There’s no question that the Giants lost something when they traded away Patrick Bailey now one month ago, but the franchise seems comfortable with their new direction, even if it’s a little unclear in a bad way just how much has been lost. They embarked on it for two reasons: an offensive uptick and more leadership at the position
. Have either of these tasks been accomplished since the trade went down 30 days ago yesterday?Before the trade, Bailey hit .146/.213/.183 (.396 OPS) in 30 games and 86
PA. The Giants’ lineup had a team wRC+ of 81 through the first 38 games of the season while the pitching staff had a 3.63 ERA in his 238.1 innings catching (3.93 overall — 12th).
Now, I’m including the team’s total offensive production here because in looking at it by positional split I came away pretty surprised. Patrick Bailey was completely awful — one of the worst professional hitters on planet Earth — but with Daniel Susac’s .478/.500/.652 line in 24 plate appearances and .300/.300/.500 in 10 PA from Eric Haase, the Giants’ catching position was not the worst in baseball through May 8th. At 83 wRC+ (.244/.297/.345), it ranked 16th, ahead of the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Rangers, Mariners , Guardians, Diamondbacks, Nationals, Blue Jays, and Phillies. So, the notion that the Giants had to get more offense out of the position was sort of… wrong? Remarkably, it was about as bad as the rest of the lineup. But Patrick Bailey’s .146 made him an obvious target.
[He has also hit .220/.276/.324 since the start of last season.]
Since the trade, the Giants’ lineup has a 126 wRC+ in 30 games, the best lineup in baseball. Ditching Bailey has raised the catching position all the way down to 17th in MLB with an 81 wRC+ (.206/.283/.346). The team’s ERA has been the third-worst at 5.16.
Compare to what’s happening over with Cleveland. Prior to the trade, their team ERA of 4.01 was 14th in MLB. Since then, it’s risen to 7th with a 3.45 result. What’s interesting about that is that Bailey’s catcher ERA in the 16 games he’s caught in is just 4.02 in 130 innings. Their catching position has dropped on the hitting side from a 65 wRC+ (23rd) to 55 (25th) “thanks” to Bailey’s abysmal .167/.196/.333 in 17 games (51 PA). I wouldn’t say it has been a slam dunk move, but it has certainly helped Cleveland more than it’s hurt them.
The results were pretty strongly in favor of the Guardians since the early going, prompting many people on social media to immediately respond with “Bailey isn’t starting in Cleveland so this is misleading!” but that’s sort of besides the point because it’s not as though the Giants couldn’t have done the same thing. Their options were to bench him entirely (which is the first thing they did), demote him, trade him, or diminish his playing time. That last option would’ve probably been the most difficult to do given all the success that he’s had and a trade might have been the only way to get him to “accept” the role, but it is pretty clear that the Giants found his value to be more theoretical than tangible, hence trading him for a draft pick and a pitching prospect, both “assets” of theoretical value.
Some consideration must be given to how the relationship between the team and the player could’ve frayed so much. It’s not as though the catching position has been a traditionally important part of a lineup and as a general scapegoat for the likes of Devers, Chapman, and Adames woefully underperforming (and let’s throw Jung Hoo Lee in there for good measure) it’s more of a bad look for the team than the player, but let’s put ourselves on the organization’s side here.
Like all of Buster Posey’s big moves (Adames, the Devers trade, dumping Bob Melvin and replacing him with a college coach), the trade was defensible in the moment. The relationship between player and team had hit a wall and there was a move to be made that netted them a meaningful draft pick and a pitching prospect who could boost a thin part of their farm system. And like all of these big moves, it sort of needs 2-3 years to really play out before we can say whether or not it was “good.”
In the podcast discussion between Roger Munter and Kerry Crowley that I linked to before, Crowley suggested that Buster Posey might have his idea of what a team’s starting catcher should be like in terms of personality. Someone a little more outgoing and leader-like. Roger was quick to point out that a Rule 5 pick and minor leaguer (at the time, Jesus Rodriguez was the de facto backup catcher) might not slip right into that role. Everything that we’ve seen suggests that the Giants just wanted different energy in that position and figured that the slumps of a Rule 5 pick, a prospect, or a journeyman backup couldn’t be worse than the full-time work Patrick Bailey offered with the bat. In terms of the defense? Maybe they thought that the ABS Challenge System would be a way to shore up whatever defensive deficiencies there might be in going from Bailey to Susac and backup.
The other part of this, of course, is that Patrick Bailey wasn’t one of Buster Posey’s successes. Farhan Zaidi gets credit for that. And that made it even easier to move him once he became a problem — which, to be clear, the front office and coaching staff affirmed that he had become a problem. But now the Giants have to live with the consequences of such a big move and a month out, it’s unclear if it’s one that’s worked out.
The Giants were 15-23 (.395) when Patrick Bailey was on the team. They’re 12-18 (.400) without him. Seems like a wash. Sure, the lineup got better, but the pitching staff seems to have gotten worse. But maybe this season was always destined for failure. So, let’s be real fair and revisit this in 2 years to see how that draft pick and Matt Wilkinson worked out for them.
