San Francisco Giants Trade Gearrin and Jackson, call up Duggar and Black

The San Francisco Giants just cut dead weight, freed up some cash, and fully embraced the prospect movement all in a deal with their favorite dump site, the Texas Rangers.

Early Sunday morning, news broke of the San Francisco Giants making an interesting trade with the Texas Rangers. The Giants created roughly $3 million in room underneath the luxury tax by jettisoning the underperforming and most easily movable pieces in the franchise.

Austin Jackson and Corey Gearrin are headed to the Texas Rangers, while the Giants will receive either cash or a player to be named later. The Giants also sent them pitching prospect, Jason Bahr, as a thank you for taking on bad players with salaries that somewhat hurt the Giants ability to make moves this trade window.

Austin Jackson’s time with the San Francisco Giants was quite short. He was signed to a two year, $6 million deal this offseason and proceeded to hit .242 with a .607 OPS. Fangraphs has his DRS at a miserable -10 in 292.2 innings. For example, Denard Span was worth -27 DRS last year in roughly 1000+ innings in CF. He was more than a third of the way there, and likely would’ve been worse. Jackson was just about as unplayable as Corey Gearrin though.

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Gearrin had a decent first two weeks of the season, and then the bottom fell out. In 30 innings he has a 4.20 ERA and a 1.533 WHIP, just a year removed from posting an ERA in the low twos in 2017. Gearrin only made three appearances in the final 19 days of June.

To replace the two, they’ve called up flame-throwing Ray Black, and Steven Duggar. Duggar is their number three prospect, and Black is their number 29 according to MLBPipeline.com.

Black has posted a 2.28 ERA across both AA and AAA. In 31.2 innings he has 58 strikeouts and 11 walks. His WHIP is a nice 0.79. Duggar struggled a lot in the spring, but his numbers have rebounded quite nicely. He is slashing .272./.354/.421/.775 and has posted 28 doubles. He’s not going to be a power guy though. His on base threat and glove will be his biggest assets.

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Jason Bahr is an intriguing young prospect who really started to show well in A ball. Bahr was the fifth round draft pick for the Giants last year. In his first year in pro ball, he posted a 2.55 across both A and A+. He struck out 103 in 84.2 innings. He is a prospect that most will be very sad to see go, as his future was starting to look quite bright.

The big picture for the Giants though is that they have plenty of intriguing arms in their system, and at least three or four starters who can be ready in the next year or two. He’s not their best remaining pitching prospect. Losing Bahr hurts a bit, but the improvements that can be made to the big league roster because of this trade outweigh the negatives.