Thoughts After Cueto Signing Press Conference

With the Cueto press conference introducing him (accounts by Pavlovic and Baggarly), news about the details of his contract came out.  Wow, complicated:

• 2016:  $15M
• 2017:  $21M
• 2017-2021:  $5M bonus, paid $1M annually, but apparently only one if he opts out
• 2017 Opt-out:  If he exercises it, he gets $5M buyout.  Else...
• 2018-2021:  $21M
• 2022:  Team option for $22M, and if not exercised, he gets bought out for $5M

Through all those complications, if he opts out after 2017, he will have received $46M in total:  salaries for 2016-17 of $36M, bonus of $5M, and $5M buyout.   He can be traded, but gets $500K for the first trade, $1M for the second.

According to the press conference, they did an MRI and found nothing wrong, that the flexor problem he had earlier in the year was fully healed.  And obviously he passed his physical.  And while Sabers hate the word, chemistry was also inferred.

Pavlovic:

The elbow issues limited Cueto’s market, but the Giants aren’t concerned. He missed a start while in Cincinnati last season because of a flexor tendon strain, but an MRI during the season came back clean and Evans said an MRI the Giants took on Thursday came back clean. “His elbow looks great,” Evans said. “It really looked good.” 

 Baggarly:

The Giants investigated those risks, and deemed them sufficiently minimal. Cueto underwent an MRI exam as part of Wednesday’s physical, and GM Bobby Evans said the right-hander’s elbow “looks great, really good.” 

The missed turn in May that caused him to skip a start and led to so much concern from clubs this winter? A mild flexor strain, said Evans, adding that a contrast dye injection was the only reason Cueto missed one start. The checkered performances following the late-July trade to Kansas City? An inevitable adjustment to a new team and catcher, agent Bryce Dixon said. 

Baer said the front office contacted several of Cueto’s former coaches with the Reds and Royals, and came back with a positive assessment of his personality, passion and clubhouse demeanor. 

So what, exactly, allowed them to move past those ghosts [of Zito Past]? “It’s a fair question,” Baer said. “What we really saw was, if you have five strong (in the rotation), plus (Chris) Heston … we think it just gives us the best chance to win. It changes the bullpen equation. We don’t have to overtax the bullpen, which is one thing that might have happened last year. 

“We did a really thorough war room analysis and everybody said" [Cueto was the free agent to get. (cribbed this from the televised press conference and inserted here)]

“And the other thing, as Cueto’s name was out there, a lot of calls were made and he came through as a huge plus-guy in the clubhouse. A huge plus teammate. Huge plus. That was really important, too.

Also, Haft has some info regarding Cueto's workout regiment, showing how much a competitor he is and how fitness conscious he is:

Based on the testimony of Jeff Brantley, the former Giants right-hander who scrutinized Cueto as a Reds broadcasting commentator, Cueto works ceaselessly to match the achievements of Marichal and other greats. "He's a high-end competitor," Brantley said. 

Don't be fooled by Cueto's thick frame, Brantley advised. "If you take a look behind the scenes and watch his workout regimen, it's about as professsional as you can get," Brantley said. 

"There's not too many starting pitchers out there who run 'stadiums [up and down the aisles of an entire ballpark].' He runs them until he's blue in the face."

Bochy was a noted driver for this move, and how it would work:

“Bochy said get me another 200-inning starter and I’m good,” team president and CEO Larry Baer said. “I’ll figure out left field … It’s our recipe: Pitching, defense and sprinkle in position players where we can.” 

Sounds like LF will not be a high priority either going forward, barring a free agent desperate for something.   Still:

Although the Giants doubled down on pitching this winter, Evans said he remains involved on “all levels” of a free-agent outfield market that remains slow to develop. Evans wouldn’t say how much wiggle room remained in the budget, but the Giants expect their payroll plus benefits to exceed $189 million and thus would pay into the competitive balance tax for the second consecutive year.

But there's a 30% premium now with the next bit of news, which is that Baer noted that the Giants had went pass the payroll threshold and will be paying the tax this season.  At 30% tax, any additional salaries added on would effectively cost the Giants at 130%, or, in other words, for every $10M added, $3M of tax is collected.

Baer noted that the development of homegrown stars like Matt Duffy and Joe Panik made this offseason spending spree possible. Counting the Brandon Crawford extension, the Giants -- resigned to paying the competitive balance tax for a second straight year -- have committed $295 million to three players over the past month. Cueto’s deal is by far the biggest, and it’s a complicated one.

And a word about Lincecum:

Evans acknowledged that filling up the five-man rotation “does put us potentially in a difficult spot” to re-sign Tim Lincecum, who is looking to start again and will showcase himself in January. “But in the meantime, we’re not ready to come to any landing there right now. He’s done a lot for the franchise, he means a lot to the organization and we’ll let that play out over time.”

I interpreted that to mean that the Giants are interested in bringing back Lincecum as the long reliever if he don't sign with someone as a starting pitcher, else they would have just said "adios" like they did with Vogelsong because there are no more spots in the starting rotation.   That would put Heston into AAA to work on whatever it was that they intimated that they would have him work on when discussing the options with him.

Speaking of Vogelsong, he just signed with the Pirates, $2M contract with $3M in incentives.  Don't know details, but basically he's signed to a cheap deal where he'll probably have a role like he had with the Giants last season, and if he ends up starting a lot of games, get his incentives, I would bet.  Good luck to him, he's been a great Giant and we'll always remember everything he's done for us.

Lastly, interesting news to come out (via Pavlovic) was that apparently the team Greinke was close to selecting was the Giants, not the Dodgers as most (including me) assumed.  Apparently the Giants brass got the impression from meeting him that he was leaning towards the Giants.  Greinke impressed by asking about prospects that not everyone in attendance was aware of.  In their meeting, he blew everyone away with his knowledge of the Giants.

This could tie in with the information I read about how upset he was about Puig in the clubhouse.  This could have been akin to the Kent-Bonds situation for the Giants after 2002, where the free agent was not returning to the former team for any price because of a tense situation he has with another star on the team.  Given how Greinke is clearly a GATE student type (smart, but socially a bit awkward, and in his case, bordering on insensitive), it would not surprise me if he just wanted to get away from the LA situation, as Puig is apparently not going anywhere.