6 players the SF Giants should have traded before their trade value tanked

Will Bednar

Pitching prospects are prime candidates to die on the vine and there is a real chance that Will Bednar could end up being such an arm. Bednar blasted his way into the middle of the first round in 2021 thanks to one of the more dominant performances in the College World Series you will ever see. Trading a guy the year he is drafted isn't usually advisable, but that may turn out to be the peak of his value.

The issue is that Bednar has already been bitten by the injury bug as issues with his back have really slowed his development. Again, keeping Bednar as long as they have is certainly understandable given his potential and how highly they picked him. However, this is the risk in investing pitching prospects to begin with. If he turns things around in the near future, it might be advisable for San Francisco to flip him and sell high while they can.

Casey Schmitt

There is no denying that Casey Schmitt has a chance to be special defensively at third base. He has the arm to make plays from anywhere and he constantly puts in the work to get to balls at any angle. He also was an excellent hitter in the minor leagues and if the Giants had been able to include him in a track package after the 2022 season where he posted an .854 OPS, he could have been the centerpiece in a big deal.

That is not what happened, however, and Schmitt's bat has been exposed in the big leagues this season. In almost 200 plate appearances in the big leagues in 2023, he has put up just a 52 wRC+ and he hasn't even been a particularly good defender. There is still a chance that Schmitt turns things around, but the odds are worse now than they were before the season.

Alex Wood

Finally, we come to Alex Wood who is a cautionary tale about not reading too much into a one season sample. In 2021, Wood was coming off back to back seasons where he had not pitched well and had dealt with back and shoulder issues. However, he put together a really nice season with the Giants with a 3.83 ERA. Trading him at the deadline wasn't really an option since the Giants were in the middle of a pennant race, but that probably would have been better than what actually happened.

Instead of letting Wood leave in free agency, the Giants signed him to a two year, $25 million deal. Wood's surface numbers weren't great in 2022, but his peripherals still looked good and he could have gotten a nice return in a trade given the extra year of team control. The Giants also didn't do that and Wood has looked even worse this year with big-time regression in his strikeout and walk rates.

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