The San Francisco Giants should trade Matt Cain.

Well, actually, the first thing the Giants need is to realize that they have no hope of winning anything this season and that this means they should be big-time sellers. I also think the Giants should be looking to deal Randy Winn, Bengie Molina, Ray Durham, Rich Aurellia, and any of their other aging veterans that they might be able to get something for.

But the Giants also need to consider dealing Cain. Now, somewhat understandably, the Giants and their fans are reluctant to part with Cain. After all, he was the ace of the team in ‘06 and ‘07 (before the rise of Tim Lincecum), is under contract for three more years, and is still only 23. In fact, “reluctant” is probably too weak a word - thus far reports are that Giants GM Brian Sabean has refused to even discuss the possibility of trading Cain.

But that is foolish. Because while it is true that Cain is under club control for three more years at bargain rates, and is a very good pitcher, it is unlikely that the Giants will really be in contention for any of those three years if they keep him.

The Giants’ farm system is completely barren, and they are in desperate need of young position players, because even if they don’t trade the aging vets, those vets are not going to be around for much longer either way.

Meanwhile, there are still numerous actual contenders still out there and still desperate for starting pitching. Given what the Indians got for a few months of C.C. Sabathia, what the A’s got for incredibly fragile Rich Harden, and what the A’s got for Dan Haren last fall, it seems clear that the Giants would be able to get at least 4-5 decent prospects for Cain.

The Giants are currently seven games back in the NL West, but with a terrible offense and a lousy bullpen, there is no way that they are going to leapfrog Diamondbacks, Dodgers, and Rockies to take the division, especially given that it seems likely that all three of those teams I just mentioned will play a bit better in the second half than they have thus far.

It is long past time that the Giants recognized that they need to be in rebuilding mode. And that rebuilding should be centered around a trade of Matt Cain. While Cain will probably be a good, cheap starter for the next three years, are the Giants at all likely to be in contention in the next three years if they keep going the way they are going?

But on the other hand, if they can get a bunch of really good prospects for Cain, especially position players which they can throw into the mix with Lincecum, Jonathan Sanchez, Fred Lewis, and Aaron Rowand, then the Giants have a much better shot to jumpstart a rebuilding and be back in contention much sooner than if they keep soldiering on with Cain and spare parts for three more years.

UPDATE: Durham has been dealt for two minor leaguers, speedy outfielder Darren Ford (A) and struggling lefty hurler Steve Hammond (AAA).

- What They Need Index -

In baseball there are two kinds of suckage - ordinary, run-of-the-mill “suckage,” and spectacular, 100-loss level “total suckage.” In the past two weeks, the San Francisco tranwreck express seems to have veered off the track of awesome HD flatscreen total suckage and back onto the track of boring, basic cable suckage.

On one hand, the team is in the throes of a five-game losing streak, but on the other hand, several positive developments have occurred which have made GM Brian Sabean so giddy with optimism that he is now declaring publicly that the Giants are still in contention this year and that he will not be trading away any veterans this season.

Let’s look at what has gone the Giants’ way of late…

- Barry Zito has returned from his 10-day banishment to the bullpen (during which time he did not make a single appearance), and miraculously reeled off three decent starts in a row, all of which he rightly deserved to win (although, of course, the lousy offense behind him insured all three wound up as Giants losses).

- Omar Vizquel made his triumphant return from the disabled list and is off to a blazing start at the plate, posting a .360 batting average and a .907 OPS in his first 8 games.

- Better yet for the team, Vizquel’s return and the “emergence” of Manny Burriss as a middle infielder who can post an on-base percentage of at least .260 means that single-A shortstop Brian Bocock has been optioned to Fresno where he can now be overmatched at the plate by triple-A pitchers rather than major-league pitchers.

- After a magical hamstring injury which helped him magically recover his hitting stroke, Ray Durham has gone on a 10 for 19 tear which has seen his batting average skyrocket from .247 to .300.

- Lone rotational standout Tim Lincecum continues to be one of the awesomest starters in the game, leading the entire major leagues with 63 strikeouts and placing third with a 1.92 ERA. Of course, he has to be nearly perfect with the terrible offense and defense he has playing behind him, but is there any more watchable starting pitcher in the majors right now?

- After spending the first month of the season last in the major leagues in runs per game, the Giants have finally clawed themselves into 29th place, ahead of the even more woeful San Diego Padres.

So with all this good news, can we really call Brian Sabean crazy for thinking the Giants might still have a chance to contend this season?

Yes. Why yes we can. The poor man has clearly lost his marbles and is now living in Magic Happy Land, where chocolate rivers flow clean and sweet, Roger Clemens retired quietly in 1996, and the presently 17-28 San Francisco Giants are going to make a playoff run in 2008. Judging from this picture, apparently they also have a cute white puppy there too.

Park adjusted, the Giants still have the worst offense in baseball. Their defense is also terrible, 26th in the majors in defensive efficiency. Legendary gloveman Omar Vizquel is back, but it is hard to picture him improving the team’s defense, given that their gloves were the only reasons Bocock and Burriss were anywhere near a major league ballpark, and that Vizquel is playing with a knee brace, on the heels of a major knee surgery, at age 42.

The Giants have the second worst record in the majors, and are on pace for 101 losses. But Brian Sabean thinks they are still in contention, and won’t be trading any of his aging veterans for young talent. No wonder he was recently voted the worst general manager in the game today.

This is one of a series of posts in which we lambaste each team for their befuddling offseason boondoggles, and possibly applaud them for their prescient preseason pickups.

The Giants have traditionally put very strong teams on the field year after year, and have had very few truly catastrophic seasons, but this year’s team will have a shot to be historically bad.

Last year the Giants lost 91 games, which tied for the 4th worst record in their 125 years of existence, and this year they could well be even worse. PECOTA is projecting the Giants to lose 93 games this year, and it with a few key injuries or some bad luck in one-run games, one could easily imagine a scenario in which the Giants would lose more than the 100 games they lost in 1984, and thus set a new record for the worst season in franchise history.

Consider:

- Last season the Giants were dead last in the entire Major Leagues with a .708 team OPS, last in the Majors with a .387 team slugging percentage, and 29th out of 30 teams with 673 runs scored. And ridiculously, that was including the contributions they got from Barry Bonds and his 1.045 OPS!

- By letting Bonds, Ryan Klesko, and Pedro Feliz walk as free agents, the Giants are losing 41% of the meager 131 homers they hit as a team last season. PECOTA projects that the 2008 edition of the Giants will hit a mere 93 home runs. The team leader is projected to be Aaron Rowand with 14, followed by Dan Ortmeier and Bengie Molina with 12 each.

- David Pinto of Baseball Musings is projecting that the Bonds-less Giants will average 3.99 runs per game this season, down from 4.22 last year. At that rate, it will be a year-long struggle for the Giants to even clear 600 runs scored on the season.

- The Giants do have a promising young starting rotation, but their awful bullpen was last in the National League last season with 33 bullpen losses, and has not been upgraded in any way this offseason.

Indeed, nothing seems to be more popular this offseason than making up zingers about how much the Giants will suck this year. A small sampling of a few of the better ones:

“One move to make: Release half the roster.” - Joe Sheehan, Baseball Prospectus

“Take the Fresno Grizzlies, spot them a league-average starting rotation, and what do you get? The 2008 San Francisco Giants.” - Nate Silver, Baseball Prospectus

“I think I’d trust Amy Winehouse to guard my bag of coke before I’d trust [Brian Sabean] to build my offense.” - Dan Szymborski, Baseball Think Factory

“Maybe management thinks the best way to celebrate the Giants’ 50th anniversary of their arrival in San Francisco is to have as many active players as possible who were actually alive the last time Willie Mays was on a major league roster.” - A.J. Mass, ESPN.com

The sad part is, as bad as the Giants are going to be this year, there seems little hope of improvement at any time in the near future. The Giants already have a payroll in the $100 million range, they are locked into bad long-term contracts with Barry Zito and now Aaron Rowand, they have no tradeable assets to speak of, and up and down the system they have one of the thinnest collections of minor league talent of any team. In fact, the highest-ranked prospect in their whole system right now is Angel Villalona, a 17-year-old Dominican youngster without a defensive position who was still playing in Rookie ball last year.

This is a team with so many holes at the major league level, that it could be legitimately said that they headed into this offseason needing to find a first baseman, a second baseman, a shortstop, a third baseman, an outfielder, a closer, and nearly an entire rest of a bullpen.

So how did the Giants get into this mess? Well, for the last 15 years, the team, led mostly by GM Brian Sabean, has systematically mortgaged their future in an attempt to win it all now, trading away, blocking, or simply failing to develop any young position-player talent they might have had, while repeatedly signing big-name “experienced veterans” to overly long contracts. In some sense, this strategy was understandable - after all, if you have arguably the greatest hitter of all time on your team in Barry Bonds, it seems reasonable to try to win now rather than waiting for some distant future which may not come. But the execution of the strategy has been very poor. Despite having Bonds on the team for 15 seasons, the Giants failed to win a championship, and only ever made one World Series, back in 2002.

But even worse than past mistakes is the fact that Sabean and the Giants continue to compound those past mistakes by imagining that they are only a veteran player or two away from contention. No team in baseball is farther away from contention than the Giants right now, especially after the departure of Bonds, and yet Sabean went out and signed league-average centerfielder Aaron Rowand to a gargantuan $60 million, five-year contract which will take him well into his mid-30s decline years, having signed a similar deal with Barry Zito last year. But even setting aside the mediocrity of these players, these kind of signings would only make sense if the Giants had any hope of reaching the playoffs within the lifetime of these contracts. Since that is almost certainly not going to happen, this is a case where the Giants would almost literally be just as well served taking all that money and dumping it into the San Francisco Bay.

Although the Giants are in no position to contend any time soon, at the very least they should recognize this fact, trade away or just eat the contracts of some of the horrible veterans on their roster, and start playing kids and searching through the waiver wires for some promising youngsters to at least start building toward a semblance of maybe constructing a possible contender in five or six years’ time.

Offseason Grade: F

Additions: Aaron Rowand

Losses: Barry Bonds, Pedro Feliz, Ryan Klesko

Projected Lineup, Rotation, and Closer:

LF Dave Roberts (36) - .260/.331/.364, 31 SB

SS Omar Vizquel (41) - .246/.305/.316, 14 SB

RF Randy Winn (34) - .300/.353/.445, 14 HR

CF Aaron Rowand (30) - .309/.374/.515, 27 HR

1B Dan Ortmeier (27) - .287/.317/.497, 6 HR

C Bengie Molina (33) - .276/.298/.433, 19 HR

3B Rich Aurilia (36) - .252/.304/.368, 5 HR

2B Ray Durham (36) - .218/.295/.343, 11 HR

LHP Barry Zito (30) - 11-13, 4.53 ERA

RHP Matt Cain (23) - 7-16, 3.65 ERA

LHP Noah Lowry (27) - 14-8, 3.92 ERA

RHP Tim Lincecum (24) - 7-5, 4.00 ERA

RHP Kevin Correia (27) - 4-7, 3.45 ERA

CL Brian Wilson (26) - 6 SV, 2.28 ERA

-Hot Offseason Action Index-