You can jump now or jump later

I wanted to address this Ken Rosenthal tidbit real quick:

The Giants have expressed past interest in Sexson, who is owed the balance of his $14 million salary this season and $14 million next season.
The two teams apparently are not talking, but a Sexson-for-Matt Morris trade would make sense. Morris, also signed through next season, has struggled of late. Then again, Sexson is batting just .204.

Before I get into whether the Giants should do this I wanted to look at whether Sexson is even worth considering before putting him up against Morris. He’s had a terrible season so far but I’ve been surprised just how high the cliff he fell off of was, so I wanted to see if this is something we can expect him to rebound from.

First I went to Baseball Reference and neutralized his stats to get a quick and dirty idea of how unlucky he’s been (Do this for Matt Cain. It’s fun.). No luck. His line raises, but only to .203/.305/.406. Still crap.

So I went to FanGraphs. The big difference looks like Sexson has replaced a lot of line drives with groundballs, driving his BABIP to a staggering low .211. This isn’t all him being a terrible hitter, though that helps. For proof, Nick Punto, of the .218 average, has a .260 BABIP. Sexson is also hitting fewer home runs per flyball taking his ISO down to .203 from .240 last season. Those numbers have been on a steady decline since about 2004. One positive is that he is walking more and striking out less this season, for what it’s worth.

So is he worth it? As Rosenthal points out, Sexson and Morris are each making about the same next year so money is a wash. I hate to say it but having a big power hitter regress to the mean in a Giants uniform doesn’t sound that bad. Losing Morris would kill some space in the rotation and force someone such as Russ Ortiz up a little soon, but what the Hell.

But then I remembered this USS Mariner post from the off-season. Remember, this was written before the collapse. So yes, Sexson is on the decline.

Of course, Morris’ strikeouts rates have been on the decline since 2001 so who are we to quibble? And that’s the real point. I’ve spent this whole time arguing who is a better bet for the next season and a half, Richie Sexson or Matt Morris. Both are aging, declining and overpaid. Yet one of these two may be the best option for the Giantsin a deal this month. Is it 2010 yet?