Giants stars Tim Lincecum, Hunter Pence and Javier Lopez all went on waivers Saturday and were quickly claimed by teams, according to Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com. However, someone familiar with the situation told Heyman that "none of them are going anywhere."
While the Giants could still trade any of the players, it appears that either the claiming teams were doing so in order to block trades or the Giants weren't really interested in trading any of the three. The Giants could save close to $8MM by dropping the pending free agents, but there's reason to believe that they were never eager to deal three players who have helped them win World Series titles. With Lincecum and Pence, the Giants have extra incentive to keep them as they plan to extend qualifying offers and collect draft picks if they go elsewhere.
Lincecum owns a 4.55 ERA with 9.4 K/9 and 3.6 BB/9 but he is seen as someone who can help teams as a reliever or starter and one rival exec is confident that he's "better than a 4.5 ERA pitcher." The right-hander is owed $4.2MM for the remainder of the year. Pence, who makes about $2.8MM and Lopez, who is owed just $859K until the end, were locks to be claimed. At any rate, it appears that all three men will finish the season in San Francisco.
