This is the easiest post in the series. The top four in the Giants rotation should be with the team when it breaks camp next year. Barring injury or trade (a standard caveat for all prognosticationary punditry such as this) Lincecum, Cain and Sanchez will be Giants for years. It would take the Jaws of Death to pry them loose, although I won’t be surprised if teams try. We can only hope that Brian Sabean learned his lesson with the Lincecum-for-Alexis Rios kerfuffle. Who knows? Maybe a rival GM will offer the moon, some crazy-nutso-wonderful package of Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Ian Kinsler and Josh Hamilton. (Would you trade Sanchez straight up for Hamilton? The Rangers wouldn’t, but that’s not my question.)
At the other end of the spectrum is Barry Zito. He isn’t going to be cut. He isn’t going to be traded. We’ll see him next year and the year after that in the rotation or, at worst, long relief. Zito is trying new stuff — fewer moving parts in his windup, a lower arm angle — with mixed but encouraging results the past month. Not easy to do mid-season, but if any athlete can re-learn his craft on the fly under this much pressure, it’s Zito. He’s healthy (we think), open-minded and hard-working.
Or if you prefer: He’s here. He’s dear. Get used to it.
The only real task other than keeping Caincecumchez healthy and praying for Zito’s resurgence is sussing out the fifth starter.
We thought Kevin Correia would be at least a league-average solution. Thanks to injury and ineffectiveness — perhaps the oblique strain still bothers him — the 5th turn has been a bleak one for the Giants. While Correia was DL’ed, Pat Misch was gopher-plagued, and now Correia has Chulkitis, often losing focus for one batter or one pitch (witness the 0–2 meatball that Jim Edmonds deposited in the bleachers last Saturday).
If a contender wants Correia for the stretch run, the Giants should certainly entertain a trade. More likely, he’ll remain the 5th starter and try to regain the control and the sinker he used down the stretch last year to put together a nice streak of starts. Then he’ll re-compete for the job next spring.
One other agenda item: whether or not to sign Lincecum to a long-term contract. Those will be interesting negotiations.
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SMALL PRINT UPDATE: Now listening to Nellie McKay’s Pretty Little Head, which I found on the cheap at a used CD shop in the hinterlands. I knew of her but never heard her music; I figured it would be worth a few bucks, considering she’s talented and eccentric enough to tell her label to go cop a squat because it refused to release a double album. After a couple spins through it, let’s just say her label was right. There are plenty of good ideas and clever lines, but barely enough good material for one disc, let alone two.
