Mission Accomplished: Giants Sign Scutaro to 3 years, $20M

The  report I can find on this right now is Pavlovic's blog post and Baggarly's blurb which reports on a Ken Rosenthal tweet..  Not too much details, a reported three years for $20M for the Giants to keep Marco Scutaro.  Also, Baggarly tweeted that the Cards never went to three years for Scutaro, but apparently was offering 2 years in the $8M per range, which led the Giants to move to guarantee the third year, giving Scutaro an extra $4M for that third year over the Cards.

ogc thoughts

Mission Accomplished:  Giants wanted to sign Affledt, Pagan, and Scutaro, and they just did.  All the deals reflect the higher salaries being paid this off-season, which is most likely related to the $15-20M boost in revenues that they get from ESPN starting next season with their shiny new contract.

Yet still, the contracts were all relatively reasonable.  Affeldt got $6M per year, and given that League had already gotten $7M per year from LA, that was a fair price.  Pagan got $10M per year, which was the upper range of what I was hoping for (I was thinking $8-9M per, Randy Winn range, if I remember right), but many people were predicting 3 years at $10M, so 4 years at that rate is not outrageous.  And he doesn't even need to duplicate his 2012 season each season to pay off on the deal.  Plus, Victorino's deal for 3 years at $39M ($13M per) make the Giants deal look great, though I would note that one thing most people neglect to mention is that Victorino has many more years of good offensive production than Pagan, and that is the difference there (for Upton, it was his age and potential improvement).  And Scutaro, I thought, should get around the $6M per year that he got in his previous contract that he signed, given inflation and two more years on him, and he probably got $6M/$7M/$7M, which is close enough for me.  As Evans joked at one point, if he can survive that slide by Holliday and still play great baseball, he's going to be fine.

I see some people upset that Gregor Blanco is now the starting LF.  These are the people who are never satisfied unless every starter on the team is some sort of star player capable of great deeds.  Most lineups have a Blanco (actually, they have worse) somewhere in their lineup, and a Crawford, if not more.  These people never look at reality, at the actual teams making up the league and seeing what it takes to build an above average lineup.  And you don't need above average players at every position to do that, you need some really good players in the top half of the lineup - like Pagan, Sandoval, Posey, Pence, even Scutaro and Belt - because most teams cannot afford to have a better lineup than that, and if they do have it better, typically that means that they scrimped on their starting or relief pitching, and then the Giants got them where they want them.

Things left to do are few.  The Giants are interested in bringing back Theriot and I loved having him around too, he is a great backup in case either MI needs a rest or, god forbid, out for some reason.  Those complaining about Blanco don't realize that the Giants is looking for a right-handed complement to Blanco in the OF - ahem, Andres Torres is a free agent - and Nady wasn't so bad last season either.  Plus Peguerao was pretty interesting last season, great defense and speed, could be a Hanchez redux.  They are probably going to look into former starters on the fringe for AAA, just in case, though they did sign Hacker the other day and Heston, Kickham, and Surkamp should be in AAA as well (where's Petit?).  They are probably going to give some vet a minor league invite to compete for the bullpen, though if they prove good to form, they are hoping that Hembree steps up and take that last spot.  And, of course, Brian Wilson is still out there, hopefully he understands why the Giants did what they did and re-join us, this is the best place for someone special like him.  Otherwise, things are looking good for a defense of their championship in the 2013 season.

Go Giants!

Giant Sign Pagan: 4 years, $40M

Reports from Baggarly, Pavlovic, and Shea.  As usual, won't be official until the physical is done, but that is generally a formality.

Baggarly claims CSNBA first call on reporting the year-by-year breakdown (Shea nor Pavlovic did not acknowledge this though):  four years, $5M bonus, $7M in 2013, $9M in 2014, $9M in 2015, and $10M in 2016.  Apparently his lack of prior full-season experience scared off some teams, leaving just the rumored Phillies and Giants making offers to Angel Pagan, and when the Phillies would not commit to a fifth year, he accepted the Giants offer (no word on any salary difference between the two teams, but the Sporting News stated that they gave the Giants a small discount).

Reportedly, there were a number of factors in this decision.  Part of the factors influencing the Giants decision to go to four years (it had been thought that the Giants would only go three years) was that CF Gary Brown was no longer considered on the fast track to reach the majors.  Another part was the Giants preference to keep the cohesion and chemistry that led the Giants to set history with winning six playoff elimination games to reach the World Series, then sweeping to win the Championship.  The Giants also wanted a full-time starting OF, as Blanco is viewed as a platoon type player.

Pavlovic warned that the "timing of this is a bit of a surprise, so we'll see if anything else comes down the pipe later tonight."

Next up:  signing Marco Scutaro.

ogc thoughts

He said he loved playing for the Giants and he ended up staying (perhaps for a little less), despite his wife warning on Twitter that this would be a business decision, so don't hate on them.  This is a good price for Pagan, one year more than I was hoping for, but this keeps a key contributor in Pagan around for 2013 and I think it allows the Giants to let Blanco, Kieschnick, and Peguero (and perhaps Brown despite the concern above) battle for an OF spot.

I would not be surprised if the Giants also sign a right-handed LF like Hairston or even Cody Ross, to compete and most probably end in a platoon with Blanco in LF.   Reportedly, the Giants are interested in Hairston, but so are a lot of other teams.  He only got $1.1M last season, but I can see him getting more than that and for multiple years given how well he has hit the past two seasons, particularly for power.  The Giants also might pay more just to get him away from an NL West team, as he has killed the team in the past, though it should be noted that he has not hit well in AT&T in his career.

He has also played CF OK defensively, so he could see some time there and in LF where he has played well defensively there.  He probably is the ideal guy to platoon with Blanco, as Ross would probably still want more money as well as more playing time.  But he grew up in Arizona, so he might not want to join the Giants - if the offers were basically even - given that he probably grew up a D-backs fan.

And the funny thing is that Pagan was viewed as the one harder to sign and yet he ended up signing first between him and Scutaro.  Most whispers have said that Scutaro is expected to end up with the Giants, whereas Pagan was reportedly pursued by many teams.

I have to think that Pagan and/or his agent knew that Sabean do not like waiting so long with uncertainty in their lineup, given how quickly this deal went down after Sabean on Friday stating how the two sides were still far apart.  He appeared to know that if he wanted to stay with the Giants, they would need to wrap it up by the Winter Meetings.  Given how quickly he signed after Sabean reported on Friday that while the Giants felt good about their negotiations with Pagan and Scutaro, they were not close and thus the Giants had made backup plans to move forward without either of them, I have to think that got Pagan to move faster to sign.   He didn't want his deal with the Giants suddenly disappearing, like LaRoche found in 2010 when his 3 year, $21M deal that he thought he was negotiating with the Giants was taken off the table once they signed Huff.

That is how one should negotiate:  be aware of everything that you want to get out of your negotiations and be sure to move quickly when you could lose a deal that you are satisfied with.  After all this, I think it is clear that Pagan did truly value playing on the Giants, as he stated frequently during the 2012 season, it was not B.S., like it was with, say, David Bell, who told Giants fans not to worry about opting out of his contract and then took a reportedly lesser contract to sign with the Phillies.  He did appear to leverage out one more year out of the Giants but that's free agency for you, with supply and demand driving the process.

Good Deal, Could be Great

I'm happy with the deal, it was a fair annual salary, and while I worry a little about the four year, I think that he'll be a fair deal over the life of the contract, as he averaged 3.4 WAR over the past three seasons and the going rate for free agents per WAR is roughly $4.5-5.0M, so the Giants are paying him at a 2.0 WAR production rate, if you are into such calculations (I'm still uneasy with such analysis, because of the uncertainty regarding defensive value metrics, but wanted to cover this angle for another perspective on the deal).

I feel pretty confident that he will produce somewhere around the .281/.334/.415/.749 batting line he has produced over the past three seasons.  That is a .317 BABIP, which he has easily beaten in three of the past four seasons.  He has also averaged 33 SB per season and a 81% SB success rate is very good, hopefully he can teach Brown a thing or two in spring training, and pass some tips to Blanco as well.

As much as people might complain about that batting line, that was actually great for a leadoff hitter in the NL in 2012:  the average batting line was .257/.319/.382/.700.  And the Giants, with roughly that batting line for 2012 (.263/.335/.424/.758) was second in the NL in OPS and clearly much higher in OPS.  They were also 5th in OBP (out of 16 teams, so in the top third).   And our hitters drove in the leadoff guy a lot, as the Giants led the NL with 120 runs from that position, and second was Arizona with 108, third Brewers with 104.

He's also OK for NL CF, where the average was .264/.332/.408/.741.  The Giants overall had a .277/.333/.423/.756 from CF, which was good for 6th in the NL in OPS and 8th in OBP, smack in the middle.  While I like looking at positional comparisons like this, I think the more important point is how well that hitter fits into your team's batting order.  And at leadoff, Pagan was great in 2012 and if he just continues his average from the prior three seasons (which was hurt by his poor season in 2011, which he feels was a fluke because he was out of shape) he should be great for us at leadoff as long as he hits at least that much, which is a lower threshold than what he hit in 2012 or 2010.

Defensively, he wasn't that great in CF, according to DRS he was a -6 for the season.  That was better than 2011 but much worse than 2010 when he was very positive.  His UZR was basically average for 2012, though, but still a sharp drop over his 2010 season while a huge improvement over his 2011.  If he just can be average defensively or just under, he'll be fine hitting what he has hit over the past three seasons.  If he can return to the defensive goodness he was before 2011, he would be a great bargain in production.  If he returns to how badly he defended in 2011, when he was admittedly out of shape, then his hitting would not cover his poor defense at all.

Overall, he's a good deal even for what he produced on average between 2010 and 2012.  Those three seasons were pretty good for a leadoff hitter, balanced by relatively poor defense.  If his 2010 and 2012 seasons is the range that he can produce going forward, that's a pretty good deal for the Giants.  If he can return to his great defense prior to 2011, that's a pretty good deal for the Giants.  As long as he's not extremely bad defensively for the Giants, he's a pretty good deal for the Giants, even if he ends up having to move to LF to make space for Brown in CF, where he has played GREAT defense there previously, RF too.

Pence and Posey

Speaking of RF, I should note that in previous Sabean interview last week, when he was asked if the Giants had discussed a long-term deal with Hunter Pence this off-season, he said "not necessarily."  I guess that they want to see more out of him in 2013 before committing to him long-term.  Or perhaps they are waiting to see how the budget looks after signing other players.

However, Sabean did say that the Giants have been talking about a long-term deal with Buster Posey and are "open to the idea."  Which is great news heading into their first arbitration session with Posey, who is a Super-Two eligible.  After recent big long-term deals with Wright and Longoria, that should set a precedence for Posey's signing.  Maybe something like $6M for 2013, $8M for 2014, $12M for 2015, $15M for 2016, and something in the $15-20M range for his free agent years, that's $41M to cover his arbitration years, then let's say, $16/$17/$18, for a 7 year contract for $92M.  Add an $8M buyout for an 8th season, or $20M salary, and that gives him a 7 year contract for $100M.

Last notes:  Lincecum is reportedly working with the trainers on a fitness plan for this off-season that will be the happy medium between his too much lost in the last off-season and his too much gained in the prior off-season.  Also, the Giants are open to signing Casilla to a multi-year extension.

The Hall of Shame: Marvin Miller and Barry Bonds

I just had to get this out there.  As a big cosmic intersecting synchronicity, Marvin Miller, the famed, long-time union leader for the MLBPA passed away, just days away from Hall of Fame announcement of who got in this year, with Barry Bonds being one of the big steroid question marks on the ballot, along with Clemens and Sosa as well.

ogc thoughts

Marvin Miller Should Have Been in the Hall of Fame While Alive

It just makes a big joke of the Baseball Hall of Fame that Marvin Miller is not in there.  Whether you like the results that he brought into the game or not, he was a huge figure in the middle of the breakthrough years for the players association where they broke out from the yoke of slavery to the MLB, then turned it all around with arbitration and free agency.  That is everlasting fame that the Hall of Fame should not and cannot deny.  Shame on the Hall of Fame for not putting him in while he was alive, he lived to 95 for gosh's sake and he battle liver cancer the past few years as well, so it wasn't like people didn't know it wasn't coming, if not just for the age, but the disease.  That he died without getting in - in fact, he was bitter about this and said in recent years that he would turn down the honor if it were to finally be given to him - is a blot on anyone who had a hand in keeping him out.

Barry Bonds Should Be Voted In First Ballot

Bonds could be the next embarrassment for the Hall and the baseball writers.  McGwire has already gone through the gauntlet and survived enough to stay on the ballot.  But he really was more like Dave Kingman than he was an Hall of Famer, in my mind, so he was not a real test of the fervor of the writers about steroids, as even without that stain, given the boost in homers in that era, he should have been borderline anyway.

Two things make Bonds a different case.   First and most of all, he already had a no-doubt Hall of Fame career when he was suspected to start taking steroids.  Whether he willingly took the drug or was tricked into it by his friend/trainer, I don't think we'll ever know the full story, but either way it looks pretty sure that he took the stuff.  However, most agree that he already had Hall of Fame career stats when he reportedly started taking.  So a non-vote for him represents punishment by those writers for him taking the drug, in spite of his achievements prior to using.

Second of all, it is still not all that publicly clear what taking steroids does for a baseball player.  Many claims are being made by writers and fans.  Plus, baseball is a different sport, where finesse and form is more important than physical strength, though strength helps if you already have the skills.

But the evidence, as gathered by famed sabermetrician Eric Walker, of The Sinister Firstbaseman fame and the A's internal Bible fame, suggests that it was a juiced ball, not juiced humans, that powered the Homer era of 1993-2008, and on top of that, his research shows that steroids does not do anything to help improve performance in baseball.  Assuming this is true - I have not had the time to exhaustively read all the citations, but I have read through the website -  I will quote one of his ending statements:

There seems little point in "punishment" for an effect-less "crime".

To me, it seems like the writers want to do this to absolve themselves of the fact that they did NOTHING all those years to investigate when it was so obviously happening.  And I'm throwing into this their shame for letting amphetamines stay in the game for over 50 years when it was happening all over the clubhouse, in fact, Krukow said in his morning KNBR show today that the team's trainer was OPENLY HANDING THEM OUT when he came up to the majors in the mid-70's.  In any case, in my mind, steroids does not help a player hit better, muscle power is not how homers are hit, for if it were, skinny Hank Aaron (when he started) would have never gotten the career record.

The Hall of Shame

The Hall of Fame is not supposed to be used as a form of punishment.  But that is what happened to Marvin Miller, making him bitter about it in his last days.  It could and probably will happen to Barry Bonds, as well as Clemens, who is also clearly a Hall of Famer (Sosa, I can go either way, but he was also caught corking too, I would note, and he was another one-note freak like Dave Kingman;  I would have to look at his career with more detail).

Which is all the shame because the writers do not know beyond a shadow of a doubt that steroids helped players.  If they would just, you know, maybe be a journalist, research the topic, starting with Walker's great website, they might realize that there was a lot of hand waving and sermonizing (and demonizing) happening with regards to steroids.

What if Bonds usage was more akin to placebo using than performance enhancing?  For if they think that they got egg on their face for not facing the steroid era head-on, from the moment that stuff was found in McGwire's locker for all to see (really, not one enterprising reporter thought to follow-up and investigate that one?  Gary Hart would sure would have had a different career in that case), imagine how bad it will look if they held out Bonds on high moral grounds that proved to be quicksand?  If all Walker presents is true, then Bonds is guilty of taking snake oil medicine or leeches, neither of which helps a player avoid a strikeout (which he did to great extremes) or hit a baseball well.

I have placed these Walker links in various places in the cyberspace, particularly websites that is known to draw a lot of readers, like The Hardball Times and Fangraphs.  I would frankly be very surprised if at least one reporter has not see the links before, not that I'm that full of ego, but I cannot imagine that the journalism profession has degenerated down so much that they do not even read baseball websites like these.  And I don't think that it is a coincidence that after years of me putting my performance box on the side, showing the team's record when a certain number of runs are scored or given up, I have started seeing this type of stat noted in the press as well.  Reporters do read websites.

So why isn't the press showing the other side of this issue?  Why not expose the demagoguery around this topic?  Maybe Walker got it wrong, but why not at least tackle the issue since people are making so many decisions and judgments based on possibly false "facts"?  And if he is correct, then it would be a huge scoop on their fellow sports writers, that person would gain a lot of fame for exposing the Emperor's New Clothes regarding steroids and bringing it to the public.  Yet nothing so far.

Amphetamines Was the True Difference Maker

To me, if anything, amphetamines was a bigger blot on baseball records than steroids.  It allowed players to play at their standard level of play, instead of being too tired to perform at that level.  That greatly affected all career records set in the last 60 years or so, since World War II brought that drug into common usage.  It is like caffeine (a legalized form of stimulant, I would add, so nobody is clean in my mind if you drink coffee or any cola drink), only better.  Where is the outrage for that?  Particularly since a number of players were exposed to have used the drug as far back as the 1960's, when Jim Bouton's book, Ball Four, came out and talked about the Yankee's drug use.

And sportswriters must have known about it.  Again, Bouton's book exposed it and yet no enterprising journalist thought to investigate this illegal drug use (perhaps because many of them were using themselves).   And reporters probably took them too when they were in the field reporting on World War II, someone somewhere must have known that usage would have gotten into baseball as well, tie the links.

Pete Rose Should Be In Too

And, in any case, the Hall of Fame does not exist to punish people, it is to honor the accomplishments that a person has made that made baseball what it is today.  That is why I think Shoeless Joe and Pete Rose should belong in the Hall too, especially Mr. Hustle, he may have gambled but the proof is only when he was a manager, and I also can't imagine that he would ever bet against himself or his team if he had done it as a player (and there appears evidence that Shoeless Joe was just a witless participant, particularly given that he hit .375/.394/.563/.956 in that series that he supposedly "threw").

Nobody drives themselves relentlessly, particularly without much pure baseball talent - Rose was a mostly modestly skilled player - and then throw a game.  He didn't achieve greatness throwing games, I think that would be impossible to do, a guy like him don't do that on a part-time basis, either you believe or you don't, and he believed in himself and pushed himself to greatness.  You can't do that part-time.

And even if he could, he's still the LEADER IN HITS ALL-TIME.  How do you keep that out of the Hall, even if he did do the unthinkable and bet against himself like a psycho, he still had more hits than anybody else in baseball history.  It is not a real Hall of Fame if the hit leader is not in there.  Instead, it is a Hall of Shame for all and any participants in the decision to keep Marvin Miller out, Pete Rose out, and, most probably, Barry Bonds out.  If ethics were so important, then they should retroactively throw out all the racists and other person with vices that is not palatable now, that is how the Olympics does it when they re-award competitions.  It would be hypocrisy not to.