Even though the Giants' postseason run could increase revenues next season, the club will not make a major increase to their payroll, writes Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle.
"We're always going to want to be somewhat creative," team president and chief operating officer Larry Baer said. "We're not going to have a doubling effect, or a double-digit massive increase. That's not who we are. The good news is, who we are is not going down in payroll either."
While the organization won't spend tons of money this winter, Baer says that ownership will do what it can to keep the team in tact. Roughly $20MM will be coming off of the books this offseason but much of that will go to raises for Tim Lincecum, Mark DeRosa, Matt Cain, and Brian Wilson. Meanwhile, Cody Ross, Jonathan Sanchez, and Andres Torres will all be arbitration-eligible.
The Giants won't be backing up a Brinks truck for a major free agent in the coming months but they have been able to find success on the cheap, as our own Steve Adams pointed out over the weekend.
In my opinion, the Giants have too many position players platooning with eachother. They need to clean up their roster except for their pitching staff. It just seems like they have 30 outfielders, and 30 infielders…They don’t, but they need to make some decisions. What to do at 1B? SS? Rowand? Uribe? Ross? Burrell? DeRosa?
I say they should tender Cody Ross a contract and sign Brad Hawpe. Make Hawpe the starting LF. I say they trade for Prince Fielder as well. It sounds crazy. But I think they pull the trigger. Hembree, Surkamp, and Belt.
Tender contracts to Lopez and Ramirez.
And unless they can get DeRosa to play SS, re-sign Uribe, Renteria or Alex Gonzalez possibly and make DeRosa an expensive 4th OF/IF.
“Make Hawpe the starting LF. I say they trade for Prince Fielder as well. It sounds crazy. But I think they pull the trigger. Hembree, Surkamp, and Belt.”
Brad Hawpe may be one of the worst defensive outfielders in all of baseball and he just came off one of his worst offensive seasons of his career. You complain about having a logjam but then add a new one by throwing Hawpe into the mix. Mark DeRosa will still be a Giant next year and most likely will be the starting left fielder with perhaps Pat Burrell back again. Ross will obviously be back and will probably start in right.
The Prince Fielder trade is a really, really bad idea. For starters Prince Fielder is close to entering the free agent market with Scott Boras as his agent. The market right now still overvalues offensive power so you can guarantee that any extension the Giants would have to give him would be an overpay similar to the Ryan Howard deal. Giving away 6 years of control for your #1 offensive prospect, plus a potential back end starter, plus a potential closer is just a bad idea. ‘Nuff said.
The giants often sign players coming off down seasons.
I think you’re contradicting yourself. You say they need to clean up their roster but then you say they should sign a player who they will probably need to replace or at least get someone to platoon with him.
By the way, there’s nothing wrong with some flexibility. The Giants are, after all, in the World Series.
I agree with you in the sense that the Giants have too many spare parts and are relying too much on mixing and matching. I love the mixing and matching from a strategy point and the emphasis it puts on the manager. But long term success is hard to maintain under that strategy. The Giants face losing several of their maintain contributers because they focused on picking up cheap, retread types, but now the Giants are going to struggle to sign them while keeping budget. And if there is significant roster turnover as I expect, it will be hard to contend next year.
I never understood why people used the phrase ‘get creative.’ It seems like something they say when they have nothing else to say.
It just kind of tells the readers that they aren’t going to do anything orthdox…If that makes the slightest bit of sense.
I sort of get what people mean when they say it, it just bothers me when people use hollow phrases such as this one.
I see what you are saying. I just want to see an executive be straight up and say for example:
“We are going to address SS and 1B and our two targets are Alex Gonzalez and James Loney. How much money do we have to spend you ask? $10MM. So we are going to do whatever we can to get those players and if we don’t, then we will consider Nick Johnson to play 1B, not SS…Nick can’t play SS.”
I also don’t like when a GM says “we are going to whatever we can to improve our team and we are always open anything that comes our way”. Yeah, I expected you to say that you want to make your team worse.
Exactly. Someone finally understands me.
I have always understanded you Ian, I just want you to go to the Royals this off-season since you already Declared Free Agency.
My allegiance is to the Pirates, though I have always liked the Royals for their powder blue jerseys.
And for Bruce Chen, be honest.
Wouldn’t it be considered tampering to be that honest?
Forget the tampering… you’d lose all leverage by being that honest
Exactly, plus the fan base would get so frustrated if they saw how often their team fails at landing their targets, even though it happens to every team. Being so specific really comes across as closed-minded and tactically moronic.
Yeah, it’s really just stating the obvious. If they weren’t getting creative before they have no business running a baseball team.
Sounds to me like they are being cheap!
This is a team that privately financed their own stadium, and they have always made an effort to put out a contending team. I would never call them cheap.
Cheap is the Cardinals. A team that loves to claim small market when their owners just don’t want to spend the money.
The Giants should get rid of some of their OF. It’s gonna create an uncomfortable situation next season with DeRosa coming back. Part ways with Rowand, and Guillen(even if it means eating salary. Tender Ross a contract and re-sign Burrell. Starting 3 in the OF are Ross, Torres, and Burrell, with 2/3 of that OF being good defensively. Mark DeRosa should play the game of being an expensive 4th OF/super utility player. INF, Part ways with Renteria, Re-Up on Huff and Uribe, tender Sanchez a contract. Panda would stay at third in hopes of a comeback season from him. Catchers are pretty much the same, Posey, and Eli Whiteside as backup. The next year’s bullpen should be Casilla, Lopez, Romo, Ramirez, Affeldt, and Wilson of course as the closer. I think it is a 6-man bullpen? If not, add Chris Ray into the mix. The rotation should go: Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Bumgarner, and Zito(puts a better chance of a 4-game win streak, then lose one, then start over again lol). After next year the Giants should look to trade Zito.
Freddy Sanchez is already under contract for $6M in 2011.
Where will Giants get their big bat? In a trade or Free Agency??
Well, they just made it to the World Series without one. My guess is they re-sign Huff, maybe Burrell & Uribe, and then hope for Posey to keep raking, Sandoval to find his form again, and Belt to develop into a major leaguer.
Does anybody see the Indians trading Shin-Soo Choo this offseason?
I think the South Korean Military drafted him, didn’t they?
South Korea has a military requirement for it’s citizenship. Though if a South Korean baseball team wins some big title within the next 2 years he’ll be excused. But yeah, I keep bringing this up… Choo is quietly one of the better right fielders in the game, it would be sad to see him lose a couple of his prime years.
Kinda off topic, but I just saw the Giants announced their rotation for the Series. Anyone else think it’s a little crazy to give game 3 and 7 to Sanchez? From his last outing he can clearly be rattled by something simple and if you reach game 7 of the Series you want a rock on the mound. I’m not questioning his ability to pitch but rather his confidence.
Thank goodness for the Giants that they took him out before the Phillies blew up in game 6. He clearly did not have any control of his pitches that night. But I think they are doing it because they don’t want to give Matt Cain too much rest.
It might be worth it to eat huge sums of zito’s and rowand’s contracts. I’m not sure how much you could really save after the need of a 5th starter if you drop zito. Remember how awesome Wellemeyer was? If they could somehow get a serviceable 5th starter in a trade and still free up some money for a bat, that would be awesome, though i think that’s a bit of a pipe dream.
Oliver Perez for Barry Zito I think the Mets would do that (Gets a very decent starter)…..I was proposed an Aaron Rowand for Gil Meche deal which might work if the Giants pursue that I would be a benefit for both teams
On most teams, Zito would be like a 3rd starter. The last two years he’s been about league average. Which means they’re paying him twice what they should — it’s obviously an awful contract — but I don’t get where this idea of unloading him comes from. He’s healthy, he’s a decent arm to have around, reasonably consistent. There’s nothing to do really but ride out the last 3 years of the deal. The alternative is to give him away, pay half his salary, and get nothing in return.
When you divide money spent on baseball operations by the amount of revenue a team earns you see that almost every team, with maybe two exceptions, spends nearly the same amount.
Setting and adhering to a fair budget is principled, though it may not be the principles you wish them to have. The problem with raising the budget even if a playoff push gets you more money is it’s a one-year money influx, but fans never see it that way. They’ll whine and complain and not buy tickets in 2012 because, like the poster above us, they think a mid-$90MM payroll is “cheap” and golly gee, if more money next year didn’t get you back deep into the playoffs to justify holding the increase, less money is even worse.Their payroll is and has been fair, regardless of their success so far in pushing to the playoffs. I think they’ll pursue a big bat as they did (somewhat unsuccessfully) this year and that’s about it. Getting that into roughly the same payroll or a few million bucks higher (ie, not a double-digit increase) after all the contracts come off and arbitration raises go in seems possible.The quote seemed fair and honest to me. The only thing I would have changed about it is the timing; I wouldn’t have started talking about next year’s payroll until the World Series concluded one way or the other.
Agreed!
I don’t love the guy, but look at his how consistent his innings totals are. His lowest innings and games total in the past 10 years was 180 IP, 32 games started. And with an ERA in the very low 4’s the past two seasons, he’s starting to look like we can really count on him to be amazingly, consistently, and very reliably, average (with no injuries or periodic minor league stints!) and that’s something that most teams would love to have at their 5th spot in the rotation. The mere fact that all 5 guys in our rotation are injury-free, locked up on contracts, and average-or-better, is very enviable. And, with this new post-season money, why even consider dumping his contract? If it ain’t broke (and you have enough money to keep it the way it is) don’t fix it.
Zito is still guaranteed 64.5 million (assuming buyout for ’14) over the next 3 seasons. Considering that he’s been about a 2 WAR, 4 ERA, 7 K/9, 3.8 BB/9 pitcher good for approx. 195 IP for the last 2 seasons, the Giants would have to eat somewhere around 40MM in my opinion, which would probably only be worth it if they had a FA target they really liked but couldn’t quite afford.