The final player eligible for arbitration, Andres Torres, signed for either $2.1M or $2.2M, I have seen both figures. The sfgiants.com website article by Half reported $2.1M and, while I can't find it online, I read in the San Jose Mercury that he signed for $2.2M plus $100K in incentives. The Chronicle reports only $2.2M. Who knows, maybe it is $2.1M with $100K in incentives, which could account for both reports. $2.2M is the mid-point between the salaries that the Giants and Torres submitted to the arbitration board.
Now it is time for the Giants to handle all the pre-arb players, like Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner. While they have the right to impose any salary that they want, as the Brewers found out when they did that with Prince Fielder, just doing that without some negotiation and agreement with the player and his reps could lead to a poisoned relationship. Obviously, Posey is the tougher one since he won the Rookie of the Year award, but Bumgarner pitched a great shutout in the World Series. Lincecum, though, after his Cy Young season got $650,000, according to Baseball-Forecaster.com, so I would say that is the ceiling.
And hopefully the Giants can work on a long term deal with one or two of their young arbitration players to get more salary certainty.
Andres Torres is one of the more intriguing players for 2011 on a team chock full of intriguing players. Dude hung up a 6 WAR season last year despite being a reserve for much of the first month of the season and essentially missing the month of September due to illness. A 6 WAR season is just stupendous! Fangraphs did a fan projection that put him at 4.1 WAR for 2011 which is still a darn good season. Just for comparison, Vernon Wells put up the 3'rd best season of his career last year and was 4 WAR.
ReplyDeleteWhat I liked about Torres last year is how hard he hit the ball. Fully half of his hits went for extra bases. he just drove the ball, into the gaps, over the fence. He just hit it hard and kept hitting it hard.
If he can keep doing that this year, the Giants are in very good shape. His performance in the NLCS and WS after looking lost in September and the NLDS was encouraging.
Too early for Posey and Bumgarner. At least play them a whole season first.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the Giants paid Posey $6.2 million and Bumbarner $2 mil before they even put on Giants uniforms. It's not like the team will be considered going cheap on 'em.
Though I'd be more likely to ink Posey, less likely to have an injury derail his career.
Yes, Torres was a monster in 2010! He clearly was swinging for power both years with us, and while that got him a lot of strikeouts, it also got us a lot of great hitting to boot.
ReplyDeleteClearly, his lessons on hitting took hold in 2009 and his prior poor hitting should not count against him, as most projections assume. So I am expecting him to have another great season. Yes, his performance in the latter stages of the playoffs was very encouraging, though I would note that most estimates on when he could come back from the surgery was right around when he started hitting again, but he came back way early.
Though that might have been good as he obviously had his batting stroke once he got healthy, instead of probably being rusty had he rested instead...