Eric Wedge Suspended for Tonight’s Game
July 27, 2009While We’re Waiting… Shaquille O’Neal on Raw
July 28, 2009Slated to DH tonight, Ryan Garko has been pulled from the lineup. Ed Price is reporting that the Indians have traded him to the San Francisco Giants.
No word on what we have received just yet. Will update as we can.
Update: The Indians receive Class A Scott Barnes from the Giants. Barnes, according to Baseball Prospectus:
Barnes was the Giants 8th round pick in 2008, and is 12-3 and has a 2.85 ERA in 18 starts with High-A San Jose. Baseball America rated him the Giants’ 9th best prospect coming into the season.
Update 2: Per Anthony Castrovince of Indians.com, it will be Andy Marte taking Garko’s roster spot. Expect him to play the bulk of his time at first base. Marte is tearing apart AAA right now, hitting .330 with 18 HR’s and 66 RBI’s.
32 Comments
If all we get is a box of donuts I’ll be happy…..nice! Hope Jhonny is next.
Who would give up much more than a shoelace for Garko?
Man Scott you are quick…beat me to it!!!
I will have much more on this deal tomorrow….
All I can say is PEACE OUT!!!
So, does this mean we will be seeing LaPorta soon?
The guy we got is pretty good, but young. This will more importantly allow LaPorta to come up and take Garko’s playtime as starting 1B and backup OF. That should allow him to play just about everyday
Big gulps eh?
I guess this clears room for James Loney on the team?
I’m a Giants fan.
Does anyone have anything better to say than “Who would give up much more than a shoelace for Garko?”
To be honest, I don’t know much about Garko, but I hope someone could tell me something better than that. His stats seem decent enough.
I don’t know anything about Barnes…sorry, but his stats looked good and I know he is young. 2008 draft pick.
Thanks
I don’t see the reason behind this, wouldn’t have been just as effective to send Garko to Columbus and bring Laporta up. Garko is only making sub 500k a year and isn’t performing to a level that demands a big contract extension… He’s performing better than most players who make that close to the league minimum. There are a lot better trades that could’ve been made today than unloading Garko I feel.
Why didn’t anyone point out that Wedge will resume being JUST as ineffective as Abreu when they both come back!
Laporta? Not so much … Its going to be Marte who will be brough up to see whether or not he can actually hit big league pitching finally
I have a feeling we are not seeing LaPorta because the Indians want to squeeze another year out of his prime, David Price-style.
Marte… Nooooooo. He’s a career minor leaguer.
Olney already reported on mlbtraderumors.com that it would be Marte coming up
Expendable talent, just like many more of the Indians. Cut, tighten, acquire, and build a true championship contender.
i will say it again: Garko, don’t let LaPorta hit you on the way out!
I guess this pitcher is a solid prospect at least… any idea where he will be when he joins the franchise? Kinston? Lake County?
I guess only in bizarro world would we trade our current 3b so we could bring up the 3b in the minors tearing it up (Marte)….OR we would trade our current 1b (Garko) to bring up our top 1b prospect in the minors…. am i missing something here? Not a knock on the trade, just on the call-up….
What’s up with all the LaPorta love I’ve seen recently? Are we really putting the faith of our organization in a guy that has proven nothing?
Dimitriy,
You might search for some past posts on this site, but I think the gist is:
Garko plays pretty mediocre (but he’s been on a tear recently that has brought his stats up). In general, he is no better than an average hitter for the positions he plays (first base or corner outfield), and is a below average fielder anywhere but first (and maybe there, too?).
There is also some negativity because he plays first base, and takes time at that position from other players that we might rather see, such as Victor Martinez or Matt LaPorta.
For example, this post, which discusses his fielding:
https://waitingfornextyear.com/?p=14594
I might have been a little negative on his hitting, as I haven’t looked in detail at the statistics.
I always liked Garko, but understand why the Indians had to get rid of him. A decent 1st baseman with some power — who put up some nice stats (usually in meaningless games, which the Indians have had a lot of in 2 years).
He’s going back to Stanford territory and the fringe of a pennant race.
I hope he does as well as Blake has with the Dodgers.
Marte deserves another chance. LaPorta needs to play NOW. The lineup, me thinks, will be very different on August 1.
[…] Checking out Indians’ fans perspectives on this, and I’ll tell you this: I’m glad I’m not an Indians fan. I thought Giants fans […]
good riddance…
Garko can now flounder his way around the National League…and who knows…since the NL typically isnt as strong as the AL…maybe he will be decent…I’m just glad I dont have to see his uncoordinated goofy running anymore…
I give him a couple months til SF says…”why did we trade anything other than a box of hammers for this guy?”
I think that people easily forget that in a full season, if given regular playing time, Garko will drive in 90 runs. There is value in him.
I, too, am not happy about the Marte call up. They started having LaPorta play at 1B presumably in preparation for this, right? Or is it in preparation for Marte being called up and then being an egregious disappointment again?
Will we see Jhonny unloaded, too? In that case, Marte at 3B and LaPorta at 1B makes sense.
Peralta had 4 hits yesterday! To every other team in the majors: COME AND GET HIM WHILE HES HOT!!!
The Indians are grooming LaPorta to play first base, but they bring up 3B Marte to play first. I have very little confidence that the Indians know what the heck they’re doing.
I’m guessing that the Indians already know that LaPorta is in their long range plans and are trying to get as long of a look at Marte as possible to see if he’s either 1) worth plugging into a corner IF spot for a year or two as a seat-warmer or 2) trade bait.
I also wouldn’t be suprised if they’re leaving Peralta at 3B in order to give him as “extended” of a look as possible to make him more attractive trade bait…perhaps in August before the waiver trade deadline?
Or, another possibility is that the Marte call-up-to-play-first-base is a completely dumb move with no real plan behind it. Who knows anymore?
What’s with all the Garko bashing? The guy gave his best effort every night, which is more than I can say for a lot of the corpses on the field and in the front office for the Tribe. Wedge never liked the guy, which means he’s A-OK in my book.
I hope he does well in SF getting regular playing time. I think we’ll see what kind of player he should have been for the Tribe if they didn’t jerk him around.
[…] in Seattle on Saturday. Next came the last minute scratch of scheduled DH Ryan Garko, who had been shipped to San Francisco for A-ball pitcher Scott Barnes. Wedge and interim manager Jeff Datz had to scramble to fox his lineup with Grady Sizemore and […]
Omega – people have always ripped on the guy…hes not that good…getting 90 rbis on a horrible team is nothing to be proud of…I think hes a mediocre player at best…they should have left him as a catcher…then his lack of athleticism and coordination while moving wouldnt be so bad…
he is still a singles hitter with below average power for a 1b…he will be out on the west coast, so thankfully, we wont have to see much of him anymore…
lol DK getting 90 rbis on any team with less than 500 AB is plenty to be proud of…especially when the next guy in rbi had 600+ AB and got 89 out of it. I wasn’t aware power was needed at certain positions? Last I checked when you’re in the field it doesn’t matter how you hit…? Bottom line is Garko did not make 1B a weakness for us…and now we have a huge hole at 1st. Is LaPorta the answer? maybe…but he hasn’t shown anybody he’s gonna be a star.
The thing about Garko is that nobody said he was the next Ted Williams. What I’m saying is that he brough something to the table as opposed to a lot of guys who have just taken things off of it.
I’m certainly not saying that he was the greatest 1B in franchise history, but he wasn’t a terrible player.
Even if he was as awful as you say – he was still one of our most productive hitters, so what does that say about everyone else?
[…] needle has barely moved with Tribe fans this morning in regards to first basemen Ryan Garko being traded to San Francisco for left-handed Class A pitcher Scott Barnes. While many of you may say that Garko was the hottest […]