Giants' Free Agents Expected Pay Days

Over at Fangraphs they have been working on a crowd sourcing project for each free agent. Today the results were announced so I thought it would be fun to take a look at what the results were for each of the Giants free agents.

Angel Pagan: 3 years, $10 million AAV (Average Annual Value)

Looking at this it makes the decision to not make a qualifying offer all the more puzzling. Pagan is one of the better free agent outfielder available and it seems like a good bet that he gets at least this deal from some team and possibly more from a desperate team.

I think if this is the best offer he gets the Giants can sign him, if it goes much higher than this he might be gone.

Marco Scutaro: 2 years, $8 million AAV

This is a little higher than I expected due to his age but I wouldn't say that this is an overpay. Going back to 2008, he hasn't produced a season where he was worth less than $9.5 million. That's a solid track record.

I would love if the Giants were able to keep him for the old Freddy Sanchez special of two years, $12 million total but that might be a pipe dream after his amazing second half and playoff performance. He isn't under the radar again and when people take a second look they will like what they see.

Melky Cabrera: 2 years, $8 million AAV

I really doubt Cabrera signs anything less than 4+ years or just a 1 year deal. If some team is willing to give him a long term deal I think he jumps on it. Other than that he probably looks at a one year deal to prove his numbers weren't all the result of PEDs and then try again in 2014.

I doubt he comes back with the Giants, but I would be interested to have him back.

Jeremy Affeldt: 2 years, $5 million AAV

This would be two more years at his current salary. That makes sense. I bet that this is about what he gets but there is an option/buy out tacked onto the end. Given this I would say the Giants bring him back unless someone comes in with a major overpay.

Freddy Sanchez: 1 year, $3 million AAV

To me this seems high. Sanchez is broken and may never play again. If I was a GM I wouldn't even consider him for a Major League contract at this point. I doubt that he comes back with the Giants, we'll always have the memories of 2010 and remember him as a good Giant.

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No qualifying offers for Giants free agents

According to CSN Bay Area the Giants will not be making any qualifying offers to any of their free agents this offseason.

Before anybody freaks out that doesn't mean that they will not be making an effort to re-sign these players. What this means that they are not making them an offer that under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement that would give the Giants draft pick compensation if someone else signed them.

The CBA states that in order for a player to qualify for draft pick compensation they must offer players that have been with the team the full season a one year deal equal to the average salary of the top 125 paid players. This year that comes out to a bit more than $13 million.

Of the Giants free agents only a couple really merited consideration for an offer, Cabrera (before the suspension, but a fairly big risk now), Angel Pagan, and Jeremy Affeldt.

I can totally understand not offering the deal to Cabrera or Affeldt.

A $13 million deal for one year is probably more than Affeldt will make over two years. For Cabrera, the Giants seem to be avoiding him like the plague and bringing him back at any amount seems like a long shot.

Pagan on the other hand, this seems like it would have been a prudent risk to take.

Going back to 2009, he has been worth $13.2 million, $21.8 million, $3.9 million and $21.6 million according to Fangraphs WAR to dollar conversion. That's an average of $15.1 million per season over that period.

Given that it doesn't seem like much of an overpay to consider him at one year $13 million, essentially that is his fair market value.

The other thing to consider is that he is probably looking for a long term deal this offseason. With a weak market for free agent outfielders it is a good bet that he will have multiple teams interested in him and will get offers in excess of one year that will guarantee more money than this. In addition this was a strong year for him so it isn't likely that he would want a one year deal to try to rebuild his value.

After considering these things it makes less sense to not offer Pagan a qualifying offer. A one year deal works well for the Giants long term plans, it isn't a massive overpay for his skills and he is likely to see multiple suitors so it would be prudent to attempt to get compensation if he leaves.

This isn't a dumb decision, but I would have loved to been privy to the thought process of what into making it.

3 ways the Giants could have signed Carlos Beltran

The big bat on just about every Giants fan Christmas list just signed with the Cardinals for a very reasonable 2 year $26 million deal. When the news of the years and money involved broke over twitter, a justified freak out session broke out among Giants fans, why couldn't the Giants swing this deal?

It would have been understandable if the Giants didn't want to go three or even four years with the aging slugger but two years was right in the Giants sweet spot. The Giants have window to compete with their pitching and getting Beltran on a two year deal would have opened that up a little bit further without hurting the long term out look.

Is There a Market for Jeremy Affeldt?

Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Giants are shopping Ramon Ramirez and Jeremy Affeldt to try to make some room in the payroll.

It is a little peculiar that the Giants are looking at trading Affeldt right after picking up his option, especially considering his relatively high salary at $5 million for this season but I guess the front office has had a change of heart or think the market for relievers has changed enough that flipping him might make sense.

2011 in Review: Relief Pitcher Vertical Vector Charts

Click to enlarge

Continuing with the vector charts series that I started earlier today (based on this from Athletics Nation) here are the relief pitchers stats visualized awesomely.

If you need a refresher here is how to look at the graph:

Each line corresponds to a Giants relief pitcher. The angle of each vector corresponds to the pitcher's GB percent with 100 percent ground balls as a horizontal line and 100 percent fly balls the opposite (duh) and represented as a vertical line, and the middle between the two extremes (50 percent ground ball rate) represented as a 45° angle.

The length of the line corresponds to the pitchers FIP-, where 100 is equal to league average and each point below is equal to a percent better than league average. So an FIP- of 75 means that the pitcher FIP was 25 percent better than league average. So in this chart a shorter line means that the pitcher pitched better which is kind of counter intuitive for how we would normally look at things.

Sergio Romo is the tiny, tiny line which is pretty amazing. The rest of the Giants relievers come in around 80 which is still really good and finally there are the two outliers Steve Edlefsen and Barry Zito but neither pitcher pitched many innings in relief so it didn't kill the Giants bullpen much.

Unlike the starting pitchers the relievers are not as fly ball heavy with 7 guys who were at the 50 percent mark or higher for ground balls with just Romo being the only guy who would be considered an extreme fly ball pitcher.

Up next will be the Giants hitters.

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The Giants Misguided Way to Build a Baseball Club

Every Giants fan needs to chip in to send Willie Bloomquist a nice gift basket. Bloomquist, by choosing Arizona over San Francisco recently, saved Brain Sabean from himself.

This is the type of thing that really boggles my mind and makes me question if Sabean knows what he is doing when he is building a baseball team.

Let's take a look at what he has done thus far this off-season.

He signed Javier Lopez to a two year $9 million contract. He picked up Jeremy Affeldt's $5 million option. He nearly signed Willie Bloomquist to a two year $4.6 million deal.

Do you know what the fWAR was for these players last year was?

A combined 1.2!

Sabean wants to give a combined $11.8 million to these guys who have a market value of around $5.4 million dollars. That's right he wanted to pay more than double what the market price for what these guys produced last season!

Look I would rather have a nice filet mignon with caned/frozen veggies than a plate full of fresh organic vegetables with no meat at all. If the team isn't going to spend like the Phillies/Red Sox/Yankees I can do with cheaper options on the side (read rookies that you plug in as a back up infielder or loogy) if that means that you go after a big bat that can bring this horrid offense from league worst to middle of the road.

This pitching staff and this fan base deserve better.

You might not have noticed but the honeymoon period that I gave to Sabean after winning the World Series is over. I am fed up with the way that he builds a ball club and I am fed up with the Giants ownership crying poor when they are selling out the stadium every game and are one of the highest revenue teams in baseball.

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Analysis of Giants Bringing Back Lopez and Affeldt

Well it seems that so far the game plan for this off season is the same as last year, keep the band together and hope for the best.

The Giants have announced that they have signed Javier Lopez to a two year $8.5 million deal and picked up Jeremy Affeldt's $5 million dollar option.

Lets take a look at how these deals shape up for the Giants. First up Javier Lopez and his two year deal.

To examine the contract I took the weighted average of the last three years WAR and then an assumed $4.5 million value for each win above replacement. I have the WAR from both the Fangraphs, Baseball Reference and an average of the two.

Javier Lopez
Year	fWAR		rWAR		Average
2009	-0.1	$    (0.45)	-0.5	$    (2.25)	-0.3	$    (1.35)
2010	0.6	$       2.70	1.5	$       6.75	1.05	$       4.73
2011	0.7	$       3.15	1.3	$       5.85	1	$       4.50
2012	0.58	$       2.60	1.17	$       5.25	0.87	$       3.93
2013	0.58	$       2.60	1.17	$       5.25	0.87	$       3.93

With a contract that pays him $4.25 million in each of the next two seasons, he appears slightly overpaid according to the Fangraphs version of WAR, slightly underpaid according to the Baseball-Reference version and pretty much right in line when you take the average of the two.

This deal isn't a killer and Lopez certainly does play an important role in the bullpen as the late inning LOOGY. It is hard to swallow paying full price for a reliever like this when it really shouldn't be too hard to get one nearly as good for relatively cheap on the open market.

For Affeldt it is the same process for estimating how much he will be worth next season as what I used for Lopez.

Jeremy Affeldt
	fWAR		rWAR		Average
2009	0.7	$       3.15	2.2	$       9.90	1.45	$       6.53
2010	0.2	$       0.90	0	$           -	0.1	$       0.45
2011	0.2	$       0.90	0.9	$       4.05	0.55	$       2.48
2012	0.26	$       1.15	0.74	$       3.35	0.50	$       2.25

Affeldt's option that was exercised pays him $5 million next year. This seems like far too much money to be paying him. Both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference WAR estimate that he will be overpaid by roughly $2-4 million dollars.

In addition the Giants could have gone the route of declining the option, offering arbitration and if he declined potentially had a draft pick (he was projected to be a type B free agent). This probably would have been the way that I went because if they were comfortable picking up the option they were willing to bring him back should he accept arbitration. If he declined the Giants get a late first round draft pick as compensation which is pretty valuable and the farm system could always certainly use more depth.

Then if he left there was always Dan Runzler there to fill in for him at the league minimum salary. Some people may not care for Runzler but really the difference between Affeldt and Runzler talent wise is not that great, Runzler has a higher walk rate but also a much higher strikeout rate. In addition he has some nasty stuff that could give him a high ceiling should he gets some semblance of control.

Th Affeldt signing so far isn't one of my favorites and taking both deals into account knowing the Giants self imposed budget means that there is that much less to spend on upgrading the worst offense in the National League.

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Jeremy Affeldt Deals

Jeremy Affeldt looked ridiculously good last evening, getting a rare two inning save (Brain Wilson was unavailable), striking out five, and giving the Giants 16 total strikeouts on the night.

It is a moment like this that you just have to marvel at the talent that the Giants have accumulated in their bullpen. Affeldt is, on most nights, the fourth option out of the bullpen and showed tonight that when he has control of his pitches, he's unhittable. A tip of the hat to Brian Sabean for assembling this group.

I am not sure exactly what changed but Affeldt has regained a feel for the strike zone. In the first two months of the year, he was wild and not exactly effectively wild; he was walking 4+ batters per nine innings. However, since June started, he has been a completely different pitcher.

Here is a rundown of his excellent stretch that he has put together for June:

2.05 FIP
1.42 xFIP
0.68 ERA
11.48 K/9
5.67 K/BB

While this is just a very small stretch of innings, there is a lot that is encouraging here. Keeping the ball down while also being in the strike zone makes Affeldt a very good pitcher. He has nasty stuff with a heavy sinking two seam fastball that induces swings and misses and ground balls.

I am optimistic that Affeldt can be a reliable option going into the future.

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2009 Jeremy Affeldt is Just a Memory Now

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Jeremy Affeldt's impressive 2009 seems like a lifetime ago and with each progressive outing, it feels like getting back to that level of pitching is less and less likely.

Even with Affeldt's struggles, he is still in the good graces of Bruce Bochy. He keeps getting the call to pitch in important situations and has been one of the go-to options in the sixth and seventh innings. So, when can we expect Affeldt to bounce of his funk?

To be perfectly frank, I don't think what we are seeing now is the funk. What was out of the ordinary was his 2009 season where he posted a 1.73 ERA, while his other numbers all remained around his career norms. To help illustrate just how much of a blip 2009 was, here is a nifty chart that plots his ERA along with some advanced stats that look to strip out things beyond a pitchers control.

The stats that focus on what pitchers can control all foreshadowed the coming struggles and didn't believe that he was an elite relief pitcher. His run prevention were helped by a strand rate of 86.4% (career 70.7%) and excellent outcomes on balls hit into play not falling for hits (25% vs 30% career).

Another interesting thing to look at is his control and strikeout stuff haven't really changed since his big season either and his numbers are down from his 2008 season prior to joining the Giants.

What this means is the 2009 Jeremy Affeldt was awesome at preventing runs, but the numbers suggest he is unlikely to repeat that level of performance. The Giants coaches and us fans need to expect that as well and not be expecting miracles from the lefty.

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Jeremy Affeldt's Outlier

Jeremy Affeldt is a good relief pitcher, but many people are distracted by one thing; 1.73.

That was his ERA in 2009.

His next best season was a 3.33 ERA season. This is not to say that pitchers can't put it together all of a sudden and become dominate forces. I'm saying that this was an outlier and a deviation from his true talent level.

If you look at his last three seasons and look at the pitching stats that try to strip out things beyond a pitcher's control, it becomes fairly obvious that one season does not look like the rest.

Year	BB/9	SO/9	SO/BB
2008	2.9	9.2	3.20
2009	4.5	7.9	1.77
2010	4.3	7.9	1.83

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/29/2011.

If you take a glance at his peripheral stats, you would expect that his 2008 should have been the best season, which it was according to the advanced pitching statistics. However, 2009 is looked at as his superior season because of the sparkling ERA. What isn't seen is that he had career years in BABIP, strand rate, ground balls, and home run rate that were all significantly below his career norms.

What this means is the Affeldt of 2009 is most likely a mirage. It was amazing while it was happening, but it wasn't his true talent level.

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Brian Wilson's Replacement Should be Obvious

Brian Wilson has a strained oblique that is a definite cause for concern. This is a nagging injury that has a tendency to linger if not given the proper time to heal, but at least it seems the Giants will play it safe here.

According to Andrew Baggarly, the Giants are not going to rush him back just to be available for Opening Day.

Wilson’s ability to pitch on opening day is in significant doubt after the Giants’ right-handed closer had his throwing session cut short Wednesday – his first time picking up a baseball since straining his left oblique six days earlier.

“It didn’t feel as good as we hoped, so we backed him off,” Giants manager Bruce Bochy said.

Wilson sounded less discouraged, saying he threw at “a high level” and wasn’t surprised to feel some discomfort in the area on his left side. But significantly, the black-bearded closer with the playfully rebellious persona said he wouldn’t fight Bochy if he was told to begin the season on the disabled list.

That means the most obvious question is who should be the guy to fill in for him while he's getting healthy. To me, after looking at the numbers, the choice is obvious: it should be Sergio Romo.

A quick plotting of the tRA (from StatCorner) of each of the possible replacements shows that Romo has been consistently excellent and is arguably on the same level as Wilson when it comes to the Giants best relief pitcher.

The one knock on him is he has some platoon splits and I think that it would be a very good strategy to use when of the Giants LOOGYs to get tough lefties out. Overall, I think that Romo is as good or better against most regular left handed hitters.

Player	FIP	xFIP
Jeremy Affeldt	4.33	4.12
Javier Lopez	3.62	3.78
Santiago Casilla	4.54	4.57
Sergio Romo	2.72	4.16

Romo has the best career FIP against lefties (partially due to an extremely low home run rate), but he still holds his own in the xFIP category even when compared to the lefty specialists like Affeldt and Lopez, who don't come close to matching his dominance of right handed hitters.

To top everything off, Romo has worked on a sinker that he can use to attack lefties where his awesome slider is less effective.

When you boil things down, this is really not a tough decision at all. Romo is one of the best relief pitchers in baseball and Bruce Bochy should have all the confidence in the world to hand the ninth inning over to him.

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2011 Projections: The Giants Bullpen

The final projections for the 2011 Giants are below. Today it's the Giants bullpen. This was a major strength for the team last season and I expect that will continue this year led by Brian Wilson and Sergio Romo.

Most projections that you will see give you one line of stats. I know my limitations, so I will gave you that line of stats, but also a best case and a worst case scenario, so you can get an idea of my general range for that player.

Without further ado, the projections:

Brian Wilson

Year	ERA	W	L	IP	H	HR	BB	K
2011 Projection	2.74	4	4	72	61	4	28	85
Best Case	2.19	5	3	87	73	5	25	102
Worst Case	3.29	3	4	58	49	3	33	68

Wilson put up one of the best seasons ever for a Giants closer last year and did anything and everything for Bruce Bochy. I expect that he'll continue to pitch at an elite level. I just don't think it's realistic to expect a sub-2 ERA, but he should maintain a strikeout rate over 10 and a respectable walk rate.

Sergio Romo

Year	ERA	W	L	IP	H	HR	BB	K
2011 Projection	2.70	5	3	60	46	5	15	65
Best Case	2.16	6	2	72	55	6	14	78
Worst Case	3.24	4	4	48	37	4	18	52

Romo is by far my favorite of all the Giants relievers and that may have clouded my judgement because this appears to be a very rosy projection (by almost all measures, I have him better then Wilson). However, I think it's well deserved. Romo has a tremendous strikeout rate for a guy that doesn't hit 97 on the radar gun and has an arsenal of crazy breaking stuff that is second to none. In addition, this offseason, he worked on a sinker to limit his home runs. I expect big things from Romo.

Javier Lopez

Year	ERA	W	L	IP	H	HR	BB	K
2011 Projection	3.82	3	3	55	53	3	23	35
Best Case	3.05	4	2	66	64	4	21	42
Worst Case	4.58	2	3	44	42	3	28	28

Lopez was a pleasant surprise last season, but I don't think he will be able to replicate it. I was down on the trade when it happened and I still don't see a lot that gets me excited in Lopez's past. He doesn't have great strikeout stuff and he walks too many for my liking. His numbers from last season were built on a foundation of sand and luck. The probability of that continuing is low in my estimation.

Jeremy Affeldt

Year	ERA	W	L	IP	H	HR	BB	K
2011 Projection	3.77	3	3	54	53	5	24	49
Best Case	3.01	4	2	65	63	5	21	59
Worst Case	4.52	3	3	43	42	4	27	39

Affeldt could be a good guess of what happens to Lopez next season. He was coming off an awesome year where every ball bounced his way and road that to a sub-2 ERA and then things reversed course. Affeldt is still a good pitcher and I think he puts up very solid numbers again this season. Maybe we cross our fingers that he gets some of that double play mojo back.

Santiago Casilla

Year	ERA	W	L	IP	H	HR	BB	K
2011 Projection	3.38	5	3	60	54	5	28	57
Best Case	2.70	5	2	73	64	6	33	69
Worst Case	4.06	4	4	48	13	4	39	46

Casilla has the "stuff" that teams crave in a relief pitcher. He has a hard fastball that runs 95-97 on a regular basis with a nice slider to compliment the heater. The question has never been about his talent but more about harnessing the talent. Last season, he put together his first resemblance of control and showed future closer ability. If he continues on that path, watch out. If his control regresses, then batters need to watch out because a 96 mph fastball hurts a lot.

Ramon Ramirez

Year	ERA	W	L	IP	H	HR	BB	K
2011 Projection	3.47	3	3	68	58	7	29	53
Best Case	2.77	4	2	82	70	8	26	64
Worst Case	4.16	3	4	55	46	5	35	43

Ramirez was another one of the Giants mid-season bullpen reinforcements that played above his head. I don't see him repeating his 0.67 ERA that he had with the Giants, not with a strikeout rate in the 5-6 range. Ramirez is an okay pitcher and I'm not ever really comfortable with these projections because I feel like they are too low, but I will go with this and say that the glass is half full.

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Giants Roster Question: Dan Runzler vs. Jeremy Affeldt

I was reading PaapFly this morning and something caught my eye that I wanted to dig deeper into.

The question that is brought up is which pitcher makes more sense as the Giants left handed non-loogy guy, Dan Runzler or Jeremy Affeldt?

The Giants have been said to be trying to convert Runzler into a starting pitcher. Why? I’m not exactly sure. I read Sabean said that Runzler’s best shot at making the bullpen is to stretch out and become a long reliever. Let’s ignore the fact that he’s younger, cheaper and has better peripherals than Jeremy Affeldt – thus may be a more serviceable non-LOOGY lefty out of the ‘pen than Jeremy, whom I still adore for his Game Six emergency innings against Philly, by the way. But anyway, that’s perhaps a discussion for another time.

Well I have sometime so I want to have this discussion now.

Here are the numbers for 2009 and 2010:

Runzler:

Year	W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	IP	H	ER	HR	BB	SO	ERA+	WHIP	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	SO/9	SO/BB
09-10	3	0	1.000	2.61	52	41.1	35	12	2	25	48	160	1.452	7.6	0.4	5.4	10.5	1.92

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/10/2010.

Affeldt

Year	W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	IP	H	ER	HR	BB	SO	ERA+	WHIP	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	SO/9	SO/BB
09-10	6	5	.545	2.80	127	112.1	98	35	7	55	98	150	1.362	7.9	0.6	4.4	7.9	1.80

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/10/2010.

Most of the numbers are pretty similar, Runzler has more strikeouts but also more walks. Affeldt allows fewer base runners but gives up more homeruns. One stat that isn't here is that Affedlt induces more ground balls then Runzler but Runzler still gets ground balls at a clip of 51% which is solid especially with the strikeout numbers.

To me the decision comes down to a couple of things. Affeldt has a longer track record of success (Runzler has less then 50 major league innings), he has slightly better control and gets ground balls like a champ.

In the long run I think that Runzler has more potential with a big fastball and strikeout stuff but he still scares people with the command issues. So I think that the Giants game plan of trying to groom him for a backup starter or long man role is a temporary thing for one depth and to also give him more innings to try to work on his control. In addition if Runzler does turn into a serviceable starter his value goes up quite a bit, and could be a good trade chip or just a simply piece of mind if one of the front line pitchers goes down.

This of all things is a nice problem to have. You can never have too much pitching talent especially lefties who can get strikeouts and ground balls.

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