I honestly don't know. We hired a guy, Farhan Zaidi, as President of Baseball Operations. He was hired because he was an "analytics" guy. And "analytics" tells us that long-term, expensive contracts are not a very productive way to build a winning ball club. Because of that, we're not seeing so many of them and players and agents are whining about collusion. Farhan Zaidi has had a big role in building a winning ball club, with that blue-ish team down in LA. That team may be nearly unmentionable to Giants fans, but you have to admit, they have done a good job of winning. Like, in the playoffs each of the past 6 years, in the world series the past 2. I know, they haven't won it all, but they have been in a position to do so, unlike the Giants lately.
One of the reasons the Giants went out and got a shiny, new President of Baseball Operations, was that our previous GM, Bobby Evans, signed a number of players to long-term contracts that have not been very productive, and have certainly not made the Giants into a winning team. Mark Melancon is a case in point, having pitched a total of 69 innings in his 2 years of service as a closer for $15.5 million per year. You are, of course, familiar with others. Injuries are part of it, perhaps a big part, but the fact is, the Giants have not been a competitive team the past couple of years.
So here we are, and word is that the Giants are offering Bryce Harper, a guy who's stats are the poorest in Oracle nee PhoneCo of any major league stadium, a long-term contract of, maybe, more than 10 years and more than $300 million. How new is this "new direction"? How "analytical" is this long-term deal?
This is today's bit from MLBTraderumors.com on the Bryce Harper shitshow. I don't know what Bob Nightengale knows. I honestly don't understand what the Giants are doing. I don't know if Farhan Zaidi is running the team or not.
13 comments:
Farhan Zaidi works for The Ownership Group. Just like any other job he has constraints, things he has to work with or work around that he cannot control. If he had said in his job interview "I won't do this or that" then he would not have been hired.
The Giants are private entity. What they do they keep close to the vest because they exist in a competitive environment in which small margins matter a lot.
So I worry not about the Bob Nightengales of the world. They don't know anything, but they have to produce copy, that is their job.
The Giants have a fuckload of money. Any narrative that talks about salary limits or staying under the CBT threshold or any of that is just speculation. If the Giants think they can spend $300M for a player then they are the most likely ones to know if they can actually "afford" to do that. That has nothing to do with "analytics." Teams are looking for an edge wherever they can get it, and right now "analytics" is part of that search. Owners who dig deep in the coffers might be an edge, too.
As fans we are helpless observers. I enjoy the observing, in fact. I like the speculations. I don't care what is true and what isn't because in the end the team will play games and will win some and lose some. And we can jump for joy or gnash our teeth or whatever, and the whole thing will start over again. That's OK by me.
Obviously we are never going to know exactly what goes down in the Front Office unless Sabes writes a tell-all autobiography, and even then there will be stuff that happened he was not party to.
Relax, enjoy the show. If we get Harper all it will tell us is that we don't know shit about running a ballclub, and that's something I've come to accept!
NEVERMIND--Phillies get Harper.
The Phillies can have Harper. As I've said many times since the end of last Season, what I am most disappointed in has been our inability to play in the market for overseas Players. I see no reason why, given, as Mark says, we have tons of $, we can't take some chances on the name Players from that pool. Or, maybe we're just saving our $ for Mike Trout. Or, maybe, tomorrow, we'll sign Dallas Keuchel for twice as much as he should be getting. At least, that way, people can recycle their Brian Wilson T-Shirts. Who knows?
You mean Cubans? And Japanese players? Seems like the Giants get a lot of players from Venezuela. I expect it is because the rules are looser. And to be fair they made a pitch for Ohtani.
Craig Edwards at FanGraphs has a nice analysis of Harper and The Deal.
I'll cut and paste the last paragraph:
It’s possible that Harper’s defense has taken a more lasting turn for the worse, and will limit his value going forward. It’s possible Harper gets hurt. He might age poorly. There is inherent risk in making any decade-long-plus commitment when you only get to see a single outcome. It’s important to bake that risk and that downside into future expectations. When we factor that risk with the very good player Harper has mostly been, the great player he’s sometimes been, and the upside associated with a star’s late-20s–make no mistake, even at this high cost, there is still substantial upside–this is an objectively good deal. Adding Harper for 2019 is always going to look good. Every single team in baseball would love to have had Harper for this season. The reason those 29 other teams don’t is their unwillingness to make the substantial commitment that comes after this season. Those teams undoubtedly have their reasons for not making that outlay, but based on everything we know, the Phillies did a very good job in securing a likely Hall of Famer fairly early on his career while paying a reasonable price to do so. For both sides, it has been a long time coming.
Well never mind. As usual, letting my unrelenting angst get the better of me.
Alex Pavlovic says the Giants went 12yrs/$310M for Harper.
I did not expect that, but like I said the Giants are hella rich so why should we be surprised?
From ESPN:
"The goal was to get the longest contract possible," Boras told the Post. "Bryce wanted one city for the rest of his career. That is what I was instructed to do. It is very difficult in this time to get length of contract that takes a player to age 37, 38, 39."
Note that the agent works for the player, not the other way around. And also note that Boras did not meet with GMs (although they were involved), he met with the OWNERS. Boras knows who works for whom. He also knows who signs the checks.
Back to my comment about overseas Players, I'm not talking about picking up half-baked, semi-washed up people from the US or any other Country. I'm talking about real, ready-for-prime time Players who are mostly either from Cuba or Asia. Yes, the rules regarding signing those types of Players are different. And, they favor Teams who are loaded w/ cash (such as the one who now plays in a Stadium named after a Basketball Arena). So, where are we, when it comes to that type of Player? If reporting is accurate, we are either nowhere, or in w/ some guaranteed-to-fail lowball offer. One of these days, I'd like us to be serious about trying to sign one of these guys ... it's been a long time since Masanori Murakami & Osvaldo Fernandez. Not that those guys turned into superstars, but, at least we tried. Shohei Ohtani? A few murmurs about how we were interested is about as far as we got.
No, Ohtani listed the teams he would talk to and the Giants were one of them.
Here's a bit from the MLB article from Dec 2017:
One day after the baseball world learned that Ohtani had narrowed his search to seven teams, the Giants were the first club revealed to meet with Ohtani, a source told MLB.com's Jon Paul Morosi.
San Francisco -- which was also the first club to meet with Giancarlo Stanton last week -- sent a large group of officials who met with Ohtani on Monday in Los Angeles, according to a report from NBC Sports. The club has not commented on the reports.
The Giants' contingent included executive vice president Brian Sabean, general manager Bobby Evans and manager Bruce Bochy, along with All-Star catcher and former National League MVP Award winner Buster Posey.
Anyway, I don't know if the Giants are slackers about Cuban and Asian players. But both of those pools of players are (1) really small and (2) hard to deal with. Cubans, until the new agreement (the bribes for Cuban bigwigs), had to DEFECT to play in the US. We've all read the Yasiel Puig story, and it is some ugly shit. I can see teams being reluctant to get involved in what has been a people-smuggling enterprise. And NPB makes it ridiculous with all its fees and posting rules for Japanese players to come over here. So I'm not sure the Giants have missed out, or if they have, it is due to their negligence and not the vagaries of those "markets."
Maybe 30 million a year in 10-13 years will end up not being that much. It all depends on the economy. It could end up being bargain money by 2029 or 2030. Then again if we have deflation it could be worth even more. (unlikely).
Eno Sarris (who used to write for FanGraphs and now for The Athletic) thinks both contracts (Machado and Harper) are relative bargains, partly due to inflation as you point out, but mostly due to projected wins (i.e. WAR) per dollars spent. Sarris is generally a thoughtful and analytical guy and he thinks both stars are actually being paid less than their market value. Of course, the baseball "marketplace" is a rigged system, and players are not fungible commodities, but the youth and uniqueness of both guys should have generated a higher payout, what with revenues in the game being at record levels. My hope is that the new CBA will give players more freedom and allow them to reach FA sooner so that they get paid for their peak years and not the decline phase of their careers. More FAs and more player movement is good for the game and good for teams who are looking to add talent and improve their rosters.
It will be plugging up one hole, to fix another. If players become free agents earlier, the brass will find a way around it. Maybe they will bring players up when they are even younger, or maybe contrarily they will wait until they seem to be close to their individual peak before they brink them up, thus having more years of peak play for less dollars, if they cannot keep them for long. Look at it like a balloon with a bubble waiting to burst, but then you fix or push in that bubble, and low and behold another bubble pops out somewhere else. Any shift in policy in the next contract should be analyzed for possible bubbles, or cracks, and methods should be instituted to avoid the biggest problems that the new cracks may cause.
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