Eric's Giants Blog

The morning after

Note that this began as a comment and morphed into a full post when I realized how lengthy it had become. It responds to the first comment left by "The Bosnian" to my post entitled "Nightmare Scenario".

Respectfully, I must disagree with virtually everything The Bosnian wrote. Since there appears to be a need for further explication on some of my exasperated one-line conclusory statements above, I'll go into slightly greater detail about why I think the 2005 Giants represent a nightmare scenario.

Responding to the overall point that this is no time for a "youth movement" like the one Billy Beane is ostensibly undertaking in Oakland - I never said now was the time for a rebuilding period (actually that's not true, I said it in May of this year, but I'm not saying it now). What I did say was that signing ancient, overrated veterans to multiyear deals is NOT the solution. The two best things that will be said about the 2005 Giants will be that they a) had Barry Bonds and b) had a lot of guys who used to play great defense. Between Bonds, Snow, Grissom, Vizquel, Matheny and Alfonzo the Giants will have no shortage of late-30s players who used to play great defense in their prime.

Vizquel:

Player A: 567 AB; .291 / .353 / .388 / 7 HR / 19 SB / 6 CS
Player B: 250 AB; .244 / .321 / .336 / 8 SB / 3 CS
Player C: 582 AB; .275 / .341 / .418 / 14 HR / 18 SB / 10 CS

I wouldn't mind terribly getting player A to play shortstop for the Giants, although I can't see I'd be jumping up and down. Player B, of course, is a disaster. Player C - similar to player A, I guess.

Player D: 1399 AB; .276 / .343 / .391 / 23 HR / 45 SB / 19 CS

So of course Player A is Vizquel in 2004, B in 2003 and C in 2002. D is his 3-year line. So figure if you look at D divided evenly among 3 seasons, you're talking about:

466 AB; .276 / .343 / .391 / 8 HR / 15 SB / 6 CS.

That's the Giants new shortstop and he plays stellar defense, so that's good, right?

Not really. The three-year numbers are for his ages 35, 36 and 37 seasons. Vizquel turns 38 in late April. So the Giants will have him for his 38, 39 and 40 seasons. How many productive 40-year-old shortstops can you name? For that matter, how many 40-year-old shortstops can you name? And why stop there? How many 38-year-old shorstops can you name?

Because Vizquel hit .291 in 2004 you seem to assume that he'll do so in 2005. There are a lot of very good reasons to believe otherwise.

Reason #1: He has hit over .290 twice in the last 8 years. Four times over a 16-year career. In 2004 Vizquel had a fluky high batting average, and most of his offensive value is batting average.

Reason #2: He's 38. Barry Bonds and Randy Johnson notwithstanding, the VAST majority of players are in steep decline in their late 30s.

Reason #3: He's played his entire career in the American League. Now, at 38, he has to face a league's worth of pitchers the majority of whom he's never faced. The majority of hitters who switch leagues suffer a significant performance decline (see Pierzynski, AJ).

Reason #4: He is moving from a neutral environment in Cleveland to an extreme run-suppressing environment in San Francisco.

The likelihood is, Vizquel is going to be a very substantial liability offensively. My suspicion is that his offensive line will look something like this, assuming a full season's worth of ABs:

.260 / .325 / .345 / 5 HR / 12 SB / 7 CS

Let's look at a couple of other things:

Player E: 397 AB; .292 / .322 / .431 / 7 HR / 1 SB / 3 CS

Player F: 542 AB; .276 / .344 / .351 / 4 HR / 53 SB / 23 CS

These represent (some of) the alternative universes to the one where the Giants overpay for Omar Vizquel. Player E is, of course, 2004 Deivi Cruz. Of course, I don't believe that he'd do that again either. Player F is the average season over the last three years for the recently-released David Eckstein, who as of right now could be had off waivers from Anaheim, who cut him after signing Orlando Cabrera.

Cruz has the advantage of being cheap. No, he doesn't have the greatest range of any shortstop you ever saw. But at $800,000 he allowed the Giants to spend money elsewhere. Eckstein is young and relatively cheap (likely to make about $2.5M in arbitration) after only four years in the league. Yes, he looks silly playing shorstop.

Of course, the rejoinder to all of this is that Vizquel was signed for his DEFENSE (this will be an ongoing theme here). To which I can only respond two ways. 1. DEFENSE WASN'T THE PROBLEM. 2. THE GUY IS 38! Once upon a time Vizquel was a defensive wizard. In fact, he's probably the best defensive shortstop I ever personally watched play ... in 1995. But to give the guy a 3-year contract based on his defensive back when he was young? That's just foolish.

There is no real basis for the conclusion that Vizquel will be "productive but not spectacular" for his age 38 and 39 seasons. He was productive but not spectacular in his age 37 season in Cleveland. To give him a 3-year deal based on that season is crazy.

Moving on.

Mike Matheny. I don't even know where to start on this one. So many have posted exactly what I think that to exhaustively demonstrate the reasons this was a bad signing would be a waste of time. So I'll simply summarize it.

1. He's too old. How many productive 37-year-old catchers can you name?

2. He's a terrible liability at the plate. I mean, seriously - Neifi-esque liability.

3. His defense is on the decline. It's still good, but ... who cares?

4. The idea that he'll magically make the young pitchers better is a myth. I'm sorry, it just is. If you look at Cardinal pitching stats w/Matheny and wo/Matheny, pitchers weren't any better with Matheny behind the plate.

5. (and this is the big one) The Giants ALREADY HAD a guy who can give everything Matheny supposedly offered for a tiny fraction of the price. Yorvit Torrealba is a young, cheap, home-grown catcher who offers respectable offense and above-average defense. At the very least he'd have outperformed Matheny at the plate while slightly underperforming defensively. That would have been the worst-case scenario for a 500 AB year from Torrealba. But of course, why go with the cheap, superior alternative you already have when you can badly overpay for something worse, right?

Moving on.

Benitez. This is the best signing they've made, but it's still not very good. Benitez is 32 and they gave him a 3-year, $27M contract. As I recall, the last time they gave a fireballing closer a 4-year, $32M deal it didn't work out very well.

Benitez is a very good reliever, although not as good as he was in 2004. He strikes guys out, seems to have improved his control, and his mental issues don't scare me as much as they do some people. The bullpen was a complete disaster in 2004, and Benitez is a huge improvement over Hermanson or Herges. I'd much rather have Benitez than Troy Percival.

It's only not a great signing because there were better ways to spend those millions of dollars. Like on a real right fielder (wait for it, we're getting there), a real center fielder (rather than a 38-year-old platoon player) or a slugging first baseman. But I'm ok with Benitez.

And now we get to the meat of it (the point where steam starts coming out my ears) - the coach's boy. Yet again, many many reasons not to pay $6.5M per year for Moises Alou. Some of them have already been posted to this blog.

Reason #1: HE'S TOO OLD. I'm sorry that I'm being repetitive, but didn't anyone watch the Diamondbacks last year? When you build a team entirely out of really old players eventually the odds will get you and the team all collapses at once. Moises Alou turned 38 in the middle of last season. He'll turn 39 during his first year with the Giants and 40 during his second. Newsflash to Brian Sabean - NOT EVERY PLAYER IS BARRY BONDS.

Reason #2: Wrigley. He's been with the Cubs for three years. Check this out:

Overall OPS: .837 (pretty good, not special)
Wrigley OPS: .940 (very productive)
Other OPS: .744 (miserable and useless)

Another newsflash to Mr. Sabean - if "Other OPS" represents an amalgamation of other road parks for a Chicago Cub, SBC Park is MUCH WORSE than that amalgamation. Alou was basically a useless scrub outside of Wrigley the last three years. .264 / .327 / .417 kind of useless. And he's going to be 39 - you think he's going to get BETTER at this point?

Reason #3: He gets hurt. A lot. He's played 140 games twice in the last five years.

Reason #4: Defense. Anyone who reads here knows I'm not obsessed with defense, but playing a guy who's known as a really bad left fielder in an extremely difficult right field is just asking for trouble. Alou is going to be Glenallen Hill bad. Playing him in right field is like asking a first baseman to play right field. This is going to be ugly.

The Giants probably just signed Alou to play like Michael Tucker with fewer walks and inferior defense for 4 times the price. Nice job, guys. For those who think that hitting behind Bonds will magically undo all the above factors (and since when is "The Bonds Effect for the guy hitting behind Bonds? Didn't it use to be the guy hitting in FRONT of Bonds who got the "steady diet of fastballs" and the corresponding 200-point OPS boost?), enjoy your time at Hogwarts. Sure worked well for AJ Pierzynski.

Just because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'm going to actually go through this lineup that he posted.

1 Durham (2B) - no complaints. Solid leadoff hitter.
2 Vizquel (SS) - out-machine in the two-spot. Assuming he's not hurt and we're not looking at Deivi by June.
3 Snow (1B) - This is almost too funny. Snow has 346 great ABs and people are ready to anoint him Carlos Delgado. 2004 was JTs best year as a pro. By a lot. At age 36. He turns 37 in February. Which represents real life, the 346 ABs in 2004 or the 2500 ABs of mediocrity between 1997 and 2003?
4 Bonds (LF) - Not to put too fine a point on it, but he's 40. At some point...
5 Alou (RF) - Would you have wanted to see Michael Tucker in this spot?
6 Alfonzo (3B) - Learn to spell. .740 OPS since joining the Giants. You know that's really bad, right, even for a #6 hitter?
7 Grissom (CF) - Over the last three years, .717 OPS against right-handed pitching in 1,070 (wasted) ABs. This is not a regular player anymore, and age 38 (in April) he's not getting better.
8 Matheny (C) - This team couldn't afford another automatic out.

That is so NOT a nice lineup. That's a lineup with two hitters in it, hitting first and fourth.

To say this team is in place for a "respectable run at the world series" assumes that Brian Sabean has The Sports Guy's magical "juvenation machine" and can conjure up 1997-1999 versions of Snow, Vizquel, Grissom, Matheny, Alfonzo and Alou. Barring that, this team is a disaster waiting to happen. Expect more Plan B ideas early in the season.

Note that this is being posted simultaneously as a comment response as well as a regular post.

Go Giants.

posted by Eric @ 8:49 AM