Carlos Beltran's Offensive Boost

According to Henry Schulman the Giants and the Mets are "very close to completion" on a trade to bring over Carlos Beltran.

The thing that stands out to me in his brief blog post is this:

Beltran, a switch-hitter who is eligible for free agency after the season, would give the Giants' offense a significant boost for the rest of the regular season, particularly during the current stretch of 19 games against playoff contenders.

Would he really be a "significant boost" for the Giants? Sure he would come in and be arguably the best hitter on the team but the player who would be replacing would be Cody Ross or Nate Schierholtz who have both been better than league average hitters.
To try to figure out how much this does boost the Giants offense I used the lineup analysis tool and the rest of season ZIPS projections to figure out the runs scored with and with out Beltran.

Without Beltran the lineup tool says 4.018 runs per game.

With Beltran and Schierholtz moving to the bench the Giants improve to 4.169 runs per game.

With Beltran and Ross moving to the bench the Giants improve to 4.136 runs per game.

Over the last 55 or so games (it all depends on when the trade goes down) this would translate into about to 7 to 8 runs extra. The big question is what position he would play, I have heard things that he doesn't want to move away from right field, which is not an easy position at AT&T park and he might cost the Giants some runs there.

If he is willing to play left field I think that would be the best position for him and then the Giants can do a platoon of Torres and Ross in center with maybe Cody giving the occasional day off to Schierholtz and Beltran during the stretch run.

I am not sure that is a significant boost but it is something. I wouldn't expect an overnight change in the offense from worst in the league to best in the league but maybe with this move they can be mediocre.

So, yeah for mediocre.

---

Become a fan on Facebook and follow the The Crazy Crabbers on twitter there is lots of good stuff going on there. Sign up for our free newsletter!