New Toys, by Casey Mitchell

This is Casey Mitchell guest blogging for ST today. To me, one of the most exciting time of the baseball season is the week before and after the trade deadline. All of the hype and rumors before the deadline has everyone worked up wondering who their team is going to get, and once 4 o clock hits everyone stops and focus' their attention back on the season and making the playoffs. Now that the teams have gotten the chance   to play with their new toys, the questions are now focused on performance. Can he make the transition from a hitters park to a pitchers park? Can he pitch in a pennant race? The two biggest acquisitions in my opinion were Zack Greinke to the Angels and Hunter Pence to the Giants. I think with Greinke, the Angels easily have the best rotation in the American League along with CJ Wilson, Dan Haren, and Jered Weaver. When you add that rotation in with their stellar offense, they are now set up for a dogfight with the Rangers in the AL West.
Staying in the West, the pick up of Hunter Pence to the Giants is bigger than the stats show. Pence, a two time all star, is having a sub-par season at the plate. A career .290 hitter, Pence is only hitting .267 with 17 homers and 60 RBI. This is a perfect time for a trade. For the Giants, pitching can only get you so far. I don't care how good you pitch, when you score no runs, you will not win a ballgame. Hunter Pence knows that it will be a task to hit the ball out of AT&T so he won't be hacking at the fences on every swing, thus more base hits are sure to come. What the Gigantes really need is for somebody to get that runner from third to home with less than two outs, and I think that somebody will be Hunter Pence. I know that the Dodgers had a great trading season, so that just makes it even a bigger move to get Pence. Be prepared for quite the fight in the NL West this year.