Giants Release Dave Roberts

6:20pm: Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle spoke with Brian Sabean who said he tried to trade Roberts all winter. Sabean also emphasized that the Giants are "on a path to get younger and healthier. Right now that’s not on his resume. I think the longer we went not doing something would have been an injustice to trying to find out about our own kids and giving him a chance to go somewhere else."

Rob Neyer adds that the Roberts contract is "Brian Sabean’s recent performance in a nutshell."

A month ago El Lefty Malo predicted that if Roberts were a free agent this off-season, the current baseball economy would probably force Roberts to retire. Now we get to see if this was prophetic.

1:37pm: According to Andrew Baggarly of the San Jose Mercury News, the Giants released outfielder Dave Roberts.  They’ll eat his $6.5MM salary for ’09, minus $400K if another team signs him.

Roberts was part of a string of bad signings by Giants GM Brian Sabean.  He signed a three-year, $18MM contract in December of ’06.