San Francisco Eyeing Wild Card

The San Francisco Giants are in the midst of a playoff race and they’re going hard for that National League Wild Card. They’ve already made a trade for Cleveland Indians 1B/OF Ryan Garko. Now Fox Sports reports that they have a scout in Milwaukee watching players from the Washington Nationals.

Honestly its no surprise that the Giants are scouting the Nats. The weakness for the Giants this year has been with their lineup and they’re making attempts to improve that. They had glaring needs in the outfield and at first base. With those needs the two players who would help the most are Josh Willingham and Nick Johnson.

Nick Johnson has been an on base machine his entire career, when healthy. He’s been healthy all year and is performing at his customary level with a .407 on base percentage and 42 runs batted in. Numbers the Giants would love to have in their lineup. The problem here would be Garko. Garko is primarily a first baseman but could play the outfield if needed.

With Garko already in San Francisco you’d have to think the teams interest in Johnson may have dropped a little bit. Is that true, who knows. But if it has then the Giants are most likely in Milwaukee scouting Willingham.

Willingham would be the big bat that the Giants sorely need. On the season, Josh has hit 16 homers with a .302 batting average in just 77 games. That would instantly put him at the top of the Giants homerun list this season. Matter of fact the team has only two players with more than ten this season, pretty freaking sad. Josh would be a huge boost in that aspect.

There’s another plus in acquiring a player like Willingham. His primary position is left field which just happens to be the biggest weakness in the Giants outfield. They’re current starter is Fred Lewis whose got a pretty sweet .256 average, 4 homers and 68 strikeouts.

Earlier on the Nationals did tell the Giants they’d have to give up pitcher Jonathan Sanchez in a deal for Johnson. Sanchez is a player that the Giants have balked at trading for a while, after another season of an ERA near five thou their mind could of changed.

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Tags: Jonathan Sanchez, Josh Willingham, MLB, Nick Johnson, San Francisco Giants, Washington Nationals