{"id":722542,"date":"2026-06-10T18:36:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/722542\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T18:36:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T18:36:14","slug":"the-patrick-bailey-trade-30-days-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/722542\/","title":{"rendered":"The Patrick Bailey trade 30 days later"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s no question that the Giants lost something when they traded away Patrick Bailey now one month ago, but the franchise seems comfortable with their new direction, even if it\u2019s a little unclear in a bad way just how much has been lost. They embarked on it for two reasons: an offensive uptick<\/a> and more leadership at the position<\/a>. Have either of these tasks been accomplished since the trade went down 30 days ago yesterday?<\/p>\n

Before the trade, Bailey hit .146\/.213\/.183 (.396 OPS) in 30 games and 86 PA. The Giants\u2019 lineup had a team wRC+ of 81 through the first 38 games of the season while the pitching staff had a 3.63 ERA in his 238.1 innings catching (3.93 overall \u2014 12th).<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m including the team\u2019s total offensive production here because in looking at it by positional split I came away pretty surprised. Patrick Bailey was completely awful \u2014 one of the worst professional hitters on planet Earth \u2014 but with Daniel Susac\u2019s .478\/.500\/.652 line in 24 plate appearances and .300\/.300\/.500 in 10 PA from Eric Haase, the Giants\u2019 catching position was not the worst in baseball through May 8th. At 83 wRC+ (.244\/.297\/.345), it ranked 16th, ahead of the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Rangers, Mariners , Guardians, Diamondbacks, Nationals, Blue Jays, and Phillies. So, the notion that the Giants had to get more offense out of the position was sort of\u2026 wrong? Remarkably, it was about as bad as the rest of the lineup. But Patrick Bailey\u2019s .146 made him an obvious target.<\/p>\n

[He has also hit .220\/.276\/.324 since the start of last season.]<\/p>\n

Since the trade, the Giants\u2019 lineup has a 126 wRC+ in 30 games, the best lineup in baseball. Ditching Bailey has raised the catching position all the way down to 17th in MLB with an 81 wRC+ (.206\/.283\/.346). The team\u2019s ERA has been the third-worst at 5.16.<\/p>\n

Compare to what\u2019s happening over with Cleveland. Prior to the trade, their team ERA of 4.01 was 14th in MLB. Since then, it\u2019s risen to 7th with a 3.45 result. What\u2019s interesting about that is that Bailey\u2019s catcher ERA in the 16 games he\u2019s caught in is just 4.02 in 130 innings. Their catching position has dropped on the hitting side from a 65 wRC+ (23rd) to 55 (25th) \u201cthanks\u201d to Bailey\u2019s abysmal .167\/.196\/.333 in 17 games (51 PA). I wouldn\u2019t say it has been a slam dunk move, but it has certainly helped Cleveland more than it\u2019s hurt them.<\/p>\n

The results were pretty strongly in favor of the Guardians since the early going, prompting many people on social media to immediately respond with \u201cBailey isn\u2019t starting in Cleveland so this is misleading!\u201d but that\u2019s sort of besides the point because it\u2019s not as though the Giants couldn\u2019t have done the same thing. Their options were to bench him entirely (which is the first thing they did), demote him, trade him, or diminish his playing time. That last option would\u2019ve probably been the most difficult to do given all the success that he\u2019s had and a trade might have been the only way to get him to \u201caccept\u201d the role, but it is pretty clear that the Giants found his value to be more theoretical than tangible, hence trading him for a draft pick and a pitching prospect, both \u201cassets\u201d of theoretical value.<\/p>\n

Some consideration must be given to how the relationship between the team and the player could\u2019ve frayed so much. It\u2019s not as though the catching position has been a traditionally important part of a lineup and as a general scapegoat for the likes of Devers, Chapman, and Adames woefully underperforming (and let\u2019s throw Jung Hoo Lee in there for good measure) it\u2019s more of a bad look for the team than the player, but let\u2019s put ourselves on the organization\u2019s side here.<\/p>\n

Like all of Buster Posey\u2019s big moves (Adames, the Devers trade, dumping Bob Melvin and replacing him with a college coach), the trade was defensible in the moment. The relationship between player and team had hit a wall and there was a move to be made that netted them a meaningful draft pick and a pitching prospect who could boost a thin part of their farm system. And like all of these big moves, it sort of needs 2-3 years to really play out before we can say whether or not it was \u201cgood.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the podcast discussion between Roger Munter and Kerry Crowley that I linked to before, Crowley suggested that Buster Posey might have his idea of what a team\u2019s starting catcher should be like in terms of personality. Someone a little more outgoing and leader-like. Roger was quick to point out that a Rule 5 pick and minor leaguer (at the time, Jesus Rodriguez was the de facto backup catcher) might not slip right into that role. Everything that we\u2019ve seen suggests that the Giants just wanted different energy in that position and figured that the slumps of a Rule 5 pick, a prospect, or a journeyman backup couldn\u2019t be worse than the full-time work Patrick Bailey offered with the bat. In terms of the defense? Maybe they thought that the ABS Challenge System would be a way to shore up whatever defensive deficiencies there might be in going from Bailey to Susac and backup.<\/p>\n

The other part of this, of course, is that Patrick Bailey wasn\u2019t one of Buster Posey\u2019s successes. Farhan Zaidi gets credit for that. And that made it even easier to move him once he became a problem \u2014 which, to be clear, the front office and coaching staff affirmed that he had become a problem. But now the Giants have to live with the consequences of such a big move and a month out, it\u2019s unclear if it\u2019s one that\u2019s worked out.<\/p>\n

The Giants were 15-23 (.395) when Patrick Bailey was on the team. They\u2019re 12-18 (.400) without him. Seems like a wash. Sure, the lineup got better, but the pitching staff seems to have gotten worse. But maybe this season was always destined for failure. So, let\u2019s be real fair and revisit this in 2 years to see how that draft pick and Matt Wilkinson worked out for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no question that the Giants lost something when they traded away Patrick Bailey now one month ago,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,4,378,66,81843,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342],"class_list":["post-722542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco-giants","tag-baseball","tag-giants","tag-mlb","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-san-francisco-giants-analysis","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-sanfranciscogiants","tag-sf","tag-sf-giants","tag-sfgiants"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116727262964599473","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}