OK, team! There are a few things going on that area worth catching up on:
Giants get a bunch of arbitration guys signed. Pence for $13.8 M, Buster $8 M, Mijares $1.8 M, Blanco $1.35 M. When the Nationals can sign Rafael Soriano to a 2 year/$28 M contract, I don't think anyone cares about the money anymore. For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as a payroll budget in baseball and any team that claims there is, is lying.
These 1 year contracts do not preclude longer term deals later on. I predict we'll see one for Buster, but not for the other 3.
Glad to see Mijares and Blanco crack the $1 M mark. Of course, even $1 M, after taxes, does not give you financial security, but it sure gives them some breathing room if they are wise with it. I like to see guys who work hard and contribute on the margins take some financial security away from the game.
And, $8 M for Buster! OMG! After what they young man has done for this team and what he went through with that injury? Now THAT is a bargain beyond belief! Yeah, Buster. You earned every penny of that!
Speaking of Buster, how great is it that he visited Yogi Berra at Yogi's museum? Great Q/A with Buster afterwards. He seemed genuinely in awe of the fact that Yogi was part of the D-Day invasion in WWII. Funniest comment(talking about the injury and blocking home plate): "Yogi was telling me he used to straddle home plate. I'm definitely not going that route." LOL!
Nice link over on Giants Extra to a shoutout by ESPN's David Schoenfield about Brandon Crawford's defense.
Pablo Sandoval hospitalized in Venezuela with "abdominal inflammation" which can mean almost anything. His brother reportedly tweeted that it was "colitis" and he's already been released. Hopefully it was just something he caught from drinking the water or something.
Love the collection of minor league signings. I'm guessing word has gotten out that if you sign a minor league contract with the Giants, you have a great chance of ending up as part of a World Series Championship team. Competition for that last spot or two in the bullpen is gonna be fierce, although if they sign Brandon Lyon as rumored, it will suck some of the oxygen out of it.
Any other stories out there I should be paying attention to?
Pitchers and catchers report on February 13. That's less than 4 weeks away, folks!
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Go Giants!
ReplyDeleteDoes it seem that the figures exchanged between Romo and the Giants are strangely far apart? One would think that Romo will easily win his case.
ReplyDeleteThomas Neal is still a free agent. Wonder if it's because he is negotiating for the best deal, or is it because no one wants him?
I would say Romo's argument is he's the closer and the Giants argument is 1. They do not have an official closer. 2. The job is open to competition in spring training and there are other strong candidates. 3. Romo did not have the most Saves on the team last year.
DeleteI think the Giants win if they go to a hearing.
Most likely outcome is they agree on a 2 or 3 year deal with the first year being essentially the Giants number before a hearing.
DeleteBTW, read an interesting article today and now I can't find it. Darn! It was about the changing value of SB's and CS's. The gist of if was that in an era where power is declining and games are lower scoring, the value of a SB to get a runner in scoring position increases. If most of your runs are driven in with HR's, it's doesn't matter whether runners on base are on first or second, but if you are depending on singles and doubles and SF's to drive in runs, getting that runner over becomes the difference between an RBI and simply putting another runner on base who won't score.
ReplyDeleteAs for CS, if you are depending on HR's to drive in that runner on first base, getting him caught stealing takes away that opportunity, but if that HR ain't coming, then you haven't lost anything by getting thrown out because you ain't scoring anyway. Thus, the negative impact of CS goes down.
Later in the article there was a table showing how much every MLB team net gained from steal attempts and the Giants ranked something like 5'th. Anybody else see that article?
I saw it, Doc.
DeleteIt's on Fangraphs (Bradley Woodrum). Agree, it was an interesting take on the dynamic value (shifting with regard to more or less power (HRs)) of stolen bases.
And, as you point out above, interesting was the idea that the value of a stolen base varies with regard to each team during the same season, again, based on the power of each team.
Thank you. I thought it was Fangraphs. I kind of bag on them a lot, but they still put up some of the more though provoking articles out there. I thought this one was particularly interesting. It makes intuitive sense and is backed up by the math.
Delete...er that's THOUGHT provoking.....
Delete