The Mets are the only team that can save SF Giants from Rafael Devers nightmare

It always seems like it can’t get worse…until it does. That seems to be the way the SF Giants are trending right now. Yes, it’s just early May but this does not look, feel, or smell like a good baseball team. The Giants are 13-19 entering Saturday's game and they have hundreds of millions of dollars tied up in players who look like they should be riding the pine.

Rafael Devers has been awful this year for the Giants and he’s under contract until 2033. That’s scary, and if president of baseball operations Buster Posey has any sense he should be looking around MLB to see if there is any team desperate enough to save him from eight more years of Devers swinging and missing on fastballs down the middle.

In come the New York Mets. If Giants fans think they have it bad, imagine if San Francisco landed almost every big free agent imaginable and then still was awful. That’s what the Mets are. They have the highest payroll in baseball and yet they are abjectly awful, sitting at 11-21 on the season.

Mets can provide Posey, Giants an escape hatch on Devers

It seems like they aren’t going to fire their manager Carlos Mendoza like the Philadelphia Phillies fired Rob Thomson and the Boston Red Sox fired Alex Cora. Still, owner Steve Cohen is peeved. What do rich guys start doing when they’re peeved? Make poor financial decisions. Maybe Cohen is desperate enough that he thinks throwing more money at the problem is what is needed to put out the fire.

After the Mets lost slugger Pete Alonso in free agency to the Baltimore Orioles, they are without a first baseman. They’ve cycled through several guys at the position but they do not have a regular, everyday player there.

Well, Mr. Cohen. Might you be interested in a three-time All-Star who has hit 237 home runs in his career? What’s that? Oh, you want to know why we don’t want him? Well, uh, we just feel charitable and feel bad seeing that rough start your poor team got off to so we thought we’d throw you a bone. It doesn’t matter how much he’s getting paid. Can he play first base? Um, well…sort of?

It wouldn’t be an easy sell by any stretch, but if the Giants want to pull the plug on Devers now is the time to do it while you can reasonably point to his past success and argue that whatever he is going through right now won’t last, even if secretly they believe it will.

Conveniently, recent reporting suggests that the Mets are open to trading away starting pitching. For Giants fans who don’t want to see Adrian Houser or Tyler Mahle start another game, they could certainly rally behind a trade that sent Devers to the Mets in exchange for Jonah Tong, the No. 2 prospect in New York’s organization.

Tong is a 22-year-old who literally modeled his motion after Tim Lincecum. He had a 7.71 ERA in five starts with the Mets last year and so far this season he has a 5.68 ERA in six Triple-A starts. That’s not ideal, but maybe it’s the perfect time for the Giants to get him while his stock is a bit lower.

Maybe the Giants choose to ride it out with Devers, but if Posey is looking for the escape hatch the Mets are probably the only team rich and desperate enough to take a chance on Devers at this point. 

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