Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks shocked the world with a blockbuster trade involving Luka Doncic and Anthony Davis. It will go down as one of the biggest (and most questionable) trades in sports history, and many are wondering what the equivalent would be for the San Francisco Giants in MLB.
In what could be considered as the most notable trade in franchise history, the Giants received Jeff Kent and three other players from the Cleveland Guardians in 1996, but that does not come close to the trade that took place over the weekend in the NBA, or even some more notable trades in MLB.
But Davis going to the Mavericks for one of the brightest stars in the sport, Doncic, has certainly stirred the pot and made anything possible.
So this hypothetical, while outlandish, is no longer out of the realm of possibility.
After failing to sign the slugger in free agency just a few short years ago, what if San Francisco reached out to the New York Yankees and acquired Aaron Judge for Mike Yastrzemski?
The Giants would have their first player since Barry Bonds in 2004 reach the 30-home run plateau, even getting above 40 with how powerful Judge is.
In fact, though the slugger would lose 63 home runs from his career total if all of his games were played at Oracle Park, he would still have reached 59 in 2022, only three shy of his American League record of 62, and 52 in 2024.
That is not even considering the home runs he would hit in away games.
Of course, Yastrzemski is not an exact one-to-one for the Davis portion of the trade since Davis does provide top-tier defense when he is on the court and Yastrzemski is a roughly league-average hitter who does nothing spectacularly.
Yankee Stadium would work wonders for Yas, however, with Baseball Savant adding 13 more home runs to his career total if all of his games were played at that particular bandbox.
A trade like this would never happen, of course, even after the unthinkable trade in the NBA.
The NBA has vastly different rules than MLB and a salary cap with numerous restrictions on how they can trade and sign players in free agency. Compared to the NBA (as well as the NFL), MLB is the wild wild west with how much freedom teams have in their transactions.
It does make for fun water cooler talk, however, and this hypothetical would certainly see Giants fans celebrating.
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