Wish List for Off-Seaon Before 2014 Season: Belt Getting Signed to a Long-Term Contract

One of the things I would like to see in the off-season is for the Giants to sign Belt to a long term deal, much like they did with Sandoval, Posey, Bumgarner in recent years, and Cain and Lowry long ago.

And why not?  He has been a good hitter for us, even though he had been hindering himself with bad mechanics, so one could say that the Giants over the past three seasons have been trying to "tame" a wild horse (giraffe?) with his benchings, which drew the ire of a part of the Belt fanbase.  And which he didn't go through much of in 2013 season anyway, he was the clear starter, I just think that some Belt fans just get a little over protective of him.

I've been expecting him to bust out sooner than later, and I think 2014 could be the year he does it, given that he finally changed his batting grip and had such great success with it.  So I think it is imperative for the Giants to work on signing him up long term, the sooner the better, but at least before the 2014 season.



ogc thoughts

MLB Trade Rumors suggested as a model for Belt, Allen Craig's contract in 2013:  5 years, $31M, $1.75M in last pre-arb year, $2.75M first arb, $5.5M second arb, $9M third, and buys out his first free agent year at $11M plus team option for $13M on his second year with $1M buyout.  This was signed after the 2012 season.  In addition, MLBTR estimated Belt's super-Two arb to be worth $2.4M, so in this scenario, he would take less in his super-two year, while getting financial security (in Craig's case, $31M guaranteed)

That's actually very similar to Sandoval's contract, which was $3.2M first, $5.7M second, $8.25M third, which was the model I was going to go with ($17.15M guaranteed).  This was signed after the 2011 season.

It is also similar to Bumgarner's contract, his last pre-arb was only $750K, but higher arbs, $3.75M first, $6.75M second, $9.75M third and buys out his first free agent at $11.5M plus team option for $12M on his second year with $1.5M buyout, and team option on his third year for $12M ($33M guaranteed).  His was also signed after the 2012 season, like Craig.  I think in terms of performance, though, Bumgarner deserves a bigger contract than Belt, so I will factor that in as well.

As a comparison, Sandoval's career numbers were at 130 OPS+, Craig's at 134 OPS+  (but he wasn't playing full-time, so that is partly a platoon advantage), and Belt's career to now is 128 OPS+.  All their OBP is about the same, roughly .350, but both Sandoval and Craig have much higher SLG, roughly 50 points on Belt.  But due to the reduced offensive era of the past few years (as I covered in a recent post), Belt's OPS+ is very similar to the other two, though still slightly less.

I think the trend is to buy out a player's free agent years, if possible.  I think Craig's contract is actually pretty good model, since it includes his last pre-arb year, which is Super-Two for Belt, plus a free agent year.  Bumgarner only got $750K in his last pre-arb, while Belt got $531.5K last season, so that fits Craig's deal better, even though he wasn't Super-Two.  Apparently the Cards can be generous in that regard.

Then Craig's free agent year is less than Bumgarner, which works for where I see Belt vis-a-vis Bumgarner.  But I would love to also get control of Belt's second free agent year, like the Craig deal.  Belt is healthy, he's on an up trend, he's young, only 26 for the 2014 season, so his free agent year covers age 30 and his second year age 31, which is still considered by some as part of a player's prime years. I would even be OK with a third year, as with Bumgarner, at a similar price range, if that could be worked out, with baseball inflation, he would not have to perform at even an average level to earn that value.

Speaking of inflation, since those comparison deals were done in previous seasons, the inflation would be cancelled out, roughly, by Belt not performing at as high a level as Bumgarner, Sandoval and Craig did before their contracts.  So a deal roughly in the $31M range with a buy out of his first free agent year, and hopefully a team option with buyout for his second, and maybe for his third, as the Giants did with Bumgarner, is what I would be looking for.

These deals seem to only get done in spring training - maybe after seeing how the players do during spring training, that gives assurance to the team - so it probably will be a long while before we see any action.  But I thought it was important enough to note as a To-Do before the 2014 season.

Plus, you never know how people negotiate.  If Belt has a monster spring training, his price might go up, hopefully the Giants know his agents well enough to anticipate what they might do in that event.   We've seen how it worked with Lincecum's agents, how they didn't let him get bought out (though to be fair, I probably wouldn't have done it either, Lincecum did perform historical feats of firsts). 

And in any case, these long-term contracts prices in low levels of performances for the player, capturing the risk that he might regress or that it was partially luck.  And that is a real risk with him, since his batting mechanics could go wonky on him, since he's still learning how to repeat his successes, as he admitted in an interview mid-2013 season.

But, given the contract level and what he has done so far in his career, I think the Giants need to sign him.  According to Baseball-Reference.com, he has 7.2 WAR the past two seasons, and that with negative defensive WAR, when most Giants fans feel that he's a plus defender at 1B (so perhaps it should be much higher).  That is much better than average production.  So I feel that the risk that he might continue to perform better and increase his price is greater than the risk that he regresses a lot, and thus we should get him locked up, sooner than later.