John Shea from the ballpark . . .

In a comprehensive reply to why Carlos Beltran didn’t return to the Giants, general manager Brian Sabean provided what he called a “long-winded explanation, but this is exactly what our thinking was.”

Here goes.

“It ended up being a Rubik’s cube, which was very difficult for us to make a decision alone with a forever-changing time line.

“We wanted to bring Carlos back. One of the things we decided was that, in our scheme of how things were going to be set up, he was going to have to play left field. We thought he’d probably be in the two-year range. That would be in our comfort zone, and we identified really how much money we wanted to spend on him in that regard.

“The problem was, if he became the left fielder, we still had (Aubrey) Huff under contract. We still had (Brandon) Belt, who perhaps makes the team as the first baseman. In doing so, can you really juggle all that? And as you wait to sign Beltran . . . Beltran wasn’t going to sign just because we made a two-year offer for X amount of money. He was going to play the market. At the end of the day, we weren’t going to go to what the Cardinals went to money-wise ($26 million over two years), and we couldn’t wait that long.

“At the time, when we were deciding what the free-agent position opportunites were going to be, including him, we were exploring trade options, the (Jonathan)Sanchez/(Melky)Cabrera scenario, and also we did kick the tires early on with the (Angel) Pagan what-if.

“More so, we found we couldn’t do both. We couldn’t keep the pitching together and juggle what would be a cumbersome arbitration case with (Tim) Lincecum. And what nobody talks about, Willie (Brian Wilson) at the end of the year crashed and burned. We went conservative as far as his rehab. He wasn’t going to throw until Jan. 1, and our bullpen was one of our strengths over the last three years. And not knowing if Willie was going to be at full stretnth at the beginning of the year, how could we weaken that bullpen?

“A lot of factors applied. We saw that (Javier) Lopez and (Jeremy) Affeldt (both re-signed in the offseason) pitched in a lot of high-leverage situations, tied, up one run, up two runs. We didn’t want to break that up. We didn’t think (Dan) Runzler was ready to take over for one of them. Quite frankly, in our league, in our division, no matter how many runs you score, you’re going to be in one- and two-run games. In meetings and in gut-check-decision time, we felt there was no way we could compromise the pitching. There was no way we could weaken that spot.

“As it turned out, we think we were fortunate we were able to make the Pagan deal. We had sincere interest in Carlos. Whether it was him or anybody else, we didn’t want to be cut short. We weren’t going wait out that market. We ran that risk.”

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