{"id":347846,"date":"2025-12-14T07:43:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T07:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/347846\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T07:43:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T07:43:07","slug":"rumor-giants-in-mix-to-trade-for-upgrade-at-second-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/347846\/","title":{"rendered":"Rumor: Giants in mix to trade for upgrade at second base"},"content":{"rendered":"

This evening, Katie Woo of The Athletic published an article with the headline<\/a> \u201cMariners, Giants emerge as front-runners for Brendan Donovan trade: Sources.\u201d Woo was the site\u2019s Cardinals beat writer until this offseason, when she left that beat to cover the Dodgers, but she obviously still has her sources in St. Louis. That could mean they\u2019re negotiating through the press, in which case it\u2019s unclear who the message is for, but within her report is even more surprising news: the Giants are also rumored to be talking to Arizona about Ketel Marte.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the part of this that caused me to drop everything and rush to the computer to whip up a post. I was content with assuming the Giants were cool with the second base group they have on hand, given the ZiPS projection discussed the other day<\/a> and even if Casey Schmitt\u2019s health is uncertain for the start of the season. Yesterday, I demanded the Giants make three specific moves, including upgrading their mix in the outfield. Both Donovan and Marte have logged innings there, but their best spots are probably on the infield (or DHing). It\u2019s clear the Giants are swinging big.<\/p>\n

They were both All-Stars in 2025. The left-handed hitting Donovan will be 29 next season and carries an arbitration projection of $5.4 million. He has a career line of .282\/.361\/.411 with a 9.1 BB% and 13.5 K%. Switch-hitting Ketel Marte will play his age-32 season in 2026 and is owed\u2026 well\u2026 it\u2019s complicated. It\u2019s $15 million, but, well, Cot\u2019s has the deal structure here<\/a> and there are deferrals built into it that lowers the present day payment to around $12.3 million. It\u2019s an extremely owner-friendly deal for a top tier talent, which in the near-term is exactly what Buster Posey needs to appease ownership. He\u2019s under contract through 2030 with a player option for 2031, his age-37 season, and that\u2019s where it might get tricky. Still, these have been two of the hottest names on the trade market this offseason and it\u2019s fascinating to see the Giants linked to them at all, because the acquisition cost will be very high.<\/p>\n

Ketel Marte is the best position player on the Diamondbacks not named Corbin Carroll and his only real wart \u2014 and it\u2019s a meaningful one, to be sure \u2014 is an injury history. He\u2019s played 140+ games just 3 times in 11 seasons. He\u2019s missed 20% of Arizona\u2019s games the last two seasons, but he\u2019s made up for it with All-Star value when healthy, generating 6.3 fWAR in 136 games during 2024 and 4.6 in 126 this past season. He was limited to just second base and designated hitter, so the idea of sticking him in left field is probably farfetched. Donovan had surgery to repair a sports hernia after the season and was limited to 118 games during the season. He played 18 games in left field. This is the second time in four days that<\/a> a Cardinals-connected reporter has linked the Giants to St. Louis\u2019s efforts to trade Donovan as part of the org\u2019s rebuild.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re pretty different players, with Marte being a complete package of contact, on base, and power, while Donovan is more of a contact-on base guy. Their projections are different enough, too, with Donovan in the 3-WAR range and Marte 4.5. To get either one of them, the Giants will have to cough up a lot of prospects. It\u2019s highly unlikely Bryce Eldridge could stay out of a Marte deal, and in the case of a Donovan trade, Katie Woo offers Gavin Kilen and Carson Whisenhunt.<\/p>\n

Now, is she offering them on behalf of the Cardinals as a way to compel the Mariners \u2014 the lead team in the headline \u2014 to up their offer with a demonstration of what they\u2019re looking for by way of the Giants\u2019 inventory or to signal to the Giants that that\u2019s how a deal gets done? Either is possible. Then again, maybe her sources aren\u2019t trying to negotiate anything in the press. Still, if we see Giants beat writers pausing their Saturday night plans to post that they haven\u2019t heard anything beyond Posey & co. being engaged in multiple conversations and simply keeping their options open, then we might have a better sense that this report isn\u2019t intended for Giants fans.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a little bit fascinated by this. The Giants being used as a stalking horse or simply \u201crandom other team\u201d in all these rumor reports is not new and is still the most likely explanation. On the other hand, with the Giants being wary of spending at the top of the market to fill all of their needs, being connected to cheap but valuable options like Freddy Peralta or Brendan Donovan or Ketel Marte makes a lot of sense \u2014 if that\u2019s what\u2019s really going on.<\/p>\n

In case it\u2019s unclear: if the Giants were to land Brendan Donovan, that would be swell. If they acquired Ketel Marte from their division rival, that would be triumphant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This evening, Katie Woo of The Athletic published an article with the headline \u201cMariners, Giants emerge as front-runners…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,4533,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-347846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-rumors","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}