I don't think that the Giants should sign Manny Ramirez unless they can move Rowand without eating (virtually) any of the contract. If they can get Rowand's 12 million/yr off of the books for the next four years then it sounds alright (although I am not very enthusiastic about Manny as a person and I think that matters). Since Winn is only on the books for next year, moving him wouldn't help enough with payroll going forward. What the Giants really need to do is trade Molina, retain Sandoval at C, and sign a free agent 3B (or trade for one). They save money (which could help if they are serious about Manny and certainly won't hurt otherwise), substantially upgrade the offense, get a couple of prospects, and maximize Sandoval's value. See the recent reports from BA which show that Sandoval was stellar at throwing out runners and fine on his blocking techniques. Sandoval's defense looks fine, perhaps even good at C, so why on earth would the Giants move him? I don't care if Posey's the C of the future. Failing to maximize Sandoval's value by moving him to 3B/1B is stupid for the Giant's present and future. If we have two great young offensive catchers trade one (someone would give up the farm for a cost effective offensively stellar young C with a year of MLB experience) or make a positional switch later. Besides, Posey will probably be even more flexible positionally than Sandoval, and although it is doubtful Posey can play SS in the MLB, one never knows. Here are the links:
http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/?p=1835
http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/?p=1724

If I try really hard, I can make the three year offer make some kind of sick sense. The 4 year, $100M albatross is just insane, though. Can we imagine a likely scenario in which that option wouldn't vest? IMO, the danger with manny is not that he'll get hurt and miss a ton of games/plate appearances (the only thing they could tie that vesting option to), but that he'll be completely unmotivated and play 140 games a season at his 2007 level, which is good enough that Manny would have a legitimate grounds to file a grievance if the Giants tried to prevent the option from vesting. Granted, two years of .296/.388/.493 is pretty valuable (who knows how he'd do in years 3 and 4), but it's probably not enough to put the Giants in serious world serious contention, and 25M a year probably is enough to hamstring the payroll.

alot of what you say makes sense, but you're making it sound like the Giants' are broke and in need of public assistance. How do you know that 20- 25 million per year in Manny's salary breaks them and forces them to start dumping other players?? You can be sure that they would love to do this if they signed Manny, but you don't know they HAVE to do this. They also have 29 million coming off the books after 2009, so Manny's salary is definitely not a problem then, although certain other players will get raises. The Giants' are making so much money that they pay back double of what they have to in debt service. As long as they're doing that, they're loaded in my mind. Andy Baggarly says that Scott Boras has always told him that based on their revenues the Giants' should always have a team payroll of about 140-150 million, and he would probably know. Signing Manny makes the Giants' the prohibitive NL west favorite this year, and shouldn't that be all that counts?? I actually expect Manny to sign with the Dodgers again, because I think he was reasonably happy there last year and prefers the warmer weather, but if that happens and the Dodgers go to the series, I don't want to hear all the fans that didn't want Manny to start whining. (like I know they all will)

I totally agree. In no way or form can the Giants afford to sign Manny without ridding themselves of either Winn or Rowand AND they will have to jettison Roberts as well, an extremely difficult task. The best the Giants can even hope for is to maybe save $2 million on Roberts and even then, they get nothing in return. They probably are more likely to pay $6 million on him.

An incentive laden deal does seem to be the best for the Giants, but neither Boras or Manny are likely to ever consider it. Maybe incentives that top out around $30 million for a monster season AND making the playoffs.

Still, I see it highly unlikely Manny signs here. Just to Manny things need to happen to make it feasible and economical. More likely, Sabean is in as a scare tactic to the Dodgers and would be happy to swallow Manny up if his price falls to the Giants.

Oh yeah, and never forget the Yankees

Finally, someone who is making sense. All I hear is we need Manny, we need him bad. BUT he comes with major baggage and is not the solution for this team. THANK YOU for writing this article, you make a lot of good points. Watching Manny last year trying to get a contract with the Dodgers his fielding was so bad I thought that he was allowing a lot of runs to score. He also scored a lot of runs for the Dodgers but the Liability that is Manny in the OF pretty much balances out the the scoring that he would add. Oh yeah and if he is on the Giants he walks 300+ times. Who isn't going to walk him to get to Rowand or Sando, we have nobody on the roster to make them throw a pitch to Manny.

so you're saying that having a player in your lineup that walks 300 times is a bad thing?? As for the Giants' not being world series worthy, I would think a team with a rotation that the Giants' have would be the biggest nightmare that any other playoff team would have to face. Who's going to match up with a rotation of Lincecum, Cain, and Randy Johnson in the playoffs??

Forget about Mannys rasta braids chasing missed balls in SF.
Him and Boras are holding off just waiting for the dodger bums to up the ante after all the offers trickle in. The last thing the blue bums want is manny in orange and black. Especially after the Giants improved pitching staff.
Would I welcome him to the bay? Hell yeah! Remember Bonds limping in left field, fighting with Kent, lounge chairs in the locker room and no shows for team photos. Oh yeah; he ripped at the plate and sold tickets.
Happy New Year!

I just don't understand how anyone can suggest signing Manny and not also accept that we could get Bonds back for probably 8Mil +incentives. He'd mean more ticket sales than Manny, there's a real possibility that he'd be over his hip surgery and court battles around the same time, (April), and he's certainly not any more of a liability in LF than Manny is.

If no one signs Bonds this year, he's going to win about 100 million bucks in a collusion law suit. This is ridiculous!