Randy Winn's Giant Debut

I was flipping through my copy of "San Francisco Giants: 50 Years" and was reliving some great Giants memories. Of all the great performances chronicled in the book, the one that I had lost to time was the amazing run that Randy Winn had in his amazing two month stretch with the Giants in 2005.

I feel bad that I had let his last few seasons cloud my judgement of him. I remembered him being a glove first right fielder who could give you a decent at-bat, but wasn't exactly an offensive threat.

If any of you are like me, that impression will forever be changed. In his first 58 games with the Giants, Winn put on an offensive show.

Before we get to0 deep, lets give a little back story. The 2005 season was a down year in the NL West, with a bunch of mediocre teams battling it out to the end. The Bruce Bochy-led Padres would win the division that year with 82 wins. At the trade deadline, the Giants were a pathetic 45-59, but only 5.5 games out of first place.

With Barry Bonds on the shelf with a knee injury, the Giants were hurting for offense. Brian Sabean pulled the trigger on a trade with the Seattle Mariners that sent Winn to the Giants for Yorvit Torrealba and Jesse Foppert.

To put it simply, Winn did not disappoint.

Year	Tm	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
2005	SFG	58	231	39	83	22	5	14	26	7	11	38	.359	.391	.680	1.071	173

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/8/2011.

In 58 games, Winn carried the Giants. They were a bad team and he single-handedly kept them in the race for the playoffs. With Winn in tow, the Giants improved from a .432 winning percentage to a .517 winning percentage. If we extrapolate his stint with the Giants to 162 games played, it would be one of the best in the franchise's storied history. He would have hit 62 doubles, 14 triples and 40 home runs.

In his third of a season with the Giants, he accumulated 3.9 wins above replacement. To put that in perspective, if he had done that over a full season, it would be worth nearly 11 wins.

Randy Winn; a tip of the hat is in order for that amazing stretch of baseball.

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All-Time Giants: The team of the 00's

Giants news is a little slow outside of pics of a slim downed Pablo Sandoval, so I was playing around with the Baseball-Reference play index to come up with some all time Giants teams based on WAR.

The first one that I present here is the team of the 00's.

2000's
POS	Player	Year	WAR
C	Bobby Estalella	2000	2.5
1B	J.T. Snow	2004	3.2
2B	Jeff Kent	2000	7.9
3B	Pablo Sandoval	2009	4.8
SS	Rich Aurilia	2001	6.5
LF	Barry Bonds	2001	12.5
CF	Randy Winn	2005	3.9
RF	Ellis Burks	2000	5.5
P	Tim Lincecum	2008	6.9
P	Jason Schmidt	2003	5.9
P	Matt Cain	2009	5.1
P	Russ Ortiz	2001	3.9
P	Livan Hernandez	2000	3.1
			119.7

This team with everyone playing at this high of a level would have won an astonishing 120 games (rounding up). The guys you expect show up but there are a couple that are surprising.

The first thing that I noticed was the Giants have gotten surprisingly little production from their center fielders. Randy Winn takes the spot with a WAR of 3.9 that he accumulated in just 58 games with the Giants in 2005. Those were a torrid 58 games however with him putting up a triple slash line of .359/ .391/ .680 with 14 HRs.

If you are looking for another reason to be thankfull for Buster Posey look no further then the Giants past catchers. In the decade the only two catchers to break the 2.0 WAR barrier was Bobby Estalella and Benito Santiago everything else was cover your eyes bad.

Another thing that this exercise helped me with is my appreciation for just how good Rich Aurilia was. His last stint sort of clouded the memory a little bit but man what a great season he had in 2001 putting together a .324/ .369/ .572 37 HR season. I still find it hard to believe that he knocked out 37 in one season.

Tim Lincecum was the best pitcher of the decade with both his 2008 and 2009 seasons being better then any one else. Jason Schmidt holds his own with 4 solid seasons from 2002 to 2006. Matt Cain is also solidly implanted on the list with his contributions since joining the team in 2006.

Not included in here but I thought I would mention it anyway but the best reliever of the decade wasn't Robb Nen, Brian Wilson, Rod Beck, Tim Worrell but Felix Rodriguez's 2001. Rodriguez put up a 3.3 WAR with 80.1 innings with a 1.68 ERA and a ERA+ of 240.

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Was Yorvit Torrealba and Jesse Fopert for Randy Winn a Bust

Forbes has a list up of the Baseball's Biggest Trade Deadline Busts at number 4 is the 2005 Giants trade of Yorvit Torrealba and Jesse Fopert for Randy Winn.

Forbes says:

Winn had a couple of decent years in San Francisco but never drove in more than
65 runs in a season, very low for a corner outfielder. The Giants would pay him
$29 million through 2009 while never finishing higher than third place.

Is this enough to qualify as a bust?

I disagree, Winn had more then just decent years but actually some pretty good years with the Giants. He had 3 seasons of 3+ WAR (according to baseball-reference) a season of 2+ WAR and 1 season at replacement level.

This to me does not even close to a bust, the Giants have made much worse trades and this is not one of them.

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