Your 2019 Giants: The End of a Dynastic Era, Thanks Bruce Bochy

As we all know, Bruce Bochy retired from the Giants, ostensibly retired from managing, but he's keeping his options open, apparently, by talking about maybe managing again.  He's mentioned working for the Giants in some capacity.  [FYI: wrote this at end of season, but had to wait until I did enough draft research to finish up, sorry]

Your 2018 Giants: Bochy's Bad Offense

I frequent The Athletic's Giants articles a lot now for comments.  Lots of people are complaining about the offense.  Rightfully, per my 4 or more runs Win/Loss metric, the offense is barely above .500 in providing 4 runs or more in a game.  So I dug into the stats, here are the results.

Your 2018 Giants: Big Mac Attack is Back

Like a lot of Giants fans, I'm excited to see Mac Williamson get to come back up and see what he can do in the majors.  Unlike a lot of Giants fans, I don't grouse about his lack of opportunities.  In this post, I'm going to see whose impression is correct.

Giants Ways of Winning in the Playoffs

I ran across an article that captures some of what the Giants did to win 3 of 5.   I commented there and wanted to capture that here.  Below is my comment, plus additional stuff, as I am wont to do.

Your 2018 Giants: Going Long on Longoria

Adios Arroyo, we hardly knew ye!  As announced by the Giants and various beat writers, the Giants have traded for Evan Longoria.  For him, the Giants traded Christian Arroyo, Stephen Wood, Matt Krook, and, to allow the Giants to stay under the CBT penalty threshold, Denard Span, who by DRS methodology, was beyond horrible in CF last season.  The Giants also get an undisclosed amount of cash, which has no effect on CBT, but basically is the Rays buying the prospects.

Nicely, both Arroyo and Span are returning to their homes in Florida.  It is something the Giants try to do with trades.

Per press conference, as reported by beat writers (I'm referencing Andy Baggarly's twitter feed):

• The Giants were CBT-neutral with the trade for 2018
• The Giants are not done, that this sets up another trade that is just as significant (!?!)

Your 2017 Giants: Post-Mortem and 2018 Thoughts

The Giants had the second worse record in franchise history, going 64-98.  I've seen many in the media, including some talking heads who I don't have a lot of respect for, excoriate the Giants for not planning on pursuing power, necessarily, when the annual post-season press conference was held.  The Giants senior management emphasized improving outfield defense, looking for an upgrade at 3B, and perhaps bullpen help.

FYI, all stats from the great Baseball Reference resource.

Your 2018 Giants: Cha-cha-changes

As announced via media leaks and then officially by the Giants, there has been a number of changes in the front office and the field coaches.  Can't tell the players without a scorecard:

• David Bell:  the first official announcement was about the replacement of Shane Turner with former Giant David Bell, as the new Director of Player Personnel.  He's been working his way around and up, manage/coach for the Reds, Cubs 3rd base coach in 2013 (I think pre-new regime), Cards hitting coach/bench coach since.  Evans touted Bell's strong experience and broad breadth of various aspects of the game. He also noted, "A lot of the success we've had [in player development] has helped us produce championships at the big league level."
• Shane Turner:  He is now special assistant for pro scouting.  I think of these "special assistant" titles to be the equivalent of "producer" in entertainment, a title given to indicate some importance, but a title given so freely that it loses significance to outside people.  
• Dave Righetti:  In a shocking move, Rags is removed as our pitching coach, which he has been since 2000 under 3 different managers.  His 18 years tenure as pitching coach was a record for the Giants franchise.  He was moved into the front office and is now special assistant to GM Evans.  The article noted that Rags is not a scapegoat, as the Giants were 4th in the majors in quality starts, and a number of other pitching quality stats.  Evans noted a need for "a new voice" and that "Changes sometimes are needed as much for the sake of that new voice, if anything, and I think that was really the priority here. ... When you see all that these guys have accomplished together, it's very hard to make a change. But ultimately change can be for the good of both your staff and your players sometimes." Also: "This certainly is not going to eliminate Dave Righetti's voice in this organization. In some ways it may even enlarge his voice." And: "Dave's heartbeat is in uniform. But he also loves this organization and our players -- our pitchers, particularly. ... I'm sure it's still hard to imagine, even for us, Dave not being in uniform. But at the same time, there's so much that he can offer in this new role. I'm excited about it." Evans noted somewhere that he had actually approached Rags once the season ended, seeing if he would be interested in a more organizationally influential role.  Righetti was quoted in a later article (after declining to comment after the original announcement of his change) about the other staff changes that one of his new goals is ensuring that the organization's pitchers are taught consistent methods from Rookie Ball to the Majors, and that "After 38 years on the field as a player and coach, I'll be looking at things through a different lens. Working with Bobby and his baseball ops team in the front office, I'll be able to apply all those years of experience to help the team in new ways."
• Mark Gardner:  Gardner is removed as bullpen coach, which he has been since 2003.  He was also moved into the front office, and is now taking on a special assignment role in pitching evaluations.   
• Steve Decker:  Decker is removed as assistant hitting coach, which he was just assigned last season.  He is now special assistant in the baseball operations department.
• Ron Wotus:  The long time bench coach, part of the Giants MLB level coaches since 1998, has been moved to 3B coach, replacing Phil Nevins.  That was his position when he joined the Giants staff, so this is not a new position for him. From the article: "Wotus, who last coached third base regularly in 1998 when he joined the Giants' Major League staff, sounded excited and in no way considered his move a demotion. "I'm looking forward to being on the field again with the players and having more of an impact on our offensive game," said Wotus, who will continue to function as the team's defensive guru. "This is about putting a quality staff together. It's not about me personally. When you're needed somewhere, you go where you're needed. I'm looking forward to the challenge.""
• Phil Nevins:  We hardly knew ye, Phil, as the rotating 3B coach experience continues after Flan manned the position from the beginning of the Bochy era.  He was up for a manager position (but didn't get it), which is what he is angling for anyway, but didn't want to be re-assigned with this move, and instead left the organization.  
• Bam Bam Meulens:  Bam Bam is now the Bench Bench Coach, replacing Wotus.  From the article:  "As bench coach, Meulens, who has openly discussed his big league managerial aspirations since joining the Giants' staff in 2010, will be more involved in helping Bochy outline strategy."  Another step in the rung of duties teams look at when evaluating potential managers.  Hence why Wotus has been routinely on the list of interviewed coaches each off-season when teams are interviewing for open manager positions.  Of course, after a dozen years of interviews with no managerial job, that's not a good sign either.
• Matt Herges:   Another former Giants player rejoined the team, as he was named the new Bullpen Pitching coach.   He was our closer during parts of his time with the team, and has been involved with the Dodgers the past seven years, the last two as their AAA pitching coach.  It was noted that part of Matt Herges’ responsibilities include “series advance analysis," which involves using the computer.  Evans added that Herges was added because of his ability of making pitchers better, not because of his interest/knowledge in analytics.

As noted in one of the announcements, Jose Auguicil will retain his 1B coaching job and Shawon Dunston will retain his on-field instructor/replay analyst position.

Evans noted that:

"I'm not necessarily suggesting that guys who are leaving their positions are moving to more suitable roles. They're very talented baseball people, and I think that there are opportunities to advance their influence and also infuse new perspectives, new energy, new backgrounds into other roles in the organization. It's just part of what happens in organizations, how you keep things strong."

Also:

“Teams have to change to keep their edge in an industry as competitive as Major League Baseball. They have to constantly infuse new ideas and energy at every level of the organization, on the field and in the front office. This reorganization helps us enhance an already successful group of some of the best minds in baseball.”

And from the Chron article:

 "Last week, when the Giants reassigned coaches Dave Righetti, Mark Gardner and Steve Decker, Evans said he was interviewing candidates with analytics-driven ideas. On Thursday, Evans said the pitching-coach changes and emphasis on analytics shouldn’t be a reflection on the work of Righetti and Gardner, both of whom he said were engaged analytically."

Your 2017 Giants: Bumgarner Got a Bum Ride

As all Giants fans already know by now, Madison Bumgarner injured himself severely on a dirt bike, and was placed on the 10-day DL.  He is expected to be out for up to two months.

Ty Blach now moves into his rotation spot, for now, and Chris Stratton was called up to take his place in the bullpen as long relief.  No word if Stratton will get short relief tries as well, like Bochy noted that Blach would get opportunities doing short as well.

Speaking of Bochy, he missed the KC series in order to have a heart procedure done.  Something about a misfiring muscle that caused an irregular heartbeat.  He says it was no big deal, he was fixed up.

Your 2016 Giants: Post-Season Presser

The Giants post-season press conference was held last Thursday after the last playoff game on Tuesday.  Reports from the beat writers:

• Andy Baggarly and Mercury News:  closer; coaches; power 
• Hank Schulman:  closer and other news; coaches
• Chris Haft:  free agents; bullpen and other news; coaches
• Alex Pavlovic:  free agents; closer; coaches; injuries and other news 

Unfortunately, Tim Kawakami did not provide a transcript of the press conference, as he has done in prior years - sorry, memory going, not sure when is the last time he did it, I'm pretty sure he didn't do it last year.  It saved me the trouble of transcribing them myself, as, often, each would interpret what was said, and we get a Realm of the Senses reenactment of a baseball he said, no he said, situation.

Bochy on my Mind: His Spectrum of Management

A recent comment about Bochy on Raising Cain got me thinking.  He was compared to Dusty Baker.  And I've added on, as usual.

2015 Giants: September and Final PQS

This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of September 2015 and for the season, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here (unfortunately, they removed the article; this link gets you at least to the PQS definition, read down to middle for details). I wrote on this first in 2006 (wow, 10th year of this!) and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old posts on this). Regular readers can skip to the next section.

This is the Quality Start with a sabermetric DIPS twist, and it gets really easy to calculate once you get used to it. I don't think it's the end all or be all, but then nothing really is that. It is, as I like to say, another piece of the puzzle. A dominating start is scored a 4 or 5 and a disaster start is scored a 0 or 1. DOM% is the percentage of starts that are dominating, DIS% is the percentage of starts that are disasters (any start under 5.0 IP is automatically a 0, or disaster).

Your 2014 Giants: Playoff PQS Analysis

I was just looking at the Giants stats when I realized that I had not done the Giants 2014 Playoffs PQS analysis.  So here it is.

Your 2015 Giants: Extensions and/or Promotions for Sabean, Bochy, Evans, and Shelley

As reported by various media sources (CNSBA, Extra Baggs, sfgiants.com, Chronicle), Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Bobby Evans, and Jeremy Shelley were either extended or promoted or both today.  I'll collate the info and add a few of my thoughts, below.

Bochy Getting Some Love in the Media

As I've been commenting in my blog, there has been a number of articles extolling the greatness that is Bruce Bochy.  Of course, I approve.

There was a great article by Jonah Keri about how Bochy is one of the best managers in baseball history on Grantland and I wanted to share it.  But if you know me by now, I'm never too happy about baseball generalists writing about the Giants because they always get something wrong that I don't agree with.  However, for the most part, Keri wrote a pretty clean article and very complimentary about Bochy, which I have been since late in the 2010 season when he started changing his tactics and strategies, sitting down low performing veteran starters in place of other players, culminating with the shocking move to leave Zito off the playoff roster, including the World Series roster.

ogc thoughts

Closer Leverage

Keri makes the great point about the bullpen.  This section was very good overall.  I think he's a saber, so I'm surprised he does not note that one of the things sabers want managers to do is use your best pitchers when it counts, not just as a monkey assigned to get the last three outs, whether it's a tight one-run lead or a safe four-run lead.   But he did say it:  "It’s about using your best players in the biggest spots. "

I'll end by quoting Keri:

Bochy is intellectually flexible enough to recognize important moments as they come and adjust his moves accordingly. In the playoffs especially, that’s a really big deal.

Bochy and the Vets

This section has the information I've been looking for, for a while now, as I had read it somewhere, started quoting it, but then couldn't find it when someone asked.  Chris Jaffe took raw team analysis data and grouped it into managerial and examined various aspects of a manager, for his book.  What he found was that under Bochy, veteran hitters out-hit expectations, based on prior and next season stats, adding 270 runs over a 12 year period (basically his years managing the Padres).   That's roughly 2-3 wins per year, just from that, and doesn't include what Huff and Burrell did in 2010, Pagan after he joined us, Scutaro in 2012, or even Morse this season.

So that means Bochy takes average teams and just from working with veteran hitters, make them 83-84 win teams.  And I think this applies to the next section as well.

#FreeBelt Was A Concept That Got Bochy Wrong

I am so tired of this meme that mean Bruce Bochy don't understand young players.  And I'm surprised that Keri didn't make the connection that he did not trust the young players in San Diego but trusted the young players in San Francisco (maybe it's the quality of talent coming to the majors?).

Bochy wasn't loyal to Huff, costing Belt playing time.  Any Giants fan of that time should remember that the Giants CHOSE to place Belt on the roster, to see how he handles things, pushing Huff to Left Field (which ultimately drove him crazy, but that's another story).  If that is considered being loyal, then I don't see it.  If the vet is favored, wouldn't Belt have been moved to LF, like how the A's moved Mark McGwire to 3B because they liked that other guy better at 1B?

In fact, the Giants liked Belt so much that they kept him on the MLB roster even though he had a lot to learn, culminating in his famous learning of how to properly hold the bat in order to release his power, TWO years later, because Belt was hesitant to follow all of Meulen's recommendations.  Only once he embraced ALL of the changes did he start hitting like the player everyone thought he was.  But Bochy and the Giants get blamed for that delay in development when it was Belt who was fighting all the changes, like a wild stallion (giraffe?).

And think of this another way:  if Bochy understands veteran hitters enough that they improve greatly under his guidance, perhaps he is a pretty good judge of what a good hitter is, and how to fix him, and that applies whether the player is old or young.  So if a lot of the Padres top prospects fizzled under him, perhaps that was more a function of the GM not delivering a lot of talent to him.  Remember, those were the brainiacs who drafted Matt Bush with the #1 pick overall, apparently because the Twins picking Mauer worked out so well, plus I think he agreed to a lower bonus (if I recall correctly).  Because that's not my experience with Bochy at the helm of the Giants.

There are many instances of this, beyond just Belt.  When Freddy Lewis was doing well, Bochy chose to keep Roberts on the bench and keep Lewis starting, even though Roberts was now healthy.  He often kept Schierholtz in the lineup even though he was super cold, until he could wait no longer (it was go time, last two months).  And of course, a lot of young guys have come up and almost immediately took starting/important jobs:  Cain, Lowry, Lincecum, Sandoval, Romo, Posey, Bumgarner, Belt (if not for his DL injuries, he probably would not have seen much more time in the minors after he was brought up).

For more recent examples, how about Panik, Susac, Duffy, and Strickland?  In particular, Bochy has put both Susac and Duffy into extreme pressure situations during the playoffs, when he could have gone to Arias instead.  Instead, he has hardly been used, Duffy has been used a lot more than he has.  And Strickland has been used in key situations as well, and he has had his ups and See You Laters! (four homers)  A guy unfriendly with young players would not have done that.

He has run the Giants mostly as a meritocracy, and if you falter, he don't make it about the player being stupid, old, or lousy, he keeps their confidence up (just see any interview where he talks about a struggling player) by saying that he believes in the guy but that the player is just out of it, for whatever reason, and he needs to get production by using other guys, with the promise to return to the player once he and the coaches fix his problems.

Beating Pythagorean

The next section covered his numbers as manager, covering how his teams did or didn't beat Pythagorean expectations.  So given the veteran hitters adding value which would show up in Pythagorean (83-84 wins), there is something extra that managers adds on top of that which Pythogorean does not measure.

Now the rubric here is that the average manager would just regress to the mean of 0 for his career.  But this table shows that over the 20 years of managing Bochy has done, he is currently at 26 extra wins for his career.   That works out to 1.3 extra wins average for his managing career.  That puts us now up to 85 wins, assuming he starts with an average team, just from his managerial influence, an 81-81 team is on average an 85-77 team.

Coincidentally enough, my study on one-run wins found that he adds 4 wins per season on average in terms of beating the rule of manager regress to mean of .500 in one-run games, which is the same number of extra wins.  Of course, if the team is a near playoff caliber team (mid-80's), adding 4 wins would put the team into the playoffs, either as wild card or divisional winner.  And Natch, a good playoff team becomes a great one, at least during the season.

Gathering all the datapoints, just from eyeballing the data, one can see that there is some correlation involved between his bullpen value add, his Pythagorean out performance, and his one-run record out performance, but there are clearly years where they are polar opposites, so clearly not the best correlation.

Overall

Obviously a very complimentary article about Bochy, and makes a pretty good case for Bochy being one of the best managers around and ever.

Why I Love Bochy: Bumgarner Gets Opening Day Assignment

I have written before about why I love Bochy and Bumgarner getting named, so early, even before the first game of spring training, as the opening day starter, just reminded me all over again.

Your 2013 Giants: Official Off-Season Press Conference

The Giants at the end of every season has an end of season press conference to go over.  Baggarly kindly provided a transcript of it, which I pasted below and added my comments.  I was finally able to spend concentrated time on it this weekend, as I took a mini-vacation break, as my daughter had a fall break.

Another BP Hit Piece on Sabean

[NOTE:  wrote this back in November when the BP article came out, but never got back to finishing it until now, when looking at prior drafts that were unpublished]

It never ends with BP and their hit pieces on Sabean.  Here is their latest (hat tip to Shankbone).  I have not forgiven BP for their 2010 Annual chapter on the Giants advocating that Brian Sabean be fired as GM for the Giants.  I'm sure you will never see that emblazoned on the cover of their book, "We recommended that the GM who put together two World Championships in three years - the first NL team to do it since the Reds in the 70's and only the third NL team in the last 90 years - should have been fired."  I've looked at their 2011 and 2012 annuals to see if they apologized for that but so far no.  Maybe in 2013?  Finally?  Probably not, given this article.

This column is named "Punk Hits" and really, it is aptly named.  This is the perfect example of why I say that it is best to have analysts following one team writing articles because when you get a generalist in, or worse, someone who just don't care (see the column name), because they don't have the full story, and yet they will influence a wide swatch of also unknowing people, essentially, the blind leading the blind.  That's why I feel the burden to defend Sabean vociferously on the Internet, because people insists on writing on something that they either do not know or do not care about or both.  For this author, it seems to be both.

I'll start with "The Good".  How anyone can write anything that is meant to be taken seriously (and since it is BP, a lot of people take their word seriously) and not mention getting Jeff Kent, Robb Nen, and Jason Schmidt in trade for the good, is beyond me.  And then in discussing people who played huge roles in winning the 2012 World Series, he leaves out Ryan Vogelsong and Brandon Belt, as both were drafted/signed by the Giants too.

In "The Bad", he acknowledges that he don't know about Zito's situation, spending a whole big paragraph on it, when he don't even believe it is Sabean's fault.   That's where having an analyst who actually follows the team is invaluable, because Andy Baggarly broke the news a year or two ago that it was Magowan who was the one pushing to sign Zito to that contract, not Sabean.  End of story.  Would have saved half that paragraph, I think.

It would also help to know that every team has a lifecycle and that the lean year in the mid-2000's was due to the good years from 1997 to 2004, which made the mid-2000's a lean period.  It also didn't help that pitchers who looked like they would be good contributors in some way - Ainsworth, Williams, and Foppert - all failed to reach their potential.  Just like it helped that the ones who were rising in the late 2000's - Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Wilson, Romo - did reach their potential (though not all went well, Lowry and Alderson didn't).

And then he gets into "The Psychology", and so he gets that noted psychologist, Grant Brisbee, head cheese over at MCC.  Grant grants that "He's a good GM.  I wouldn't have said that four years ago, but either he's changed or his luck has."

Lucky They Are Still Ignorant

And there you have it, the "luck" term again.  Really?  Is BP really going to go with the "Luck" angle on the Giants championships?  Don't they realize what a slippery slope that is?  Because every championship team has some element of luck involved, and if you make a big deal about the Giants luck, then you need to do the same for each and every one of championships that has happened in the past.  And if each championship has "luck" as a key component, then why are we bothering with following a sport that is so depended on luck?  What meaning is there when a team wins?  "We're the lucky ones!"  I really do not understand why people don't realize this.

Sure, talk about luck from a sabermetric perspective.  Yes, the Giants were above their Pythagorean, so there was some luck there by current analytical tools, as they were 6 games above their Pythagorean.  However, I can explain that one easily, Bochy had the team out performing the saber rule that teams regress to a .500 mean in one-run games, they were 10 games over .500 in that, and if you turn half of them to losses, the Giants are now only 1 game above Pythagorean.  Looks like all the luck is in that one stat.

However, as I've shown in my analysis of one-run game record for managers, Bochy is that unique manager who is capable of finishing any particular season at least 8 games above .500 in one-run games.  He has over 40% of his managerial seasons among the leaders in the NL in games above .500 and most of them were 8 games or better.  He has averaged roughly 4+ wins above .500 in one-run games during his career, making average seasons good and good seasons great for the teams he has managed.  So there was no real luck involved with the Giants in terms of Pythagorean, it was all pure Bochy managerial skills.

And I've posted this many times in Fangraphs or THT, hoping to interest any of their writers to follow up on the bread crumb that I laid out there, and do the analysis, so that it's not just the crackpot joke who ogc's people saying this, so that they do their own analysis and show the genius that is Bochy to the general baseball world.  And it is genius when you can average over 4 games over .500 in one-run games during your career, and has been among the leaders in games over .500 in nearly half of your seasons as manager, when most managers struggle to stay above .500 in one-run games.   That makes him a 4 WAR manager.

More On Naysayers

The Sabean (and Bochy) Naysayers just don't get it and apparently don't care to get it, they rather stick their head in the sand.  And that is why I wash my hands on them now, and don't really bother engaging any of their ignorant and stupid headed comments regarding Sabean or Bochy. 

It is not like I'm not open to criticism of their decisions and actions.  I do question them when I think they did something wrong (like Zito and Rowand signings), and I've questioned some of their moves here at my blog.  But the way I see it, there have been so many people questioning their moves, especially at the major Giants watering holes, but very few who seem to support their moves, at least pre-2010, that I don't bother with many of the smaller things (like game decisions or bench positions) since I assume there are already people discussing that. 

Plus, I acknowledge that I don't necessarily know everything, so I try to see it from the Giants perspective.  For example, with Zito, his contract works if inflation stayed high in baseball and brought the average salary to the $18-20M range by the end of the contract.  But the Great Recession blew that out of the water and he's still way over paid.  Also, they expected him to pitch pretty well, below 4 ERA in his early portions of the contract, and that didn't happen either.  For Rowand, he had shown good OPS for good stretches of time prior to free agency, and basically the Giants bet that with good hitting and good fielding, he'll be OK as a contract.  They bet wrong, his hitting and fielding were never that good for them, and, for him, again, it was injuries that derailed him.  That and thinking that riding a mountain bike is good fitness for a professional baseball player.

I also don't really deal with the smaller things because I've been more worried about the big picture.  I didn't view discussions about the 25th man to be very productive towards winning a World Championship, which was the concern back then.  If a mistake with the 25th man results in the Giants not making the playoffs or World Series, then I don't think that we really belong there anyway and even had we had got in, probably would have lost.  The 25th man should not be a key success factor towards winning a World Championship.

And give me counter-data.  I laid out exactly why I thought about the Giants, but instead of addressing the issue at hand, and maybe pointing out studies that are the opposite of what I was referring to, they bring up the AJ trade, or Zito signing, or Rowand signing, or Ruben Riviera being our 25th guy.  Which is not much different from the Giants in recent years, giving Uribe, Torres, Stewart, Casilla, Blanco, Arias, Vogelsong a try, or the ones who didn't make it, Velez, Guzman, Downs, Wellemeyer, Keppinger, Hall, Theriot, Loux, Hacker, Kroon.  Some make it and some don't, but the Giants were trying to find that keeper and they cut their losses quickly, which is all you can ask for.  But the Naysayers just clung to the mistakes that they saw and had no latitude for change in direction or improved success, for in their minds, once a failure, always a failure.

So I get it now, the Naysayers are never going to change their minds.  If they are so blinded by their irrational hatred for Sabean/Bochy that they are going to attribute two World Series championships in three years - something that hasn't been done in the NL since the Big Red Machine did that in the 70's, nearly 40 years of teams trying and failing - to luck, and feel entitled to make sophomore jokes at Sabean's expense - calling him a moron, essentially - then I don't know what else I can say that will change their minds. 

I've tried for over 5 seasons now, and gotten nowhere, so I truly get it.  If they don't "get" two World Series Championships, and I hate to use names or labels in such a way, but I think it is finally clear to me who the morons are.  And it isn't Sabean or Bochy. 

Your 2013 Giants: Long Term Eextensions for Sabean, Bochy, and Posey

I'm not going to bother providing all the links, just want to get this out, just check the usual suspects via links to the right (Baggerly, Schulman, Pavlovic/Mercury, Haft/sfgiants.com). 

Sabean and Bochy are linked deals again, sounds like the Giants torn up the current contract covering 2013-14 and gave them a new contract covering the next four seasons.  Rumor has it that they are getting somewhere in the $4M range, like another top baseball exec.  Well deserved for a job well done (twice! at least...).

Posey got a 8-year contract extension tacked onto his current contract, which appears to have been torn up, for $167M (it is an odd contract like Cain which includes his current contract for 2013 plus the 8 years, so technically this is a 9 year contract).  Here is the link where I got my news on this, from Haft. 

It covers his remaining three arbitration years plus five years of free agency, plus full no-trade provision, so he's here to 2021.  There is also a club option for 2022.  Posey:  "I'm thrilled."  Because this year was included, it is considered the longest contract for a catcher ever, beating out Mauer's 8-year deal, but short of Mauer's $184M contract value.  But Mauer's did not include any arbitration years, Posey does. 
Here are the gory financial details:

Posey will receive a $7 million signing bonus, according to the source. Having previously settled for $8 million this year, Posey now will receive $3 million in 2013, $10.5 million in '14, $16.5 million in '15, $20 million in '16 and $21.4 million per year from 2017-21. The 2022 club option is worth $22 million, with a $3 million buyout. Posey also will contribute $50,000 per year to Giants charities.

The Giants' commitment to Posey is nothing short of historic. It's a record guarantee for a player with fewer than three years of service time. Colorado outfielder Carlos Gonzalez set the previous standard with his seven-year, $80 million contract. It's also the biggest financial obligation to a player with fewer than four years' service time, exceeding the $151.45 million Colorado committed to first baseman Todd Helton for 11 years.

Analyzing the three arbitration years, using the 40%/60%/80% of market value rule of thumb, that works out roughly to valuing Posey at $26.25M market rate.  But then we get his free agent years at a lower "market rate", so it appears that the Giants front-loaded the contract on a relative market rate basis.

Your 2013 Giants: Bochy Talk

Alex Pavlovic kindly transcribed most of a press conference that Bochy held the other day to open up spring training.  Lots of good info there, though a lot of it is just standard manager speak in response.

Bochy Among Best Managers Ever In WAR Analysis

I ran into this right after I posted, and I usually don't like posting so close again, but I have to acknowledge it because it ranked Bochy 4th best in history.  It was posted on Beyond The Boxscore by adowrowski, titled "Manager Wins Above Expectancy"