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

2. Giants trade Gaylord Perry 

Yeah…this one still hurts. Gaylord Perry needs no introduction thanks to his illustrious 22 year career on the mound. The first 10 of those seasons were with the Giants and he posted a 2.96 ERA with 1606 strikeouts in almost 2300 innings pitched including 125 complete games. However, the Giants felt as though they needed Sam McDowell and his lauded fastball more and they traded Perry and Frank Duffy (more on him in a second) to the Indians for McDowell.

There was no denying McDowell’s raw stuff, but there were signs during the latter part of his time with the Indians that he wasn’t quite right. He was then bad in his first season with the Giants, got moved to the bullpen, and was out of the league altogether by 1976. As for Perry, he would win a pair of Cy Youngs after leaving San Francisco (including the season immediately after the trade) and his career would result in getting inducted into Cooperstown in 1991 after striking out 3534 batters and winning 314 games in his career.

1. Giants trade George Foster for Frank Duffy

We have reached the summit of our worst Giants trades of all time and fittingly, it is the one that Giants fans young and old use to measure all trade badness. George Foster was oozing with offensive potential, but somehow found himself on the outside looking in when it came to the Giants’ depth chart, so they traded him to the Reds for  Frank Duffy and Vern Geishert in 1971.

Duffy would play (badly) in 21 games for the Giants before getting shipped out in the aforementioned Gaylord Perry deal and Geishert never played for San Francisco at all. As for Foster, he would become an integral part of the Reds’ “Big Red Machine” teams in the 1970’s including winning the MVP award in 1977 after slashing .320/.382/.631 with 52 home runs. He would finish his career with 348 homers and 47.1 fWAR. Yep, that is definitely deserving of the top honors.

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