San Francisco Giants: The 10 worst Giants trades of all-time

Not every trade has worked out well for the San Francisco Giants. Here are the worst trades in Giants history.

Cincinnati Reds v San Franciso Giants
Cincinnati Reds v San Franciso Giants | Michael Zagaris/GettyImages
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No MLB organization is immune from making trades that look, especially with the benefit of hindsight, like total duds and the San Francisco Giants are no exception. For every trade that brings in a guy like Jeff Kent, Hunter Pence, and Kevin Mitchell, there are others that were decidedly less great.

When looking at ranking the worst trades in Giants history, we are going to try to not look at too many recent trades because we just don’t know how many of those are going to turn out.

Case in point: there are plenty of folks that were less than thrilled at the Giants trading away stud pitching prospect Prelander Berroa with one scout calling it arguably “the worst trade of 2022”. Berroa could end up being awesome, but he is still at Double-A so the trade needs some more time to bake before we judge it too much.

The worst San Francisco Giants trades of all-time

All of that said, these rankings are purely subjective. Those who were attached to the Giants from decades ago are probably going to feel more strongly about those trades more than the contemporary ones and vice versa. Nevertheless, we took a shot at ranking them anyway. Here are 10 of the worst trades in Giants history.

10. Giants trade Felipe Alou

In the early 1960’s, Felipe Alou was one of the Giants’ more consistent hitters including an All-Star campaign where he posted an .869 in 1962. However, Alou was not pleased with manager Alvin Dark’s rule against speaking Spanish in the dugout during his time with the Giants. Alou would get traded before the 1964 season along with Ed Bailey, Billy Hoeft, and Ernie Bowman to the Braves for Del Crandall, Bob Shaw, and Bob Hendley.

Shaw was a reasonable starter for the Giants after the trade, but Crandall had one bad season with the Giants and was out of baseball a couple years later and Hendley was shipped to the Cubs a year later after getting moved to the bullpen. As for Felipe, he would make two more All-Star Games with the Braves and would play in the big leagues for another decade. Oof. 

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