The Giants brought in Alex Wood to add a lefty arm to the starting rotation. Wood should be familiar to Giants fans from his tenure in Los Angeles with the Dodgers. Most recently he pitched four innings of relief in the 2020 World Series, allowing two hits and no runs with five whiffs.
A quick check of Baseball-Reference shows that his last full season was 2018 when he started 27 games. The year before that he was an All-Star. He just turned 30 years old and has a 3.45 ERA (3.51 FIP) over eight seasons and almost 900 IP (138 GS).
It is a $3M deal for one season with incentives. Another low-risk move by Zaidi, Harris, & Co.
--M.C.
24 comments:
It may be a low risk move from a dollar standpoint, but Wood has had 2 consecutive years of disappointment, his WS appearance notwithstanding. Still, if he can regain even most of his 2018 success, it would be a good pick up for the Giants. If.
Given that Alex Wood, or any of these low risk moves, could be traded or cut, it is hard to have even more than a marginal interest in these off-season maneuverings. It is at this time of the year that I yearn for some hard, relevant baseball news.
https://www.tmz.com/2021/01/15/tim-lincecum-texas-rangers-bet-salad-dressing-tyler-wagner/
Trade, sure. Cut, probably not. It's an ML contract, and $3M is 5x the ML minimum.
There are a ton of "replacement-level" arms out there that can be picked up for that minimum, and if they did THAT instead of sign a real ML player, then it would be a marginal move.
Guys who have a proven track record of success in the majors are rare beasts. He'd have to flame out--like career-ending--to get cut loose, especially being a lefty. The Giants are willing to bet $3M that Wood can still be an effective starter, and I think it is a safe bet. I'd like to see them get another lefty. Or two.
You gotta love Lincecum stories, even if they are really stupid. But a grand to him is nothing! That'd be like a ten-dollar bet for one of us.
Of all the players we've seen over the years, I miss Timmy the most. He was a lot of fun. When he was on top of his game he was really something. "The Freak" was a perfect nickname.
The Giants just signed a bunch of guys from Latin America, aka "international free agents."
Here's a tweet with the list of names.
There is also a story about one of the prospects, Diego Velasquez, on the Giants page.
Local boys have to go through The Draft. Foreigners take a different path. There are some byzantine regulations about all that stuff but I'll admit to a deliberate ignorance about most of it.
(You know how I feel: make everyone equal! Kill The Draft! Universal Free Agency!)
Dan Szymborksi over at FanGraphs takes a look at the Giants rotation and here's a snippet:
"Outside of my usual fevered imagining of Gausman, none of these pitchers are likely to set the league on fire in 2021. But they’ll keep the Giants in most games, and if they don’t appear to be a wild card contender come July, all of them could realistically be sent to a better team for a prospect or two."
Szymborksi has a projection system called ZiPS and regularly posts the numbers if you are curious.
Jose Quintana is still out there. He's another lefty, and like Wood he bats righty. I wonder if he is going to get a look. He's 31.
hopefully he can toss 150 innings, of which most will be effective. At this stage of his career, will he be more productive than Madison Bumgarner at one sixth the cost.
I'm expecting a big bounceback from Bumgarner. But your comparison going forward is interesting. If Wood can be a 1-2 WAR addition they will be happy. Bum will probably do better than that, but not six times better, as you say.
Payroll isn't linear. A good team will overspend (per WAR) to get the final pieces to push them over the top.
BTW Baggs Baggs has another piece on Charles Johnson, if you are so inclined. It is on The Athletic site, which is a paywall, but you can often get an article or two for free or a two-week free trial, or somesuch.
Johnson seems like a guy who writes big checks (because he can!) to umbrella PACs (primarily Republican or Republican-friendly) and those outfits funnel the money to individuals. That means it is the PARTY that supports these fringe nut jobs, not just rich individuals. I don't mean to excuse his behavior, only to point out that he's got a whole apparatus out there that validates these kooks. The problem is clearly bigger than Johnson.
He makes a statement in the article condemning the violence and etc:
“Like most of the country, I watched in dismay as our Capitol was overrun last week,” Johnson said. “I hope that those who engaged in or encouraged violence are held accountable for their behavior.
“I have a long history of giving political contributions to Republican and some Democratic candidates who share my strong belief in a free market system. My contributions are mine alone and are not associated in any way with the San Francisco Giants.
“It is often difficult to predict the future behavior of candidates and I would never have imagined that any legitimate candidate would participate in undermining the core values of our great country. Nor was I aware that any candidate to whom I contributed was associated with QAnon.
“I strongly believe in our democratic system where our elected representatives can engage in vigorous debate in the halls of government, free from violence and intimidation and in a peaceful and respectful manner. I hope we can return to this tradition that has served our great country so well for so long.”
Take it for what it's worth.
He owns at least 1/4 of the team, maybe 30% or something, so he's important. But he is old and his son has taken over the reigns from Larry Baer as the face of the Ownership Group. And he does not seem to meddle in baseball affairs and the Giants LLC and their community work and progressive politics.
For a private company to hold an owner accountable would take a big push from corporate box holders and an alliance of season ticket holders, maybe even some big advertisers. I wonder if there is enough political momentum within those groups to do something. Maybe if the season gets underway and the vaccine gets going and we get the country moving closer to "normal" again something could happen along those lines.
Maybe Johnson will get a chance, with all this blowback, to see how careless he has been with his money. Some of the recipients of those PACs are so ridiculous it makes him look like a doddering old fool. Surely a smarter businessman would have vetted those things? The flip side is that he really is just a fascist thug in a nice suit. I suspect the truth is more complex.
For A guy who seems to claim he had no idea about any of this except that he was supporting the free market, he seems to have somehow found a way to become a billionaire. Was he just lucky, or is he now having a case of wealthy mans amnesia. A common practice of CEO's of major corporations, and Union busting types. Nevertheless, let him give some of his money to the signings of high WAR players to put the giants over the top, instead of giving to QAnon.
Charles Johnson can, as say they on South Park, 'suck my b#$ls'. What a copout. He & his Wife have max'd out individual donations to NUTJOBS. Yes, they have also given massive amounts to right-wing PAC's & the like. But, they have max'd out lots of reprehensible individual donations. Typical shithead (as you call it, 'fascist thug'), diminishing his behavior, & hiding behind meaningless generalized platitudes. Go away ... sell our Team!
Meanwhile, over in NYC, the Mets new GM Jared Porter gets axed for sending a reporter a picture of his naked, erect penis! Man, they love sexting in NYC. That's a 37-day term for Porter. What a douche! Talk about killing your career in MLB. It's hard to imagine that a grown man in such a big, media-drenched job would be so goddamn dumb.
Don Sutton died. He was only 75. One of the last of the "workhorses." That guy pitched over 200 IP twenty times!
He supposedly said, when questioned about free agency and "loyalty" to a team, "I'm the most loyal player money can buy!"
I love that. RIP.
Andrew Baggarly tweeted about this blog post from Gabe Kapler:
http://kaplifestyle.com/2021/01/20/an-encouraging-day/
LINK
He writes well, and it's a short piece.
Mike "the Sheik" Sadek died at age 74. Reported by the Chronicle.
He was a Rule V pick (from the Twins). I didn't even know there was a Rule V back then! He also had more walks (107) than strikeouts (98) in his career (383 G, 946 PA all with the Giants). He backed up for Dave Rader, Marc Hill, and Milt May.
Wow. Now it's Hank Aaron! 86 years old.
He had to play in the shadow of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, being stuck out in Milwaukee and Atlanta, and no one every said he was the Greatest of All Time, but you could make a powerful argument that he was. His incredible longevity and high level of play for 20+ years makes clear what an extraordinary athlete he was. When he was a kid he batted with his hands reversed--he only changed when he got into pro ball. Imagine how strong and quick his wrists and forearms must have been.
Incredible career, & a great & influential person. It was awesome to see him play. Very hard to distinguish greatness between Mays & Aaron - both were off of the charts.
Aaron was probably as good a hitter as Mays and Mantle, but although Aaron was a very good fielder, he probably was not in the same class as Mays, who was one of the greatest fielding outfielders of all time, or Mantle who was also a very good outfielder. Aaron, like Mays, and Mantle, was and still is, even in his death, a larger than life figure. Baseball has a few of those, and Aaron is certainly one of them.
Aaron was more productive at the end of his career than Mays or Mantle, but he does not get the glove-love, as you point out. He was an excellent baserunner and has some impressive post-season stats, too. But "chasing the G.O.A.T." is a futile endeavor, there's really no such thing. Best to just appreciate a great performer for what they do and the way they do it. Like Stan Musial and Frank Robinson (and lots of others), Aaron played in a "quieter" media market. Both Mays and Mantle, playing in NYC, were bigger stars, real celebrities, not just ballplayers.
538 has an article extolling Aaron's longevity and consistency. It's worth a read. No one in MLB history played at such a high level for as many seasons, and, in his case, those are consecutive seasons.
What about Barry Bonds?
From the article:
How do you get to 755 home runs without ever cracking 50 in a season? Unrelenting consistency. Aaron hit 20 or more home runs in a season 20 times (!!), the most of any player in MLB history. He also hit at least 24 home runs every single season from 1955 (age 21) to 1973 (age 39) — a streak of 19 consecutive years. No other player in history has done that for more than 15 straight years. (Ruth and Barry Bonds, who eventually broke Aaron’s all-time record, both did it exactly that many times in a row.)
. . .
The all-around nature of Aaron’s greatness was also — you guessed it — historically consistent. If we use wins above replacement to get a holistic view of Aaron’s overall contributions, we see that he eclipsed 4 WAR (the mark of a very good player) in 19 straight seasons, from 1955 to 1973; 5 WAR (the mark of an All-Star-level season) in 17 straight seasons, from 1955 to 1971; and 6 WAR (verging on the MVP conversation) in 15 straight seasons, from 1955 to 1969. Nobody else — either batter or pitcher — has ever broken any of those thresholds so many times in a row as Aaron did
The article puts it in chart form so you can quickly compare other all-time greats like Bonds and Mays and etc. Mays missed two years ('52-'53) because of the Army, and Bonds got hurt and missed time in '99 and in '05. Ruth got hurt in 1925 and missed a big chunk of playing time right in the middle of his long peak.
I don't believe in the whole notion of G.O.A.T. Times change, the game changes, you can't compare across eras. And even comparing people of the same era (Mays v Aaron, for example) is futile because it all depends on your criteria. That is, your weighting system, what parts of the game you value over other parts. And how you adjust for ballparks, opposition, etc. Fun arguments, certainly, but fruitless. All those guys are different and it's their uniqueness that makes them interesting.
For me the game comes down to the guys I got to see and who I get to see now. I have lots of good baseball memories and I'm looking forward to more!
Greatest of All Time is impossible to discuss. I've long maintained that today's Players are, by definition, better, because they have to face competition from around the World, not just the US, or, pre-Jackie Robinson, the white US. On the other hand, who's to say that the truly great older era Players wouldn't have adapted their games to the stiffer competition & better conditioning programs.
To put things into perspective, I once spent the better part of a 9-hour car ride having a Friend, w/ full conviction, attempt to convince me that the greatest Catcher of that era (the late 1990's / early 2000's) was Dan Wilson. Dan fucking Wilson. No matter how many times that I brought up that Pudge Rodriguez played over the same time span, he was unfazed. I admired his conviction, but I worried about his mental acuity. Today, we still joke about it.
Indeed. The 'answer' to the GOAT question tells you more about the person answering than about the sport or the players!
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