Barber: Jeff Samardzija gives Giants some trade value

SAN FRANCISCO

Jeff Samardzija was dealing Wednesday afternoon, which means the Giants? might soon be dealing, too.

Samardzija pitched one of his best games of the season as the Giants clipped the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-1 at AT&T Park, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Not because an effective Jeff Samardzija will have a huge bearing on the team’s fortunes this year - when you’re 31 games out of first place, a healthy Willie Mays wouldn’t make much difference - but because the performance could increase the pitcher’s trade value.

After the game, Giants manager Bruce Bochy sang an ode to Samardzija, emphasizing his ability to pitch deep into games.

“It’s the body of work, the innings that they’re giving you along with the wins,” Bochy said. “Now, the starter can’t always control that W, those wins, because he can’t control how many runs he’s gonna get. But he can control the number of times that he goes out there and gives you a chance to win, and I think he does that quite often.”

Bochy was sitting at a podium in a small interview room, but he may as well have been standing in a car lot, wearing a cowboy hat and pointing at the camera as those little flags flapped in the breeze. You can picture Bochy resting a hand on the smiling Samardzija and saying, “Just check out this sweet ’85 model. He’s got a little mileage, but he’s built to work. Great torque, and a huge gas tank. Ask us about financing!”

The Major League Baseball non-waiver trade deadline is Monday, and the Giants find themselves in an unfamiliar place. They are sellers this year, not buyers.

And now that the team has dealt third baseman Eduardo Nunez to Boston, Samardzija is one of the biggest pieces of bait in the bucket.

Unless you believe Samardzija.

“I wasn’t in any trade talk,” he said after he had limited the Pirates to one run and four hits, striking out eight batters over seven innings. “Maybe some people using my name for value and trying to strong-arm other teams to get a better deal for what they want.”

Asked whether it bothers him to see his name popping up in trade stories, Samardzija added: “I don’t read the news anyways.”

If he did, he would know what we’re talking about. Here’s a headline from CBS Sports on July 19: “MLB Trade Deadline Rumors: Giants getting calls on Jeff Samardzija, Hunter Strickland.”

Here’s one from MLBTradeRumors.com on July 15: “Astros have interest in Jeff Samardzija.”

And from The Sporting News on Tuesday: “MLB trade rumors: Giants open to dealing Johnny Cueto, Jeff Samardzija.”

Samardzija isn’t the ideal trade prospect. He has logged some truly atrocious starts this year, and even after the win against Pittsburgh, he has a 5-11 record and an earned run average of 4.85. He also is scheduled to make nearly $60 million over the next three seasons. The Giants might have to take on some of that contract if they hope to move him. And according to several reports, Samardzija has a no-trade clause that could prevent him from being swapped to all but eight teams.

On the other hand, Samardzija is a well-liked teammate and a workhorse who is on pace to top 200 innings for the fifth consecutive season. He’d be a solid No. 4 or No. 5 starter for a contender.

This isn’t the first time Samardzija has been through the trade-deadline wringer. The Cubs sent him to the A’s (talk about an unfamiliar role!) on July 5, 2014, making him a half-year rental in Oakland.

Johnny Cueto has been through it before, too (Reds to Royals in 2015), as have Giants starting pitcher Matt Moore (Rays to Giants last year) and reliever Mark Melancon (Pirates to Nationals last year). Right fielder Hunter Pence has been shipped at the trade deadline not once but twice (Astros to Phillies in 2011, Phillies to Giants in 2012).

Nunez had joined the Giants in a trade from Minnesota almost exactly one year earlier, and Tuesday night he was moving again. In a bizarre scene that could happen only in baseball, Bochy approached the third baseman in the bottom of the fifth inning, and informed him he was headed to Boston in exchange for a pair of minor-league prospects.

“Yeah. I told him in the dugout,” Bochy said before Wednesday’s game. “His spot was coming up, and told him I had to hit for him, and why. Thanked him for everything.”

For players thrown into the rumor mill, the trade deadline is a weird time.

“I truly with my whole heart believed I wasn’t gonna get traded,” Moore told me. “It really didn’t feel like it was quite my time yet, because of my contract status. And I’d just started to throw well after Tommy John (surgery). So I really felt pretty comfortable.”

Moore told his agent to stop bugging him with vague updates. Just let me know if it’s serious, the pitcher said. And then it was. Tampa Bay sent him to the Giants, who were tearing up the National League at the time, for Matt Duffy and two minor leaguers.

“Just in the moment, I kind of thought about leaving my teammates,” Moore said. “So I was kind of in a bad way with that, just because I’d played with them for so long. But as the night started to go on, and realizing what I was about to be a part of was something really special - going from one of the worst teams in the league to the best team in baseball - was a pretty big shot in the arm.”

That’s the silver lining for MLB veterans who get traded. It’s a shock to hear you’re about to be uprooted and thrown into a completely new environment, and that you have no choice in the matter. But it almost always puts the tradee in a better situation.

That’s certainly true of Nunez, who went from last place in the NL West to first place in the AL East as soon as he was done exchanging hugs in the home dugout at AT&T.

Bochy doesn’t believe the constant stream of MLB gossip is wearing on his players.

“They’ve been hiding it, if it is tough on ’em,” he said. “Nuney, I was kidding him about that (Tuesday). Players would walk up to him and, ‘Hey, you still here?’ Because there’s so many rumors out there of where he was going. He didn’t let it affect him at all.”

Apparently, it isn’t having much negative impact on Samardzija, either. The big righty threw a gem Wednesday in what could be his final start here.

Asked whether he’s confident he’ll be a Giant on Monday, Samardzija said: “Yeah, pretty confident. I haven’t heard anything. So you guys probably know more than I would, man. Usually when it’s something like that, your name gets popped up but nothing happens. Usually there’s interest but they’re asking too much.”

Maybe that will be the case. But it won’t stop the Astros and a few other teams from, you know, kicking the tires a little bit.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.