. The hard work of getting to the  Fall Classic and winning another World Series is all that stands between autumn and free agency this winter.

Time flies when you are having fun, and excitement has been the norm at AT&T Park in recent seasons. Plus, speculation about the future, no matter how far off it remains, is always exciting.

Before taking a look at the Giants’ financial situation for 2013, let’s take a look at the growth of their payroll in recent seasons.

The Giants payroll hovered between $82-$90 million from 2003-2009, though it dipped down to $76 million during the first season without cash cow Barry Bonds on the roster during the miserable 2008 season. Since then, payroll has gone back up to $82 million in 2009, $96 million in 2010, $118 million last season and $131 million this season.

Thus, projecting an increase in payroll of between $13 million and $22 million would make sense given the growth of the payroll during the past few seasons.

Also, revenue from cable contracts keeps pouring into Major League Baseball’s coffers. According to the New York Times, new contracts with FOX, ESPN and TBS will boost annual payments to MLB from a current amount of $750 million to $1.55 billion.

Since revenue is shared, every team should be able to boost payroll significantly in the coming years.

One caveat for the Giants is that their ballpark was privately financed rather than built on the backs of the taxpayers like most other stadiums in American sports. Thus, they also have an expensive mortgage to account for.

With that said, the Giants payroll remains to be in good shape.

Though Aaron Rowand, Freddy Sanchez, Aubrey Huff (minus a two million dollar buyout), Jeremy Affeldt and Melky Cabrera are coming off the books, arbitration raises for players with between three and six years of service time, and salary increases to players under contract will eat up most of those savings.

I’ve estimated arbitration raises for Hunter Pence, Buster Posey (potentially eligible for arbitration next season), Joaquin Arias, Gregor Blanco, Sergio Romo, Santiago Casilla and Jose Mijares; those are my guesses.

I’m also guessing that the Giants will bring Brian Wilson back next season on an incentive-based contract with a base salary of $5 million.

Players who will have between zero and three years of service time entering next season are not arbitration eligible, so I will put their salaries at $500,000, slightly above the league minimum. All other contract information comes from Baseball Prospectus‘ Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

Angel Pagan, Melky Cabrera, Marco Scutaro, Ryan Theriot, Xavier Nady, Jeremy Affeldt, Clay Hensley, Guillermo Mota and Aubrey Huff are all eligible for free agency after this season.

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Marco Scutaro delivered a clutch walk-off hit for the San Francisco Giants on Monday, and such heroics are nothing new for the second baseman.

There were a number of reasons why I was a huge fan of the Giants’ midseason acquisition of Scutaro from the Colorado Rockies.

While Rome was burning in Boston last September, Scutaro did his best to hold the team together by hitting .387/.438/.581 down the stretch.

Besides his clutch performance during the Red Sox‘s historic collapse, Scutaro has always been an extreme contact hitter—striking out in only 11 percent of his career plate appearances while walking nearly nine percent of the time. He’s a patient hitter who rarely swings at the first pitch, works the count well and doesn’t expand the strike zone too often. 

Though Scutaro doesn’t have much power, he’s hit line drives over 20 percent of the time that he’s made contact during his career, and that number is up to 25 percent this season—eighth best in the game, right behind the great Robinson Cano.

In 36 games since being acquired by the Giants, he’s hit .322/.344/.425, including a .333 batting average with runners in scoring position. The Giants have gone 22-14 since acquiring Scutaro, despite losing Melky Cabrera due to a failed drug test and not getting the production they expected from their other midseason acquisition, Hunter Pence (.234/.295/.371 with the Giants).

Angel Pagan, Buster Posey and Brandon Belt have also been hot for the Giants, but replacing Ryan Theriot with Scutaro has given the Giants a huge boost at the keystone. In 60 fewer games than Theriot, Scutaro has already provided the Giants with more total value this season.

Led by the acquisition of Scutaro and the scorching hot Pagan, Belt and MVP front-runner Posey, the Giants have led the National League in scoring in August and September.

Scutaro will turn 37 before the end of the calendar year, so he’s closer to the end of his career than his prime. However, with the Giants’ best middle infield prospect, Joe Panik, at least two years away from the show, re-signing Scutaro for one more year would be the best bet for production at second base in 2013.

Scutaro is getting older, he isn’t going to hit for much power and he isn’t going to remind anyone of Roberto Alomar in the field. However, for a team that struggled to hit with men in scoring position for the better of the last two seasons and had to endure the punch-less, range-less combination of Manny Burriss and Theriot at second base for most of 2012, Scutaro has been a godsend.

As players get closer to 40 years old, a precipitous collapse starts to become a more likely possibility. However, with no readily available alternatives in the farm system and a weak crop of middle infield free agents hitting the market, one more bet on the gritty Scutaro is a gamble worth making.

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Nearly a decade after struggling to get consistent playing time as a young player for the San Diego Padres under manager Bruce Bochy, it’s come full circle for Xavier Nady.

On Friday, the Giants announced that the 33-year-old Nady would be one of their September call-ups. According to Bochy, via Andrew Baggarly of CSN Bay Area, Nady may get an opportunity to play more than just part-time against lefties in left field.

There’s no question that the Giants desperately need help in left field. Gregor Blanco has been getting most of the starts in place of Melky Cabrera, who was suspended for the remainder of the season due to a failed drug test. Blanco has been mired in a deep slump, hitting just .205/.330/.250 since the All-Star break, and just .224/.328/.245 during August.

Justin Christian went 0-for-11 with a walk while platooning with Blanco before he went on the disabled list. Francisco Peguero has gone 0-for-7 since being recalled from Fresno to replace Christian. He put up a tepid .297 on-base percentage in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, so expectations for Peguero were non-existent to begin with.

As for Nady, well, he was never more than an average player during the prime of his career before breaking out during the first half of 2008 when he hit .330/.383/.535 for the Pirates, earning a midseason trade to the Yankees.

He missed almost the entirety of the 2009 season due to injury and has hit just .237/.285/.342 over the last three years, including a .157/.211/.275 showing in Washington that earned him his release earlier this season.

In 99 plate appearances at Fresno, Nady hit .270/.343/.528. Given Blanco’s struggles, attempting to catch lightning in a bottle with Nady, as the Giants did with the presumed washed-up Pat Burrell in 2010, might not be the worst idea in the world.

Then again, when the Giants took a chance on Burrell in 2010, they were getting a player who had a much better track record than Nady does now—and a player that had been very good only two seasons prior to the Giants picking him up, as compared to the four seasons that have passed since Nady last produced.

With one month left in the season and a five-game lead in the loss column over the Dodgers, any incremental improvement is worth a try, no matter how long the odds may seem.

As bad as Blanco, Christian and Peguero have looked with the bats, giving Nady an audition can’t really hurt the offense. However, Nady is nowhere near the defender that Blanco is in the outfield. If Nady is going to help the Giants win the West, he’s going to have to hit like he did back in the summer of 2008.

If not, the Giants may be better off sticking with Blanco in the end, because he can at least prevent runs with his range. The Giants won’t be the worse for wear by giving Nady a look, but if he doesn’t produce with the bat immediately, a short hook is essential.

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The reasons for the sudden decline and fall of Tim Lincecum are plentiful.

He scrapped his slider during spring training to save some wear and tear on his elbow, only to begin throwing it again shortly after the season started.

However, even though he’s been using the slider, it hasn’t been as effective this season. Righties are hitting .283/.352/.478 off of Lincecum this year, and the slider is the primary pitch that he attacks them with.

After bulking up last year to maintain velocity on his fastball, he shed a lot of weight swimming in the offseason, which could explain the drop in velocity.

Pitchers that lose fastball velocity can afford to do so as long as they also decrease speed in their changeup to keep the difference between the two pitches close to 10 miles per hour. Alas, Lincecum’s changeup hasn’t lost velocity, and there is only a seven MPH difference between his average fastball and changeup now.

He also battled some blister and finger nail issues earlier this season, which prevented him from throwing in between starts for a period of time.

Additionally, he’s had a hard time out of the stretch this year. Lincecum has a .268/.369/.430 line out of the stretch, and that balloons to .282/.402/.468 with runners in scoring position.

His command has also been an issue as his walk rate has shot up to 10.3 percent this season from a career low of 7.5 percent in 2009, when he won his second Cy Young Award. The command issues have led to a lot of hittable pitches in the middle of the strike zone.

From a scouting standpoint, it appears to me that Lincecum is late in getting his arm out in front when his left leg plants, which is causing him to miss at the belt or above. Lincecum needs to drive the fastball down below the belt to set up his off-speed pitches, but he has not been able to do that consistently this season.

Whatever explanation you want to use for Lincecum having the fifth worst ERA and the second worst quality start percentage in all of baseball this season, he’ll be a free agent after next year. The Giants are currently on the hook to pay him $22 million next year to see if he can rediscover his old form.

Here are four possible options that the Giants have with Lincecum as he approaches free agency.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote an article arguing that San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy was wrong to play catcher Hector Sanchez over Brandon Belt. I based my argument on Belt’s superior minor and major league statistics as well his higher prospect pedigree, according to publications like Baseball America and prospect experts like Keith Law of ESPN.

The problem with that analysis is that the players with the best minor league statistics and prospect rankings don’t always turn out to be the best professional players.

Carlos Ruiz of the Philadelphia Phillies is an excellent example of a minor league player short on pedigree and tools who has since turned himself into one of the best catchers in the game.

Meanwhile, Matt Wieters of the Baltimore Orioles—who was seen as close to a sure thing after being ranked the No. 1 prospect in baseball in 2009—is still struggling to meet those lofty expectations in his fourth big league season.

Jorge Arangure, Jr. of ESPN wrote an excellent profile on Ruiz, and the one thing that stood out from the article is that analysts like myself have a hard time projecting future performance because we cannot easily measure intangible things such as work ethic, leadership and the desire a player has to improve.

That brings me back to Sanchez.

There are obvious things he needs to improve upon. Sanchez is not very athletic behind the plate, which affects his pitch-framing and ball-blocking. When he frames pitches he tends to stab at the ball instead of slightly moving his body to get around it.

This technique issue costs his pitchers strikes on the corners. He also will take the pitch just below the knees and bring it completely out of the strike zone at times by stabbing at the ball instead of keeping his glove firm. Sanchez has a hard time moving his body to get in front of the pitch in the dirt, giving him problems with ball-blocking as well.

Offensively, Sanchez is too aggressive at the plate right now—walking just six times in his first 177 big league plate appearances.

That number is the key to evaluating Sanchez, though—not the six walks but the 177 plate appearances. Sanchez is only 22 years old, and he has less than a third of a season of playing time in the major leagues. That makes any evaluation of his game unfair at this point.

Sanchez also never played at Double-A, he only received 183 plate appearances at the Triple-A level and just 228 plate appearances at High-A.

In short, he was rushed to the big leagues out of necessity, which is why he is far from a finished product as a receiver and as a hitter.

Buster Posey’s ankle injury accelerated Sanchez’s clock; this season, he should probably be playing at Double-A to clean up his game, but because the Giants need to closely monitor Posey’s playing time,—and due to their desperate need for offense—they couldn’t afford to go with a defensive back-up catcher like Chris Stewart.

Sanchez is an excellent bet to improve with playing time. Pitch-framing and patience are two skills that he will improve with experience, and he also could make himself a much better defensive catcher by getting into better physical shape.

Although Belt did have better minor league numbers, was ranked higher by prospect experts and has gotten off to a slightly better start early in his big league career, those aren’t the only important factors in determining who ultimately will be the better pro.

Their past performance is one factor, as are their tools. However, we can’t accurately measure the intangible factors that go into making a solid pro like work ethic, mental toughness and dedication. Yet those intangibles are what separate the men from the boys at the highest level of competition.

In the end, there’s a lot to like about Sanchez. He hit .292/.369/.438 in his abbreviated minor league career, and he’s hit a very respectable .280 at the beginning of his big league career in limited playing time. Right now, there aren’t many back-up catchers in all of baseball who provide as much offense as he does off the bench.

However, for Sanchez to become more than a very good backup, he has to get into better shape, improve his pitch-framing and become more selective at the plate.

The tools are there, but only Sanchez and the Giants know if the desire for excellence is underneath the hood.

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Leadership is a very difficult thing to write about because it cannot be measured or quantified.

That doesn’t mean that it isn’t significant, or that it doesn’t exist.

According to Alex Pavlovic of the San Jose Mercury News, Giants manager Bruce Bochy met with the team before the game on Friday to demand more toughness and competitiveness of his troops, particularly from his slumping offense. The Giants went out and responded with a season-high 16 runs.

Perhaps the Giants busted out because of Bochy’s leadership skills, or, perhaps it had more to do with playing at hitter-friendly Coors Field against one of the worst pitching staffs in the league. It’s impossible to say what caused the outburst, but we shouldn’t sell Bochy’s qualities as a leader of men short.

Bochy does several things very well as a manager. His biggest strength is without question his handling of the pitching staff, particularly the bullpen. Since Bochy took over as manager in 2007, no team has a better ERA than the Giants.

Some of that is obviously due to the Giants having good pitchers throwing in a pitcher-friendly stadium, but a lot of the credit also has to go to Bochy’s handling of those arms, with major assistance from pitching coach Dave Righetti.

On the offensive side of things, Bochy does a good job of avoiding small-ball tactics. The Giants are sixth in the league in adding runs on the bases because Bochy green-lights his fast runners while encouraging his slower runners to play it conservatively.

The Giants don’t run into a lot of unnecessary outs, and they also don’t throw away many outs with the sacrifice bunt. Outs are the scarcest resource at a manager’s disposal, so unless you are bunting with the pitcher, bunting for a hit or attempting to squeeze home a run, bunting away an out is usually the wrong tactical move.

Bochy does a good job of leading his troops, handling his pitchers and valuing outs properly with the offense. However, my one criticism of his managerial style is the way he handles the lineup.

The number two spot in the lineup is of critical importance, yet Bochy continues to hit Ryan Theriot there. Theriot is currently hitting a tepid .267/.314/.316 with nearly as many double-plays (9) as extra base hits (13). He doesn’t walk, hit for power or get on base much in front of the Giants four best hitters: Melky Cabrera, Buster Posey, Hunter Pence and Pablo Sandoval (currently on the DL).

To be fair, part of the problem is the that the front office has not provided him with many better options to put at the top of the lineup.

The other gripe I have with Bochy is that he is overly dependent on small sample sizes when he makes the lineup, preferring to play the hot hand in favor of taking the longer view, and allowing guys to play through slumps.

Nate Schierholtz summed up the issue well when he recently told Matt Gelb of the Philadelphia Inquirer, “I just felt like I had a short leash. It was series by series, if I didn’t perform for three games, that was my chance. It got frustrating at times. We didn’t see eye to eye.”

Playing the hot hand has its benefits, but it can also be detrimental to the development of younger players like Schierholtz and Brandon Belt.

Belt certainly has struggled in the big leagues, and there is certainly an argument to be made that he has not earned more playing time. At the same time, the fact that over the last two seasons he’s only been placed in the starting lineup 113 times by Bochy speaks volumes to how much he’s been jerked around.

Inconsistent,erratic playing time makes it very difficult to evaluate a young player, as we still have less than a whole season of playing time in which to evaluate Belt, despite the fact that he’s been in the big leagues for all of this season and a large chunk of last year.

On the whole, the Giants obviously have a very good manager in Bruce Bochy. He led the franchise to its first world series championship in San Francisco just two seasons ago. His trust in his starting pitchers and handling of the bullpen has led to some excellent run prevention during his tenure. He also trusts the hitters he puts in the lineup to get the job done by avoiding the sacrifice bunt.

Perhaps he could be more patient with his younger hitters like the recently departed Schierholtz, and Belt, who has been benched in favor of non-prospect Brett Pill twice in the past three games.

Alas, no manager is perfect, and most managerial criticisms are going to be subjective anyway. The Giants have a manager good enough to steer the ship to a world series title, and that is all that really matters in the end.

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The San Francisco Giants went into the trading deadline needing to fill three obvious areas of deficiency: a lack of power in the lineup, a lack of depth on the bench and in the bullpen due to the loss of closer Brian Wilson earlier this season.

For Giants’ general manager Brian Sabean, two out of three wasn’t bad.

The late-inning reliever never materialized, because it didn’t exist. The relievers that the Giants were rumored to be interested in were ultimately not legitimate options to replace Santiago Casilla in the ninth inning.

Jonathan Broxton and Brandon League were the two biggest names that were moved on the relief market, and while both throw hard, neither misses enough bats to be considered an upgrade on Casilla. You can’t fault Sabean for failing to acquire bullpen help when the help that was out there wasn’t good enough to warrant selling part of the farm for.

Casilla has been awful over the past month, but his strikeout rate per nine innings (K/9) of 10.2 is much better than that of Broxton (6.31 K/9) or League (5.44 K/9).

In acquiring Marco Scutaro and cash from Colorado for minor league non-prospect Charlie Culberson, Sabean bought low on a player who is a good bet to bounce back in the second half. Scutaro struggled in Colorado, but the main culprit was simply bad luck. Despite an excellent line drive rate, Scutaro saw his batting average drop to .271 from .299 last season.

Scutaro struck out looking in a crucial at-bat on Monday night, but he’s also hitting .400 with a walk in three games since coming to the Giants. With Pablo Sandoval on the shelf, Scutaro is probably the best hitting infielder on the current roster. Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy is going to have a hard time keeping Scutaro out of the lineup when Sandoval returns.

When Sandoval comes back, the Giants could play Scutaro over the light-hitting Ryan Theriot at second base, over the similarly offensively-challenged Brandon Crawford at short, or they could leave Scutaro at third and replace struggling first baseman Brandon Belt with Sandoval. More likely, Scutaro will be a spot starter at all three infield positions, and a massive upgrade over Joaquin Arias and Manny Burriss, who was recently designated for assignment, on the bench.

While the acquisition of Scutaro did not garner the same excitement as Tuesday’s acquisition of Hunter Pence, the deal for Scutaro may turn out to be just as valuable given the low cost to pry him away from Colorado.

The Giants’ acquisition of Pence on Tuesday was more costly in terms of both cash and prospects, but it filled the huge need for thump in the middle of the lineup. The Giants entered Tuesday with the fewest home runs in baseball and the 25th worst slugging percentage.

Pence is having a down year, but his 17 home runs and .447 slugging percentage provide a huge boost to the middle of the Giants lineup. Like Scutaro, Pence is a solid bet to improve over the final two months of the season. His .784 OPS this season is down from his career .823 OPS, and way down from the .872 OPS he put up last season.

The Giants had to part with Nate Schierholtz, number two prospect Tommy Joseph and minor league pitcher Seth Rosin to get Pence. The cost was high, but with the Los Angeles Dodgers acquiring League, Hanley Ramirez and Shane Victorino before the deadline, the Giants were forced into action.

Sabean gets high marks for his deadline work, but that doesn’t automatically mean the Giants will hold off the Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks in the tight National League West race. All three teams are evenly matched on paper after the flurry of trade activity over the past week.

While I hated to see Joseph get dealt, Sabean did well to hold onto top prospect Gary Brown as well as all of the Giants’ top pitching prospects. In the end, he gets an ‘A’ for upgrading the roster without dealing Brown, Belt or any of the top arms in the system, and for getting a player in Pence who the Giants control for next season as well.

The only question left to answer is whether or not these moves are enough to hold off the surging Dodgers and Diamondbacks. If the Giants come up short, it won’t be for a lack of in-season activity by their tire-kicking general manager.

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