Pedro, Nice To See You (Leave)

We spoke, we yelled, we screamed, we cursed, and the Giants finally, finally, finally have heard. The Pedro Feliz era in San Francisco is over.

Pedro is a funny piece of our puzzle. If you have a good team with a strong lineup, you can afford Pedro. He’ll hit his 20 dingers, strike out too much, drive in a bunch of runs (mostly when you don’t need them), have his usual sub .300 OBA, and field third base (and the occasional first base, and shortstop and even catcher) with the best of them, maybe even better than the rest of them. If the Giants had swapped Pedro for Lowell last season, the Red Sox would still have won it all.

On a team like the Giants, though, which is clearly at the least going to stink offensively, how can you justify a slick fielding third baseman with a little power whose only consistency at the plate is swinging and missing first pitch curve balls? They have to do better at the corners. By the way, Pedro's not exactly an up and comer anymore - he’s going to be 33 in April. His final stats as a Giant: 109 homers, 418 RBI’s, 12 steals and a .252 BA over 7 years plus 7 at bats. See ya.

The Giants are talking about Joe Crede. Now I don’t know Joe Crede from Joe Bonano, Crede being a career American Leaguer. I do know he hit 30 homers in 2006, but he had back surgery last year.

Actually his major league career is almost exactly the same at Pedro’s. They both came up for a few games in 2000 - Crede's career is 7 seasons plus 14 at bats. His numbers include 108 homers, 367 RBI’s, 4 steals and a .259 BA. His on base percentage is consistently slightly over .300. He has struck out 14.7% of the time compared to 17.6% for Pedro. I assume he doesn’t field as well.

He will be only 30 in April. On the other hand…HE’S COMING OFF BACK SURGERY.
He sounds like the perfect downgrade. $50 million, 5 years. Don’t worry – you’re gonna love him! Like Rowand, he’s a gamer! Oh yeah - he'll only cost us Noah Lowry.

Let's try to do a little better. Oh, one last thing...as far as I can tell, Crede has no major league catching experience. Pedro, on the other hand, was a catcher in every NL-only fantasy league in the country for the second half of last season.