Slim Pickings: Melvin Mora

Your infield is missing an All Star. It’s missing one of the cogs that brought it a World Championship that could be broken for 2012, or won’t show up for a long while. You’re left with a guy who hasn’t hit an extra base hit all season, a Stamos that looks like he’s settling in on defense but you really don’t expect much on offense, a kid that’s just trying to break in and is doing so very slowly, a journeyman that’s doing meh, and you’ve already brought another one of your prospects up and sent him back down. Meanwhile, the guy you dumped a hobbit for is also on the DL and really wasn’t doing much to begin with. Maybe we should be embarrassed with ourselves that we thought Freddy Sanchez wouldn’t suffer any setbacks, and that his shoulder is composed of the same material that makes up a human being’s shoulder.

And now today, we got wind that the Giants have offered Melvin Mora a contract. Nothing’s final yet because Cincinnati did too, and Melvin’s been a little distracted:

Four pre-teens. That’s got to be a nightmare. I’m in the field of education and that sounds like a nightmare. Who knows about the shape he’s in, and you’d imagine he’d have to go through some sort of extended spring training and minor league program before coming up, so even that’s a week or two away from even seeing him on a big league diamond. His defense is certainly nothing special and his power tapered off so much he hit no homers for Arizona in the small sample size of games he played for them (although he did have some XBH to develop an ISO, something Emmanuel Burriss doesn’t have). You wonder what’s left in the tank.

You might’ve heard Orlando Hudson was also unconditionally released by the Padres. That is also true, but the Giants have not said anything about putting in an offer after he clears waivers to pay him a pro-rated minimum.

Neither option is sexy. Who knows if Sabes is getting word from the top to do something. The need is so glaringly obvious though that if you were put in his shoes, I wonder what I would do. Panda coming back is not a cure-all, but it’s a big start. Signing one of those two could signal the end for Emmanuel Burriss, as well as the confidence in Freddy Sanchez to make a full recovery. Any move signing any of these two guys won’t be popular, but the front office has to convince themselves they’re better off with one of these two than with someone like Burriss, or maybe Culberson just gets the ticket back to Fresno.