Winter Meetings Inactivity: A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action (Please!)

Arguably the best time of the year for Major League Baseball gossip is the one-week stretch in December dubbed oh-so-creatively as the winter meetings, when all the front offices gather in a single hotel and speak to player agents about possible signings or trades. It’s the time of year when I check mlbtraderumors.com even more compulsively than I already do during the offseason, hunting out anything I can find about a San Francisco Giants player–past, present or possibly future.

Unfortunately the week came and went and left me with more things to worry about than get me excited about the 2010 season. I mean, you know it’s bad when the juiciest detail you find is about a prospective swap of Kevin Kouzmanoff for Fred Lewis and Kevin Frandsen.

Yes, there were also rumors about the Giants maybe getting Dan Uggla and maybe looking at first basemen like Nick Johnson, but nothing was confirmed coming out of the week. As usual, Brian Sabean didn’t show any of his cards, but rather made vague hints that the team was at least talking to people. This made me want to bang my head against the wall, though. My instinct as a fan is that I want “a little less conversation, a little more action.” I read somewhere that at this time last year the Giants had already signed Edgar Renteria, Jeremy Affeldt and Bob Howry. Now I know that two of those players were duds this year, so I guess from that I can understand why Sabean might want to take things slower. But as a fan it just makes me nervous that such little activity means that little or nothing will happen to boost our poor offense this offseason. I mean, the only thing that Giants fans did get out of the winter meetings was that Bengie Molina isn’t coming back; I believe the expression Sabean used regarding that was, “That ship has sailed.” So we haven’t done anything so far this offseason, haven’t really been strongly linked to obtaining any good hitter and oh yeah, we’re losing our second best bat who also happens to be the catcher who our elite pitchers Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain are used to. It seems like every free agent catcher out there is getting signed to a two year contract (even guys like Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez”), so why not just bring back Molina on a one-year deal with an option for a second? Couldn’t we just trade him at the trading deadline next July to a(nother) contending team if Bochy and Sabean felt Buster Posey was ready to be the everyday starting catcher? I dunno…I just think that would be the best option all-around because then Molina could mentor Posey and we would be more secure at the starting catcher position and not have to throw Posey out there right away when he’s not ready to start. I know it’s not realistic because Molina wouldn’t want to come back when he knows there’s another catcher waiting in the wings, but I don’t see why the Giants can’t try offering him a contract; instead it seems like they’re just walking away because they assume the Mets or some other team will snatch him up. They shouldn’t be regarding someone like Bengie like that in my opinion, though; not when he’s the guy who’s carried this team offensively (and defensively, one could argue) for the past couple years.

I hope that the Giants will make a move sooner or later, one that shows fans that the team is serious about building on this past season. Until then I guess I’ll just have to keep griping about what hasn’t happened yet…