Just-be-cool.
A storm of activity swept through Giants Land yesterday when WFAN — my #1 resource for reliable, sports information — leaked news that SS Edgar Renteria, formerly of the Detroit Tigers, had signed with the Giants for 2-years, $18M. Reactions ranged from solid, to bewilderment, to confused, back to bewilderment again, and then to acceptance. It’s easier for me to think of the offseason as a series of improbable events that I have no control over. That way I get less freaked out when things happen. You can call it indifference but it makes things more digestible for me than freaking out every five minutes.
In regards to Renteria, the rumor turned out to be false. The Giants will still be seeking middle infield help and the team is known to prefer Furcal, but Renteria would be a nice option B if he did indeed sign for something like 2-years, $18M. One thing that didn’t jive with the Renteria rumor right off the bat was why would the Giants sign him before the December 1st arbitration deadline? The Tigers already paid Renteria $3M to buy out his $12M option. As Baggs astutely notes, you don’t pay a guy $3M to go away and then turn around and offer him arbitration.
Marcel projects Renteria pretty favorably for 2009 with a line of: .285/.345/.417, that’s a wOBA of .336 making him a slightly better than league average hitter. Finding a SS that can hit around league average is a valuable thing to have. As Dave Cameron of FanGraphs noted yesterday, a key for Rentria will be his defense. Last season plus/minus had Renteria as a -9 SS, meaning that he made 9 plays less than your average SS. That works out to about -7 runs below average. If we count Renteria as a -10 run player with the glove, which is possible because he’s not getting any younger, he’s worth a little less then +2 wins over replacement. Teams tend to pay about $5M per replacement win, so Renteria should be worth around $10M per season. Which is exactly the rate he would have been earning per season under the rumored deal. The Cameron piece makes also makes a nice argument that Renteria’s underlying batted ball data really didn’t change from his career norms in ‘08, indicating that he might have been a little unlucky. In fact, Renteria’s BABIP in ‘08 was about 48 points lower than his xBABIP.
I’ll be interested to see what happens after December 1st now. It’s possible, as Baggs noted in his link above, that the Tigers may consider offering Renteria arbitration now because of the mult-year deal rumor. If the Giants sign Renteria before December 1st, or Detroit offers him arbitration and he declines, the Giants would lose their 2nd round draft pick.
I don’t think the Tigers would do that, they risk getting him back and given that he made $10M with them last season, he probably could get $11/12M via arbitration, or even if he asked for the same $10M, that would still be more than what he would have gotten in the rumored deal. Why not take the easy and more money, and get another season to do well before going free agent? I think he would Maddux the Tigers in a heartbeat if they were to do that.
Another reason he was unlucky in 2008 was because his hitting peripherals were still good in 2008, despite the drop in hitting. And, his season was two different halves, bad first half, great second half, 812 OPS after ASG, which is excellent for a SS. Basically, he was bad from sometime in May to July, but good in April and excellent in August and September. However, his strikeout rate and BB/K ratio was as good pre- as post-ASG, and just as good as previous years.
In addition, his poor road stats was due to some horrific hitting at a number of pitcher’s parks (including SD and SF), plus poor hitting at known hitter’s parks, like D-backs and ChiSox. He had sub-510 OPS at almost two handful of parks, and had 3-4 sub 300 OPS parks. That horrific hitting.
So he’s getting paid lower for the lower hitting line, but his peripherals (and the points made above about BIP and BABIP) suggest that he’s a low risk/high reward signing at the rumored deal. Of course, he could still stink anyway, but the data suggest that he’s not done yet, just was unlucky in 2008.
We’ll see. After shuffling through a few Tiger blogs, a few of them seem certain that Detroit will offer him arb.
He’d have a salary baseline of $8M — by the 80% rule — if that happened. I can see arguments for and against offering it. Renteria is getting older, surely he’d want the security of a multi-year deal, right?
Givens:
9 MM for ‘08 ( per cots).
80% is the best the team could get in an arbitration ruling
3M was the buy out paid to avoid paying 11M in ‘09.
So:
9M*.8 =7.2M + 3M =10.2M
So in an absolute best case Tigers gain $800K but just how likely are they to win a best case? And it would take pretty much a best case for them to avoid paying the same or more then the original contract they just bought out of.
The Tigers offering arbitration with out Renteria already being signed else were would be one of strangest things I’ve seen a team do in the hot stove in a long, long time.