Thoughts of the Giants selling at the trade deadline are becoming more of a reality in San Francisco after an 11-22 start — the worst record in baseball. The question becomes, should they chose to sell, who is most likely to go?
Initially, signs point to Johnny Cueto, who at 4-2 with a 4.50 ERA, has been one of the most reliable assets on the teams. Cueto, who could be highly desirable for teams on the brink of playoff contention, is in his second year of a $130 million, six-year deal, but has an player opt-out clause at the end of the season.
Buster Olney joined The Audible Tuesday morning on KNBR 1050 to discuss his take on Cueto, and why selling at the deadline for a bunch of young prospects won’t be as easy as it seems.
“The way the Giants are right now — they’ve got older guys that they probably would not be interested in trading, or they’ve got younger guys who probably haven’t performed up to what expectations have been,” Olney said. “They don’t have a lot of marketable players. People have asked about Johnny Cueto because of the opt-out at the end of the year. The way that other teams would look at Johnny Cueto is yes, he’s a really good pitcher and he’s someone that’s great in the postseason, but if we trade for him, he may walk away from us at the end of the year so they’re not necessarily going to get a lot in return.”
Another factor hurting the Giants in trading Cueto is the upcoming free agent market for starting pitchers is highly competitive, especially compared to a sparse 2016.
“Here’s the other factor about Johnny Cueto: this year’s starting pitching market, which last summer and last winter was really thin. There’s going to be absolutely a flood of starting pitchers that are going to be available,” said Olney. “So if the Giants put up a high price on Johnny Cueto, other team’s are going to say, ‘You know what? We’ll go talk to the Rangers about Yu Darvish, we’ll go talk to the Rangers about Cole Hamels, we’ll talk to the Pirates about Gerrit Cole.’ There are going to be a ton of guys, it’s not a great situation for them to get great return.”
The Giants have dropped four straight and are 9.5 games back in the NL West. Listen to the full podcast below. To hear Olney on Cueto, skip to 7:33.