Bay City Ball

• First off the bat, the Giants sign Matt Cain to a 4 year deal worth 9 million dollars. This is deal is similar to the one that Lowry got last year. As I wrote earlier, Cain is a tremendous talent that could already be the best pitcher on the Giants staff. He should enter the season as the #2 starter behind Barry Zito. Here is a funny quote from Sabean in the article linked that just made me say “Well, Duh!”

“If you can sign and produce your own and keep the right guys … I think it’s a sign of the times, whether it’s with us or any other organization,” Sabean said, acknowledging that trading left-hander Francisco Liriano to Minnesota for A.J. Pierzynski in the 2003-04 offseason was a missed chance for San Francisco to follow this strategy.

• Cats sleeping with dogs, pigs are flying, basically the world is ending. Russ Ortiz threw 3 innings of shutout ball against the Cubs yesterday in the Giants spring opener. Like many other Giants fans have joked, this is probably all it took to win Ortiz the 5th spot. It is well know that Giants management is rooting for him. Ortiz also added a bases clearing double in the 9-2 win. Russ could always swing the stick, if he can still pitch is up for debate but I’ll put on my optimism hat and enjoy this first start.

• Baseball America has published it’s top 100 prospect list. Only two Giants make the list, Lincecum (#11) and Jonathan Sanchez (#59). Meanwhile, Baseball Prospectus also has a top 100 list out that includes Lincecum (#6), Sanchez (#73), and Angel Villalona (#64)

• I may have found the strangest baseball news article ever and I mean ever. It’s about the Giles brothers in San Diego. Article highlights you ask? There’s at least a hundred but here goes. I seriously couldn’t make this stuff up.

“Ah, we just like to shave in there,” Brian says, referring to their body hair, not their faces. “Chris, for some reason, thinks it’s gross.”

They filmed a series of commercials Monday night that was supposed to last no more than 30 minutes. It took nearly two hours. It began with Marcus, a second baseman, saying it was cool having makeup applied to their faces. (”I haven’t done this since I was 5,” Marcus says, “back when I wanted to be a girl.”) It ended with Brian dropping his pants and jumping on Marcus, with the two giggling uncontrollably until the cameras stopped.

You may have noticed that the site looks a little different. I’ve decided to change the layout some and so far I’ve been pleased with how its shaping up. I think this layout presents news in an easier to read format. Everything is about 90% done but if you encounter any nasty bugs shoot me an email so I can try to fix it. The only major feature that I need to implement is the search function so that users can search through the archives. Hopefully, I’ll have it functional by the end of this week. Now, onward to the news!

• Winter League ball is officially done. Five Giants, Chris Begg, Guillermo Rodriguez, William Bergolla, Pedro Feliz, and Mitch Wylie, all competed in the Winter League with varying degrees of success or failure. Most notable was Pedro Feliz who is supposed to be on some Tom Emanski-esque offseason hitting program. Pete hit a paltry .214 in the Winter League which isn’t exactly known for its high levels of competition. Most frustrating Giant or most frustrating Giant? You decide.

• Todd Helton would be willing to waive his no-trade to go play for the Red Sox but only if a deal is worked out quickly. Helton is still owed a gigantic sum of money over the life of his contract and it seems foolish for the Red Sox to take on a big salary for a declining 33 year old first basemen. Helton’s power numbers have dropped each of the last three years and he is no longer the power threat he once was. He can still hit for a high average and get on base but if traded to the Red Sox they would have to pay him for the next 6 years. I just can’t see the Red Sox making this deal. It goes to show GMs that super huge contracts rarely work out. Oh, hey Barry Zito whats up!

Still not much happening in the world of the Giants. Mid to late January has to be the worst time for baseball news. Any tiny, minuscule scrap of news is interesting for news starved baseball fans. Marvin Bernard is growing a mustache? Quick! Call Rich Draper and the newspapers! Only 22 days left until pitchers and catchers report for spring training.

• Jamey Wright ends up in Texas. The Rangers sign Wright to a minor league deal for 2007. Wright has never really been that good but his ground ball tendencies could help him out in the hitter friendly Rangers ballpark. If he makes it back to the big leagues this year Rangers fans get ready for the following inning. Hit Batter, Walk, Walk, Wild Pitch, Walk, K, Double Play. Oh, Jamey!

• Over at RotoAuthority they’ve released some projections for NL rotations. The good news? The Giants are predicted to have the 2nd best K/9 and be the second hardest staff to hit. The bad news? They rank 8th overall and division foes San Diego and LA both project to have better rotations on the basis of ERA. Regardless of how you feel about projections, its nice to give ‘em a glance.

• Fox Sports has ranked the top GMs in baseball in an easy to read list format. I don’t agree with all the picks but most of them seem spot on. Sabes comes in at a depressing 17th. Heres what the list has to say about Brian

The Giants have won a pennant and three division titles under Sabean, but his neglect of the farm system and his willingness to part with the few prospects the Giants have developed are not to his credit. Neither is his undying fondness for decline-phase veterans.

• Go vote for you favorite 1987 Giant. The top 4 vote getters will have bobbleheads released in their likeness on July 29th. I’ll tell you right now, I’d kill for a Will Clark, Robby Thompson, Kevin Mitchell, and Chris Speier bobblehead.

Other Updates

Not so much a baseball topic but I’ve been listening to Dälek’s newest release Abandoned Language almost non-stop this past week. The album is set to drop in Feb. on Mike Patton’s Ipecac. Fans of dark, heavy, dense, and different hip-hop would do well to check out Dälek’s newest. The album is full of distorted violin strings, rolling droney bass, and intelligent arrangements to go along with superb flows. Dälek shows you that not only can different be good but breathtaking too. I will definitely be picking this one up.

A few small happenings around the league so lets dive right in!

• 1B/OF Craig Wilson signs with the Atlanta Braves for 1 year 2 million dollars. I like this move for Atlanta and think it could turn out to be a bargain. The Braves can platoon Wilson with whoever else they want to run out to first now that Laroche has been traded. Wilson is a ideal platoon partner because over his career he has absolutely mashed lefties to the tune of .296/.395/.543. He also gives you a little bit of flexibility in that he can play 1B, OF, and can catch in a emergency. Wilson was a player I was hoping the Giants might look at to platoon at first base.

• Bonds’ contract negotiations still going bumpy. The Chron suggests that the Giants might be looking to walk away from Bonds. I still think the contract will get done because without Barry the Giants will have no shot to win the NL West. And plus, the deal is just for one year so there is little risk to signing Bonds just for 2007.

• The Giants are going to be introducing a new mega-huge HD scoreboard for the 2007 season. I don’t know about you but if I have to see Pedro Feliz in high-def I might lose my stomach. I wonder if I can hook a Nintendo Wii up to it, hmmm?

A couple of ex-Giants find new homes. Todd Greene gets a minor league contract and spring training invite from the Pads. I’ll miss watching Todd trying to leg out a triple on a ball that he whacked into ‘triples alley’. Slowest man alive, but in all in all he was a pretty good backup for the Giants hitting .289/.335/.428. To think he played some center field in college is boggling to the mind.

The Nationals sign Jerome Williams to a one year contract. Williams, who many loved as the next-great-thing, has struggled since he left the Giants. Compiling a ERA of 4.76 in AAA over 111 and 2/3 innings in 2006. Admittedly I like this move for the Nationals. J-Will is still young at 25 and has had success in his brief career. He still has a slim chance to be a effective pitcher. Coming back to the NL and pitching in RFK surely won’t hurt his chances either.

Other Updates

• PECOTA projections are out for the 2007 season. If I could describe the Giants projections in one word I would say ‘Meh’. Zito’s projection looks very average for a NL pitcher and one glance at Bonds’ numbers make me feel a little queasy. Lets all hope that the Pedro Feliz offseason hitting program is actually kidnapping Albert Pujols and forcing him to play third base for the Giants.

• Sammy Sosa worked out for the Rangers and will receive a incentive-laden minor league deal. Deal or No Deal Howie? I can’t imagine any team wanting Sosa near its clubhouse but Texas wants to roll the dice. Sosa has been out of baseball for over a year and looked completely awful with the Orioles. Just as a carnival side show, I really hope that Sosa somehow gets back into baseball.

• Giants and the Fish still talking about a potential Benitez trade back to Florida. The only problem is that the Giants are asking for Taylor Tankersly who the Marlin’s don’t want to give up. Some believe that the Marlins would be more willing to part with Sergio Mitre or Yusmeiro Petit. I’ve written slightly about Petit on this blog and if the Giants could snag him in a deal for Armando I would be very happy. I would pass on Mitre. My favorite part about the linked article is where it calls Armando Benitez the “#1 Bullpen Target” for the Marlins. Heh, please-oh-god-please take Armando far away.

To say that Giants news has been slow lately is a understatement. When the biggest headline your team gets is ‘Aaron Sele Wants to Contine Career With Giants‘ you know you’re in a offseason lull. Aaron freaking Sele! While Giants news has been slow there has been some other interesting and weird news in baseball.

• Sammy Sosa has recently begun to train himself for a possible return to baseball. Reading Sosa quotes is always a fun time because they are completely insane. In the link posted he compares himself to Tedd Williams, Barry Bonds, and Frank Thomas. Yeahhh.

• Ken Griffey Jr. breaks his hand in a home accident. The Reds have to seriously consider freezing Griffey Jr. in a solid block of ice between offseasons so he can’t hurt himself. I am thinking something like in Demolition Man? You’ve got to feel bad for Griffey though, he just can’t seem to stay healthy. On the subject of athletes and accidents, my all time favorite is still Glenallen Hill falling though a glass table because he was having a spider nightmare.

• D-Train gets a DUI. Police in Miami arrested Willis for allegedly urinating in the middle of a street while looking confused and disoriented. Does the D-Train get renamed to the P-Train?

• The Texas Rangers and Chicago White Sox make a trade sending LHP John Danks, RHP Nick Masset, and RHP Jacob Rasner to the White Sox in exchange for RHP Brandon McCarthy and OF David Paisano. The big pieces of this trade are Danks and McCarthy. Danks, who was one of if not the top prospect in the Rangers organization, is a lefty that a lot of people are very high on. McCarthy is the young right hander from the White Sox who consistently put up very good numbers in the minors and hasn’t really had much of a chance to start in the majors yet. Off the top of my head I like this trade for the White Sox a good bit. I think Danks will be a very good pitcher and Masset is a interesting guy with some zip on his fastball. I think a sleeper in this deal could be OF David Paisano who just turned 19. Last season Paisano put up a line of.338/.430/.477 in the Venezuelan Summer League in 195 ABs.

The offseason has recently renounced its slow spiraling delve into the bottomless recesses of the baseball abyss and has instead exchanged it for a nice, quick swan dive off a terrible metaphorical ledge. My once firm optimism has been quickly replaced by a growing dread, facilitated by the names Molina and Feliz.

While the easy course of action would be to blame one man–Brian Sabean–there is a much more sinister force pulling strings and manipulating the market on the fierce upward curve that it has recently run.

Think Wizard of Oz, only instead of a big green head and a booming omnipitant voice the perpetrater is a suit clad man sitting at a desk surrounded by bags and bags of cash.

In short, I blame Omar Minaya, the GM behind the curtain, waiting behind a corner with a sock full of silver dollars ready to ambush the next potentially overpayed free agent.

It had seemed just a few short years ago the baseball free agent market had begun to normalize, the Texas/A-Rod contract was just a memory, a glint in the eye of all hopeful free agents and the waking nightmare of many Ranger fans. But then Omar Minaya, newly hired GM of the NY Mets saw Kris Benson, a former first round talent, who had never shown anything to prove he was more than a replacement level pitcher and he signed him to a 3 year 22.5 million dollar contract. Somewhere, in a galaxy far far away Obi Wan Kenobi felt a disturbance in the force as if 29 other GM’s suddenly cried out in terror and then suddenly picked up their phones and upped thier offers.

Now that we’ve all settled nicely into the grim aftermath of the Benson deal 22.5 million for a replacement level pitcher seems like a bargain but that’s only because every other pitcher saw what Benson was getting and shrewdly used their deductive facilities to discover that they were in fact better players than he.

However, the stupidity of Omar Minaya should not detract from the blame given to Brian Sabean for the individual plight of a Giants team scrambling to find two wheels for a chariot that has already caught fire before the 16 team national league race has even begun.

After all, its been many many years and Sabean still hasn’t figured out that he is no longer in the Yankees organization and therefore cannot pay players like Matt Morris 27 million dollars to pump 88 mph fastballs down the middle of the plate.

The contracts of Winn, Morris, Molina, Benitez and I’m sure the next soon to be Giant, Jeff Suppan make as much sense as an 8 mpg hummer in a global economy screaming for oil and an environment yearning for relief…not to mix grievences.

In the modern baseball world an 85 million dollar payroll is like bringing a spoon to a spork fight, sure you might get a few lucky thwaks in to someones temples, but sooner or later your going to get sporked and…er…wait…what? Anyway, the cold reality is that 85 million is the new small market payroll, so its time to start thinking like a small market team.

Think smallball, moneyball, hardball, go lean and mean, invest in the farm, spurn the overpayed and overated and raise a new flag that bears the colors of A Giants team ready for the future!

…or just keep doing what your doing, I liked the old candlestick days where it was easy to get tickets, but at least if your going to suck drop the ticket prices.

Shock and awe another ex-Giant heads to La La land to reunite with Neddy. Reports are that Jason Schmidt has signed with the Dodgers for a 3/47 deal. Those who remember the Furcal signing will notice this deal is somewhat similar. Paying more per year to make the contract shorter. Watching Schmidt turn to the dark side is going to be awfully hard for a lot of Giants fans but we all knew that Schmidt wasn’t coming back. Going to the Dodgers is just the extra kick in the pants. Alright, maybe two kicks.

For now the Dodgers rotation is lookin’ mighty fine. On paper a rotation of Schmidt, Lowe, Penny, Billinglsey, and Kuo looks solid from top to bottom. Penny is the favorite to get traded with the acquisition of Schmidt so don’t count on seeing him in Dodger blue in ‘07. Jason obviously wanted to stay on the west coast and chose the Dodgers over offers from the Cardinals and Mariners.

Draft pick wise Schmidt going to the Dodgers is good for the Giants. The best scenario would have been the Cardinals who held the 18th pick but Dodgers will give the Giants their first round pick at 22. The Mariners first round pick was protected. This is good news for Giants fans who know that the team needs an injection of youth. The 2007 draft looks to be a strong one and the Giants are going to have 3 first round picks (10,22,29) and 3 sandwich round picks. Even though it stings Giants fans to see Schmidt in LA we definitely can look forward to the draft in hopes of landing some good, young talent.

The Cubs have signed Alfonso Soriano, who is considered the most desirable free agent on the market, to a 8 year 136 million dollar contract. Here is where I state the obvious. The Cubs just spent a lot of money on Alfonso Soriano. Soriano, who turns 31 before the 2007 season, will become the highest paid Cub in franchise history. He will also have received the 5th highest package deal in MLB history when all is said and done.

The length of this deal is what concerns me most. Soriano is a free swinger without much plate discipline and you have to figure that as he ages and his bat speed starts to slip he’s going to be in trouble. He has averaged 141 K’s per season with 38 walks. True, Soriano did walk the most in his career in 2006, walking 67 times, but of those 67 walks 16 were intentional.

The other frustrating part of this deal is that the Cubs will most likely use Soriano at leadoff because “he likes hitting leadoff”. Crazy Lou also seems to echo this sentiment. He’s quoted as saying

“He likes the leadoff spot and there is none better,” Cubs manager Lou Piniella said in an interview with WGN Radio. He called Soriano “a young man who can get on base and steal some bases and hit the ball for extra base power and hit it for a homer. We are talking about the best leadoff hitter in all of baseball.”

Sorry Lou, Soriano is not the best leadoff hitter in baseball. I know you want to pump up your new players ego but calling Soriano the best leadoff hitter in the game is just ridiculous. Even though he posted a career best .351 OBP he also struck out 160 times in 2006. A leadoff hitter that strikes out 140+ in a season is brutal. I would much rather see the Cubs sign a high OBP guy to leadoff and shuffle Soriano down to the 3-4-5 slot.

Many people are calling this the worst contract ever. Even though this contract is slightly ridiculous I don’t think I can call it the worst contract ever. Have we forgotten these long lost deals?

• December 9th, 2000 - Mike Hampton signs a 8 year 121 million dollar deal to call Colorado his home. The Rockies desperate for pitching overpay for Hampton’s services. Hampton only plays in Colorado for two years until hes moved to the Marlins, and then to the Braves. Career Rockies record? 22-25 with a 5.78 ERA.

• Darren Dreifort signs a 5 year 55 million dollar deal with the Dodgers. This contract is notorious for being dubbed “The Worst Contract in Major League Baseball History”. Dreifort who had a history of arm trouble gets injured in the first year of the deal and undergoes surgery that causes him to miss 1.5 years. He never becomes fully healthy, pitching sporadically before he retires in 2006. End result? He tosses 205.2 innings over 5 years. Thats $267,431.68 per inning. Ouch.

Mikes Baseball Rants has a great article on the worst contracts in baseball history. Not surprising, Mr. Dreifort comes in a number #1. The signing of Soriano really sets the tone now for the remaining FA outfielders and I pity the team that over pays for Carlos Lee.

A few quick items of note from around Baseball news today

Could the Red Sox have posted the top bid for highly coveted Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka? Buster Olney reports that the Red Sox may have won the top bid with a bid from 38MM-45MM. You read that right, 35 to 48 million! That is a gigantic sum of money to pay a guy thats never thrown one inning in North America. Keep in mind that 38-45 million only buys the Red Sox the opportunity to negotiate with Matsuzaka. The Matsuzaka sweepstakes just keep getting stranger and stranger.

J.D. Drew opts out of the remaining three years on his Dodger contract to test the free agent market. Drew had three years left at a total of 33 million. Word is that Drew was unhappy in LA but with Boras as his agent I have the feeling that its more about money than anything else. Drew enters a free agent market with already some big bats in the outfield (Lee, Soriano, Sheffield) and I wonder if he’s going to do better than 11 mil per year? I can see someone like the Mets overpaying for Drew.

Keith Foulke also opted for free agency, declining the 3.75 million option to stay with Boston. Would the Giants have any interest in bringing back Foulke if Benitez gets moved? I hope not, Foulke isn’t going to come cheap and he is a injury concern. You can’t completely rule it out since Foulke wants to play closer to his Arizona home which puts him in the area for west coast teams.