Giants in the Outfield

In 2011, the San Francisco Giants missed the playoffs in part because of dismal offensive production from their outfielders. Their most valuable one was Andres Torres, who actually hit .221 and "slugged" .330. Their third-most valuable one was Carlos Beltran, and he only played a quarter of the season in San Francisco. Pat Burrell and Aaron Rowand combined for 570 plate appearances, and neither is playing professional baseball this year. That was a bad, bad outfield.

Over the offseason, general manager Brian Sabean addressed this glaring weakness by acquiring three new outfielders, none of whom were very sexy pickups at the time. Those three players, and their current 2012 batting statistics:

1. Melky Cabrera: .363/.402/.534, 5 HRs, 8 steals, 2.6 WAR
2. Angel Pagan: .314/.354/.459, 5 HRs, 12 steals, 1.4 WAR
3. Gregor Blanco: .274/.372/.445, 4 HRs, 8 steals, 2.0 WAR, 1 perfect-game-saving catch

Giants outfielders have produced a total of 6.3 Wins Above Replacement so far in 2012, making them the 5th-most valuable outfield unit in baseball. They contributed just 7.9 WAR all of last season. That improvement is a huge reason why the team is 37-28 and in 2nd place in the NL West. So what assets did Brian Sabean give up to acquire his shiny new outfield? The following entities, accompanied by their 2012 stats:

1. Jonathan Sanchez: 5.93 ERA for the Royals
2. Andres Torres: .221 batting average for the Mets
3. Ramon Ramirez: 4.78 ERA for the Mets
4. A Small Amount of Cash

In other words: nothing.

Meanwhile, the LA Dodgers have a right fielder named Andre Ethier, who owns a career line of .291/.363/.481 and has accumulated 2.3 WAR this season. He hits for more power than the Giants' outfield trio, but offers much less speed and isn't very good defensively. In other words, he's roughly comparable to Cabrera, Pagan, and Blanco (at least this year). But the Dodgers just invested $85 million into a five-year extension for Ethier, spanning his age 31-35 seasons.

So the question is: if the Giants can give up three terrible players and a small amount of cash to get three solid outfielders who can each do a pretty convincing Andre Ethier impression.....then why oh why did the Dodgers feel compelled to spend 85 million dollars on the real Andre Ethier??