Dan Johnson Designated

I wonder if Fred Lewis is one of the players they get in return?
He seems to have been mercilessly buried by the Giants for no particular reason.
Maybe Lewis + a reasonable A-ball player for Johnson??

well when you put it that way, Tim, why would anyone want him? if i were SF, i'd rather keep the bag of practice balls, they'd serve a much more meaningful purpose.

With vertigo and double vision afflicting DJ, wouldn't it be a good idea to pry a healthy player from Brian Sabean? The Giants need to take some risks to avoid losing a record number of games. Because the Giants would start DJ if they had him, and have also decided not to start Dan Ortmeier, maybe this should be the swap. Ortmeier, with a clean bill of health and no history of disappointing MLB stats could make for a nice little upgrade over DJ and leverage his trade value.

If I rememeber correctly Nick Esasky's career was cut short due to vertigo.

i think i would realy like to see this trade. as a giants fan i am tired of seeing richey and ort at first, richie is a liability with the bat and ort is one with both bat and glove. anyway he would at least be a breath of fresh air, as long as we dont get rid of anyone young and healthy.

Hey, if lefty 1B retread Carlos Pena can hit 46 HRs last year, anything's possible. :)

"Hey, if lefty 1B retread Carlos Pena can hit 46 HRs last year, anything's possible. :)"

Dan Johnson was never quite an elite prospect with plus plus power though. Pena simply took a long time to become what people thought he would be. Nobody has ever thought about Johnson hitting 46 homers.

And I could see a Johnson for either Fred Lewis or Rajai Davis deal making sense. The A's are trotting out a pretty bad outfield right now, with Buck, Brown, Sweeney and Denorfia. And only Denorfia is a real CF. Adding a speedy guy like Davis or Lewis would be smart for the A's. Meanwhile the Giants have an obvious place for Johnson, while the Giants simply have no use for Fred Lewis.

Johnson for Roberts/Durham/Aurilia!!

victor, at lest ol' billie didnt pay 126 MILLION for him! Now that should and does get much deserved flack! "Stupid,Stupid,Stupid" - Brian Sabean after last Zito start!

well 1) Matt Murton has a higher career OBP and SLG...the difference in their career OPS is 56 points, that's rather severe.

2) Matt Murton is an average hitting corner OFer. Dan Johnson has been a severely below average hitting 1b.

And being 2 years younger and not out of options is nice to boot.

What did I tell yall about Jason Kendall, whos laughing now

I know this site is mostly Cubs fans so that why I mention it. How about those D'Backs! Mark Reynolds can mash. I think its safe to say we can see them in October.

I don't understand why they DFA'd him just in order to call up Gregg Smith.

They already had someone to take over for Duke, in DiNardo, and Gaudin was covering Harden, so i don't see the need for calling up another pitcher, unless it was just a way to cover up the DFA of DJ with the excitment of bringing in one of their new pitchers from the Haren deal.

VICTOR: I respectfully disagree. I wouldn't call 4 divisional championships and 5 playoff appearances since 2000 evidence of being a loser! Playoffs are certainly not a crap shoot. Compared the NHL or NBA playoff structure, with a whopping 16 teams vying for glory, MLB playoffs are still a tough road to hoe for 162 game seasons. If you want to talk about the influence of luck, talk about the crap shoot of maintaining good physical (and mental: Z.Greinke) health throughout the season.

DARKSTAR: Good analysis re: DJ vs. Murton. I think DJ's OBP can improve now for a team who wants to own him during his prime athletic years. DJ's career is career is teetering on a knife's edge and this can be a much stronger performance incentive than filthy lucre. On an extremely short leash, DJ should become an übermensch in terms of work ethic, clubhouse chemistry, etc. "You've got to have Wa" to play in the Japan leagues. If DJ can harness the Wa in him, he'll have a good shot at staying in the majors for at least a few more years.

DBACKS: C.Patterson, 2008 All Star? In case you haven't noticed, the league doesn't like to reward defense over offense. Take the defensive catcher award last year. Yadier deserved it, but a bopper won it instead. It's a defensive award, for $#$%e&'s sake.

BASEBALLZ: Beane is always giddy about playing with the new toys he unwrapped over the holidays. Plus, with Blanton as the lone rotation stalwart (who could be traded), the 2-5 slots are unstable. DiNardo just can't hack it as a rotation regular, so it's time to see what the kids can do. P.S. Please promote Gio Gonzalez soon! Pretty please!

D-Jack still has some value, I think, although it will take some faith to draw it out. He came up late, then had some weird stuff happen (vertigo one year, then a vision problem that went undiagnosed and uncorrected for between 6 and 18 months depending on who you ask). Going into '07 there was a decent amount of local coverage on his vision thing that led me to believe he was back on track and ready to hit.

I don't agree with Tim's assessment that DJ was purely a bench player going into the '07 season - he was set to start pretty much every game at 1B. Remember this was before Travis Buck was anybody and before Cust showed up. Stewart's acquisition hardly pushed DJ off 1B; the A's were scrambling just to get 3 live bodies in the OF last season). The point is, a lot of people thought he was primed to finally have the kind of .290/20 HR/40 double season that he's capable of, and then he wrecked his hip and derailed the year.

I think the Carlos Pena comp is interesting in a way, in that while Pena was an elite prospect early on, he had a lot of setbacks, didn't ever get a job until he was well into his mid-20's, and needed a down-and-out team with no other (good) options at his position to give him a chance to succeed. That pretty much describes the '08 Giants' situation at 1B. If I were Sabean I would for sure give him a look, especially since they seem to have given up on the Ortmeier idea right out of the gate, and Aurilia's usefulness at the plate is pretty much nil.

"You have nothing to be proud of, and yet you came on this site and shouted about how right on your fantastic predictions were."

...in 4 back-to-back-to-back-to-back comments having exactly nothing to do with the topic of the post he was commenting on. Go team!

8 games is 8 games. ANYBODY can get hot for eight games. If they were hot for eight games in August, you wouldn't hear about it. It is simply because it's the first eight games of the year.

To say that you were right about Patterson and Kendall playing well, after they played well for eight games, is simply illogical.

And yes, trends like Patterson playing well for eight games can easily reverse itself in 180 degree fashion.

I don't even care about your predictions, maybe you'll end up being right, but to come onto this post, WHICH HAS NOTHING TO DO WHATSOEVER WITH ANYTHING YOU SAID BEFORE, and write all that irrelevant crap.

This quote, "I also called the Brewers being better than the Cubs as they proved in the opening day series," essentially sums up everything that is wrong with your comment. So you're saying that the Royals are better than the Tigers because the Royals raped the Tigers in the opening series? I mean c'mon how can you even say that. You're admitting that your basing your argument off three games. Nearly any astute baseball fan will immediately ignore everything else you say, simply because your sample size proves all of your analysis meaningless.

scribbletone you need to calm TF down because you are using words that are simply inapropriate. I just came from the Orlando Hudson thread and as I said there, this guy spends all day on this site and he uses derogatory explatives when making his point and an administrator should probalby remove him if this site wants any amount of legitimacy. This is a family website. You should be saying things like "what the h#4l are you talking about?" or "cr#p" or "r#pe". You come off as a complete lunatic who just happens to watch baseball. By the way I wrote this same thing in the Orlando Hudson thread where it does have relevancy because everyone is trashing Hudson because he wants 11-12 mil a year which he is actually worth. But as I said in the Hudson post, Kendall went 2-3 today and is still leading MLB in hitting 1/18th of the way through the season. And so I think I will go back and copy and paste Aduncaroos,Scibbletone,ARodsucksatlife,jrfukudome,maximumpotential. Everyone who said Kendall was done because he just didnt contribute to your beloved cubs, well you all just proved that this site is slanted towards the Cubs and against the Brewers Pirates Reds. By the way I was not suprised to see the Royals beat the Tigers like that as I stated in my predictions that the Royals could concievably finish 3rd this year and at no time have I ever predicted the Tigers to win the division. I believe the White Sox will. Trends like this more often then not do continue through the season. Ill come back here at the end of the year and my predictions will be correct. Just like the fact that Kendall is far from done as yall so emphatically stated in February

Kendall is not a good player any longer? You just look at his stats since he left the NL Central and are afraid of saying anything that might turn out to make you appear wrong. You are afraid of your fears that you might not be able to cling on to something that you are so clearly an ameteur regarding, and that is pro baseball. You are one of those people that looks at the status quo and thinks that its going to stay that way. You would make a very bad trader , and a very poor prognosticator.

How can you compare Shelton to Kendall. Kendall one of the 5 best catchers of the last 10 years. Even if he slumps for the next week he will still be hitting .400. Id be suprised if he finished the year hitting under .300 which you all laughed at when I mentioned as a very real possibility now that hes back in the NL Central for a full year.
And yeah it does have alot to do with him "not being good" because that is what EVERYONE on this site said about him when I was pushing back in February to hit him #2. Even the manager realizes hes a top of the order guy by hitting him 9th in a trial run.

I stated yesterday about the Cubs pitching Rich Hill got shelled just like Lilly and Marquis will. Zambrano isnt even that good. His peripherals show him as being overrated. All four of them need a good BIPA in order to be competitive because if they leave the ball up and it gets hit , its going to score runs in that park.

Kendall's BA's the last three years have been .242, .271, and .295. Maybe he bats .300, but his complete lack of power would still make him just an average player at this point. And if I was simply "looking at the status quo", then I would be saying, "Kendall one of the 5 best catchers of the last 10 years." instead of realizing that he's fallen quite far from that.

And by the way, Kendall is hitting ninth because it helps get more men on base for Braun and Fielder, in comparison to a pitcher. If he was a good top of the order hitter then he'd be batting second behind Weeks..

"Even if he slumps for the next week he will still be hitting .400."

And this is not true because he slumped for the next week then his average would most definately drop below .400, he's only had like 30 at bats. Add another 25-30 in which he bats .150 and suddenly his average is falling back down to earth pretty fast.