The Giant’s Long Term Financial Commitments: $0
I posted a thread about this earlier in the Winter but it’s worth taking a look again and comparing the team to the rest of the league. I’m getting my numbers from an article I read yesterday at mlbtraderumors but I can’t find the link right now. Sabean gets an awful lot of crap for his long term contract signing success but the reality is, we are in fantastic shape to sign free agents in the next couple of years. Just looking at financial commitments from 2015 on……..
The Giants: $0
The Angels: $274 million
Colorado: $167 million
Detroit: $166 million
Boston: $159.5 million
Yankees: $154 million
The Dodgers: $107 million (this number will probably double, at least, over the next year or so. The new ownership group, whoever that ultimate is, will be making it rain in LA for years to come)……
Brewers: $103 million
Minnesota: $92 million
Washington: $89 million
I’m not going to do all of them…..
Toronto: $21 million
Atlanta: $13 million
Oakland: $10.5 million
Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay: $8 million
Along with the Giants, the Orioles, Cubs, Astros, Indians, Royals, Mets, Padres and Mariners are at $0.
Sabean, whether he’s been instructed to or not, has exercised great restraint on doling out any long term, bloated deals. I’ve come to understand that most owners don’t give a crap about the back end of the deals they’re giving out. They’re living for the *now*. The Zito contract gets so much attention because there was never any *now* with him. He sucked from the start. Rowand pretty much sucked from the start, too, though not as badly as Zito.
We’re in good shape going forward. Now all we have to hope is that Sabean picks the right free agent to shower with cash. He’s gonna have a lot of it to spend starting in the next few years……..
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Carl Yastrzemski Fun Factoid of the Day (CYFFOTD):
The big guy had 3,419 hits in a 23 season HOF career.
Number of seasons with at least 200 hits: 0
Melky Cabrera has 836 hits in his 7 seasons in the bigs.
Number of seasons with at least 200 hits: 1
I like the acronym [ILTA].
Let’s hope that by the start of the season that there will at be at least one long-term deal going past 2015 for Matt Cain….I think Matt is looking at the fact that Pujols and Fielder are long gone for the AL and pitching will be the dominant power in the NL for the next few years. The NL West is relatively weak compared to the NL East and the NL Central does not have any extreme, pitcher-firendly ballparks as in the NL West.
But we cannot, cannot let Matt hit free agency. Dodgers will throw $150 mill and 7 years at him to pull him away from us. Then they will throw $200 mill at Timmy the next year. We cannot allow that to happen. Ownership and management need to get serious in giving Matt a long-term deal asap. I thought Matt would hopefully settle for a 5-year deal. Seems like that Sabean was trying to offer Timmy 4-years and maybe they only did the same for Matt. That is not going to get it done for either pitcher. So go ahead and offer Matt a 6-year deal and $111 mill ($16 mill for 2013 and increase by a $1 mill a year until 2018 where he will top out at $21 mill). Will certainly be a hometown discount than what he can get as a free agent.
Wrapping up Cain will help to get Tim to sign a longer-term deal and everything should be done to get that wrapped before next season starts. If we can get Tim at a 6-year $150 mill deal, that would equate to roughly $25 mill a year. So conceivably, in 2015, the two long term deals will total $43 mill. Hopefully leaving $107 mill at least on the table for Panda, Posey, Belt and Brown as the nucleus of our lineup and a couple of outfield free agents and Bumgarner hopefully also develops into a permanent part of that rotation and that our organization can produce a reliable 2B-SS combo….
I’m pretty sure I read a comment from Larry Baer stating that they expect the ballpark loan to be paid off in 2017. So unlike most teams they’ll have no rent or mortgage to pay, just property taxes and if I remember correctly, they got a pretty sweet deal on that.
I think SF gets the loan paid off by the A’s for letting them into Jose, which really won’t affect anything SF related like fanbase or attendance. Continue to put a good solid contender team out there, ATT will sell out and the A’s will remain in oblivion (esp in a division with angels and rangers). A nicer one with better weather, but irrelevant.
Top flight pitching is going to be expensive; building an offense around it within limits won’t be easy. Hopefully bean counters can let Sabes extend the spending limits to get what he needs for the offense. Not sure that has happened so far this winter.
Well. if you get up enough and don’t take walks…wonder what the record is for lowest OBP is for a 200 hit player-I’m sure it’s lower that Melky’s .339 but that’s not too hot.
Gary Carter career highlights anyone?
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/gary-carter-career-highlights/
If anyone is interested, Gary suffered from “GLIOBLASTOMAS’, a type of primary brain tumor. Mine is considerd a secondary tumor, not because it is any less serious but because it originated in another part of the body. Gary’s prognosis was particularly dire because the growths were “like a snake of tumors connected across the back of the brain.” His were inoperable.
My best to his family and loved ones.
Thanks Twin.
The guy from *Hardball Times* sends me article links all the time and I occasionally re-post them here. I thought some might like the Carter highlights since he did play for us for 1 season and I think 2 of his *highlights* came from that year.
I didn’t think about the connection between you two. Thanks for the extra info.
If any of you sicko BBOTD veterans want to email me a *nominee* feel free to forward me the link. I’ve bailed on what the chick looks like (as you can tell) and am just looking for the pic that might inspire the best “write that caption” post.
Hot chickS, girl next door chickS, fetish chicks, anything goes at the BBOTD page!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!