In a surprising move to free up payroll and open the door for young prospects, the Giants traded designated hitter Jorge Soler and relief pitcher Luke Jackson to the Atlanta Braves on Monday night.
The 32-year-old slugger got off to a slow start in his first season with San Francisco but started to heat up in recent weeks before he was dealt to Atlanta, along with Jackson, for minor league infielder Sabin Ceballos and left-hander Tyler Matzek.
In an exclusive interview with NBC Sports Bay Area's Alex Pavlovic on the latest episode of "Giants Talk," San Francisco's president of baseball operations, Farhan Zaidi, shared how the trade with Atlanta went down leading up to Tuesday's July 30 deadline.
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"They expressed interest and we went back and forth on some different concepts," Zaidi told Pavlovic. "We identified a young player that we liked. Obviously, the finances of that deal is different than some of the rentals out there. And then for us we just had to make an assessment of our position group, how we got more young players in there and the DH spot, as we talked about, is a spot we identified as a place we'd get Marco Luciano at-bats, a place we could get guys off their feet.
"Just the flexibility of opening that up, it started to become apparent to us that it was, as much as we loved Jorge and how well he played for us, especially the last couple months, it was kind of a lever to create more roster flexibility. Which I think for Bob [Melvin] to manage the way he wants to manage, the way he's been successful in past stops, we needed to create a little bit more of that."
The Giants, as Zaidi mentioned, intend to use the designated hitter spot to give young prospects like Luciano consistent at-bats and even to give everyday players like outfielder Heliot Ramos and key veterans a day off defensively.
While the trade initially might have been a head-scratching move to many, Zaidi and the Giants believe trading Soler could end up being beneficial for the club in the long run.
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