Brian Sabean: Please don't Bring in Uggla, LaRoche, Beltre or DeRosa

Brian Sabean just doesn't understand the concept of replacement value. Blowing through the Giants salary budget on mediocre veterans is the hallmark of his tenure as GM in San Francisco. Mid-level veteran free agents rarely offer good value because their production typically isn't much better than younger cheaper players. Unfortunately, Sabean is at it again this year.

In his quest to improve the San Francisco Giants offense, Sabean has been consistently linked to Mark DeRosa, Adam LaRoche, Adrian Beltre and Dan Uggla in the hot stove rumor mills. While it would be nice to add some pop to the meat of the Giants lineup, none of these guys are worth bringing in because they just don't offer enough additional value beyond Travis Ishikawa.

Ishikawa is younger, cheaper and plays gold glove caliber defense. By adding an extra 200 ABs to project a full season, Ishikawa would have produced 16 2Bs, 15HRs and 63 RBIs. Factor in the AT&T power drain into DeRosa, LaRoche Beltre or Uggla and they all project to about 70-80 RBIs and 17-23 HRs, which just isn't a big improvement over a full season of Ishikawa. Ishikawa makes $400K. Given the salary demands (and prospects in the case of trading for Uggla), how could anyone possibly justify any these players for such small incremental benefits? I guess old habbits die hard.

	Bats	Age	Salary	AB	2B	HR	RBI	Walks	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
Ishikawa	L	26	400K	326	10	9	39	33	89	0.261	0.329	0.387	0.715
DeRosa	R	34	$6-7M*	515	23	23	78	48	121	0.250	0.319	0.433	0.752
LaRoche	L	30	$10.5M*	555	38	25	83	81	142	0.277	0.355	0.488	0.843
Uggla	R	29	$5.35M**	564	27	31	90	96	150	0.243	0.354	0.459	0.813
Beltre	R	30	$10M*	449	27	8	44	20	74	0.265	0.304	0.379	0.683

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*Rumored salary demands
**Uggla earned $5.35M in '09 but will likely receive a raise from arbitration