One of the more baffling rumors, courtesy of sfgiants.com:

The organization has invited him to meet its parents and everything. Hudson plays a position at which the Giants could use an upgrade, though there are semi-reasonable options in place if the Giants choose to ignore second base. Still, Kevin Frandsen and Eugenio Velez should never, ever, never, ever stand in the way of a team looking to sign a free agent. As fallback options, they’re not bad, but fallback options are all they should be.

Hudson plays silly defense. At least, he used to. And his on-base percentages for the past three years have been good: .367, .376, and .354 going back to 2006. He has a little pop, and he runs well. What’s not to like?

He’s 31, and he wants five years and $50M. Good gravy. How about no.

He had season-ending surgery last year to put a wrist bone back in place. In May, he had hamstring issues. Last year, he tore a ligament in his thumb a couple of months after jamming his ankle. Oh, and he’s 31. The wrist bone thing is serious – because the wrist bone connects to the arm bone that connects to the shoulder bone that connects to the heart bone that connects directly to the gamer bone – but it wouldn’t be as much of a red flag if he didn’t have a sordid injury history.

If the Giants signed Hudson, their second-round draft choice would go to a division rival. There's about a 10% chance that would come back to haund the Giants, but it would sting if the Hudson signing bequeathed the next Dustin Pedroia to the Diamondbacks.

And Hudson just might be a Bank One creation. Now, home/road splits aren’t the final word on a player’s offensive ability. Almost every player hits better at home than on the road. Almost everyone laughed at the Nationals for trading for Alfonso Soriano, who appeared to be an Arlington mirage, and almost everyone learned a little bit of a lesson. But it’s wacky to just ignore park effects. In Arizona, Hudson is an MVP candidate. On the road, he’s close to the low end of what we’d hope for from Kevin Frandsen:

Again, this doesn’t guarantee that he’d come to Mays Field and magically transform into Away Hudson for 162 games, but danged if that doesn’t raise more red flags than were raised for Yuri Gagarin’s parade through Moscow. Here’s five years! Fifty million clams! And…oh, dang. You really can’t hit away from Arizona. Well, we certainly aren’t re-signing you in 2014. You cost yourself a lucrative extension, pal.

Orlando Hudson: What you get when Edgardo Alfonzo’s contract mates with Ray Durham’s contract. Stay away. Far away. Far, far away. Two-year deal? Sure. I’m in. Three-year deal. Heck, that shouldn’t cripple a franchise. Five years, at star money? Insanity. If he were a 30-homer guy, I could see why the Giants would take the gamble. Or, if the Giants were a .500 team last season, I could see how he might help them become a contender. But he isn't, and they aren't.

No.

According to a source close to a high-level official familiar with the negotiations who also has MLB Trade Rumors bookmarked, the Giants are thinking about offering a six-year contract to C.C. Sabathia. Henry Schulman says the Giants have at least asked about Mark Teixeira, though it’s unlikely the Giants will outbid another team for his services.

Leaving aside the insanity of offering another pitcher 20% of the yearly payroll budget, there’s a fear that if the Giants sign Big Player X, then they won’t be able to sign Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, or any interesting player in the free agent market. Allow me to put on my serious cap for a bit, and try and find out. All of the salary data is from Cot’s Contracts, except for the almost-educated guesses that I’ve included in the hypothetical future scenarios. This is a long, boring post with a lot of big images and surely some egregious errors, so it will continue in the "Read More" section…

Continue reading this post »

Sometime in January, when all of the free agents have been signed, I’ll sit down to write a post and start crying. I won’t want to write about Atlee Hammaker memories. I won’t want to write about how cool Donruss Diamond Kings were. I won’t want to write a 14,000-word Lord of the Rings parody with Sabean as Frodo, Bochy as Sam, Magowan as Golem, One Free Agent Cy Young Superstar to Rule Them All as the plot device, and a journey to Mt. Outright Release.

I’ll want to write about baseball. News about baseball, perhaps. But I won’t be able to because the world will be a wintery graveyard for baseball news. Then I’ll think, "Damn, I really should have posted more should-we-think-about-this-free-agent threads when I had the chance instead of opening some stupid pop-culture-based thread." I know this. I’ve lived it. And, dammit, I’m not going down without a fight. So for the next month or so, there will be a lot of rosterbation, speculation, and evaluation of the speculative rosterbation. If you don’t care for such posts, that’s understandable. We won’t delete your user account while you grumble in a corner by yourself until March. I just hope that you understand why I have to do it. Do you know that Bruce Bochy hasn’t made a questionable bullpen decision for over a month? Look it up. And yet you want me to continue writing daily posts about the San Francisco Giants? You jackals.

The chatter so far is that the Giants will either sign a corner infielder or a middle infielder or both. Maybe trade for one or both. Middle infielder or corner infielder. Corner infielder or middle infielder. Shore up the infield. Get an infielder. It makes sense, because if the outfield is Fred Lewis, Aaron Rowand, and Randy Winn with a Nate Schierholtz insurance plan, that’s a whole lot of acceptable to downright okay. Why would the Giants need to mess with that?

But if the Giants are looking for a combination of middle-of-the-order bat and a non-ludicrous long-term contract, they aren’t going to find it in the infield. Mark Teixiera? He’s sure to fetch a ludicrous long-term contract. And thus endeth the list of middle-of-the-order bats among free agent infielders. Then I read Ken Rosenthal speculate thusly:

The more I stare at the free agent list, the more it makes sense to trade Aaron Rowand and sign Pat Burrell or Adam Dunn. And by "makes sense", I mean "makes absolutely no sense, but if the Giants are committed to throwing $50M to $150M at a free agent, it makes more sense than some other options." Now, heck, I’d trade Aaron Rowand for a punch to the face just to get rid of his contract, but Sabean probably still thinks Rowand has a ton of value. Sabean might deal Rowand, though, if he were sure the end result would be a middle-of-the-order hitter. Trading Winn to make room for Burrell, Dunn, or, gulp, Manny Ramirez doesn’t make a lot of sense, as then the Giants would have huge commitments for 2/3rd of their outfield until the end of time. There’s no way that would end well.

I dunno. November spitballin’ is all this is. If I had to choose between $60M to Pat Burrell or $130M to Mark Teixeira, I’d choose Teixeira. For the extra two years and $6M or $8M annually, at least you’re getting a guy who is in the top third of his position and younger than 30. The corner-outfielder market is a big ol’ pile of expensive pyrite this year. But if the choice is between Aaron Rowand playing for the Giants in 2012 or Pat Burrell playing for the Giants in 2012, I’m somewhat intrigued.

Really, I like comedy more than baseball, so I’m actually pulling for the Giants to sign Pat Burrell (LF), Manny Ramirez (CF), and Adam Dunn (RF). But this is an Open Hey Could the Giants Actually Go for a Corner Outfielder?-Thread.

The horrifying, soul-masticating postscript to yesterday’s post about Rafael Furcal:

Hey, you know who else is a career .290 hitter? Carney Lansford. He’s already in the organization, so the Giants wouldn’t even need to give up a draft pick. Plus, Lansford would have better range than Renteria at short, so the Giants would come out ahead.

What’s that, you say? Lansford is old, and he isn’t the same athlete that compiled the .290 career average? That’s kind of the point. Renteria will be 33, and his defense has already declined. Giving him anything more than a two-year deal is madness.

If Renteria is a bad idea, then Cabrera would be…uh…a much, much worse idea. Just awful. If your cousin "Stoobie" comes to you asking for a cash investment in his newest get-rich-quick scheme – a new, super-powered household cleaner he calls Bleachmonia – it would be a better idea for you to buy $10,000 worth of shares than it would be for the Giants to sign Orlando Cabrera. At least Renteria is only one season removed from a really good season. Cabrera is 34, coming off a season where he posted a .334 on-base percentage, and surely looking for a long-term deal. He would cost the Giants tens of millions of dollars, a draft pick, and their mortal soul.

This is it. The real trial of fire for Brian Sabean. No more, "Oh, but he was forced to build veteran teams around one superstar, so you can’t judge him on his past actions." No more, "Oh, but he was handcuffed by a meddling owner, and now he doesn’t have to deal with that." Sabean has made a concerted effort to build through the farm system, and it’s been an encouraging thing to watch. The Giants haven’t gone cheap with their first-round picks; the team is more active in the international amateur market than they ever have been. Draft pick compensation was an admitted concern for Sabean as he pored over the free-agent market for relievers. The unanimously heralded Jeremy Affeldt signing was the product of Sabean’s farm friendly plan. With a little patience, we just might see what a true Sabean roster will look like in a couple of seasons.

But I’m terrified that the true Sabean roster isn’t a mystery, that it’s something we’ve seen over and over and over. Old Sabean would say:

If New Sabean exists, he would say:

In order to maintain my sanity, I’m still going to believe in New Sabean. I’ll leave out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk, and I’m going to pull the covers up to my eyes and wait for him. Surely, a man who pursued Gary Matthews, Jr. and Juan Pierre has to have some sort of awareness by now – ten years after he started – of the folly of free-agent mediocrity. He isn’t interested in Orlando Cabrera or, to a less horrifying extent, Edgar Renteria. This is all just bobbing and weaving in related Rafael Furcal negotiations.

Right?

Right?

The hottest Giant-on-free-agent-action rumor has to do with Rafael Furcal. He’s a player who:

• is pretty good when healthy
• plays a position that, before Manny Burriss’s September hot streak, was a top priority for the Giants

That sounds…not horrible. It beats the yearly migration of center fielders swimming upstream to mate and expire in McCovey Cove. But allow me to join Lefty and wonder what in the heck sense does Furcal make for the Giants. My guess on possible outcomes of a long-term deal:

• 5% chance that Furcal's will stay healthy and perform at a high level for the duration of the contract
• 53% chance that Furcal will do OK at first, but he'll struggle through injuries and eventually become ineffective. (In scouting parlance: a durhaming)
• 42% chance that Furcal will stink right away, whether through injury or aging. (In scouting parlance: an alfonzotion)

Now, you can live with the middle option if you’re sure that your team can contend. If, say, the Red Sox didn’t have anyone but Julio Lugo, they would be justified in throwing away pieces of the 2011 budget to get a return on 2009. The Giants just might contend next season, but they probably won’t. They probably won’t for at least two seasons, and that’s being generous. So the Giants are hoping that either

1. Furcal, along with one additional free agent and a spontaneous improvement from the rest of the offense, will make the Giants contenders in 2009
2. Furcal will stay healthy and effective for the length of the deal, and help the Giants whenever they start winning more games than they lose

If the Giants were to sign Furcal, it wouldn’t be the end of the world because he plays one of the two thinnest positions in the organization. As much as I’m rooting for Burriss, I’d love to see him get 500 at-bats in AAA before anointing him the starter at short or second, and if Burriss fails, there is absolutely no backup plan. So a shortstop free agent makes sense. But both "1" and "2" above are different shades of delusional.

Another thing that isn’t really part of the discussion: Furcal’s 2007 was kind of miserable. Sure, after Furcal’s back injury, he had 143 good at-bats last year. But when you have three data points – a bad year, followed by a back injury, followed by a small sample of at-bats – it wouldn’t make sense to focus on the one that makes you feel all fuzzy.

If the Giants sign Furcal, I’ll feel the same way I feel when they signed Zito and Rowand. Gee, I hope it works out. Gee, he seems like a modest improvement, all things being equal. Golly, that is a big contract with about a 5% chance of being a good deal. The worst part is that 95% of the time, I’m right every time.

Brian Sabean, 2003: "I have to get my house sprayed because I have draft picks. Wait, did I just say ‘draft picks’? Oh, man. I meant ‘termites.’ I always get those two confused. Probably because I have a similar amount of respect and affinity for both. Did you know that Michael Tucker was a first-round pick? Exactly. He also weakened the foundation of my house, but that’s a long story. Tuck Tuck knows how to liven up a party, and let’s just leave it at that. What was the question?"

Brian Sabean, 2008: Draft-pick compensation will influence which free agent players the Giants target.

This revision of organizational priorities is most welcome. A point to consider, though, is that the Giants’ first-round pick is high enough that it can’t be taken away. If the Giants sign a Type A free agent, the team will lose a pick closer to 50th overall. If the Giants sign a Type B free agent, they don’t lose a pick, though the free agent’s former team would get a supplemental pick.

You can find a list of Type A free agents here. We can talk about abstract, it’s-not-my-money reasons why Free Agent X would make us happy, but how many of these players would we actually trade a prospect for? My groupings, using only the players the Giants could conceivably be interested in (and I’m stretching that definition to include a couple of unlikely names):

Note that I’m not advocating any of these signings. Ryan Dempster’s contract is going to look silly in three years. This is more of an exercise to see if, for example, Ben Sheets wanted to sign an incentive-laden contract that would be very favorable to the Giants, how would the draft pick affect the decision? It really, really makes a difference with respect to the availability of free agent relievers. The difference between, say, Brian Shouse and Russ Springer isn’t worth one of the top 50 amateur players in the draft.

A long aside: One of the problems with moaning about lost draft picks is that we have no idea whom the Giants would actually select with the lost pick. The Royals used the pick that the Giants intentionally gave up for Michael Tucker on Matthew Campbell, which was the equivalent to a $1M donation to the Matthew Campbell Retirement Fund. Maybe the Giants would have spent the pick on someone different – Dustin Pedroia, Yovani Gallardo, Hunter Pence, or Huston Street – but you can’t just assume something like that. Of course, I’d still put money that the pick lost for the Armando Benitez signing would have been used on Matt Garza, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to ask Dick Tidrow about it. Did the Aaron Rowand signing save the Giants $1M in draft bonuses, or did it cost the team a chance at a pre-arbitration star? Without knowing exactly how the Giants would pick, we’ll never know. And, dang, that’s irritating when trying to evaluate things like this.

Long aside over. The comment starter: Which free agents should be off limits because of the draft-pick cost?

In honor of the AL Cy Young Award winner – Cliff Lee – I thought I’d create a little graph:

Oh, that tantalizing question mark. You can see that the trend – a trend that’s completely impervious to sample-size challenges or any other brand of cynicism – demonstrates that there will almost certainly be two LHSWWCCJOSBWTCYs next season. Could Barry Zito be one of them? Only time will tell.

This is the first offseason that Zito’s ridiculous contract is really, really killing me. Every question about premium free agents has the same answer:

The Giants already have their premium free agent. It’s Barry Zito. They’ve chosen. That choice is Barry Zito. Heck, let’s all revisit the initial reaction to the signing. If you take out a magnifying glass and really dig through the text, you might be able to spot one of the 2,203 wrong predictions I made in the main post.

So now I’m in a Zito depression. I don’t really think that any pitcher, CC Sabathia included, is worth long-term, $125M+ deal...but, dang, it would be exciting to have Sabathia at the top of this rotation. Paying a first baseman $125M to stick around into his mid-30s is probably a bad idea…but, dang, it would be exciting to have Mark Teixeira for a few years.

Zito has $91.5M and five years left on his contract. This doesn’t include the bonus clauses, of course – he wins $.5M for his first Cy Young under this contract, $.75M for his second, and a cool $1M for every one thereafter.

Comment starter: How much of this damnable contract would the Giants need to eat in order to get Zito the hell out of here? Would it be worth it? The 2007 Zito, while disappointing, wasn’t exactly worthless. He would have been worth a three-year deal or so.

Open Zito Depression Thread.

The Giants would like to make a trade for a good hitter. But then they'd have to trade something good to get back something good. Hey, you know who's good? Matt Cain! I wonder what we can trade Matt Cain for. Maybe they could replenish the farm system. Maybe they could trade Matt Cain for three prospects. And then, when those prospects turn into good major leaguers like Cain, the Giants could trade those three prospects for a total of nine prospects. Assuming a three-year lag between prospectdom and major league success, here's how the plan would work.

2009: three prospects
2012: nine prospects
2015: 27 prospects
2018: 81 prospects
2021: 243 prospects
2024: 729 prospects

If the Giants trade Matt Cain for three prospects right now and continue to trade each prospect as they become major leaguers, then they will control every player in Major League Baseball by 2024. If the Giants did this 15 years ago, they'd have Evan Longoria as a backup for David Wright. This isn't just idle speculation. I've shown my math above. This plan can't miss. Put the slide rule back in the pocket protector, Gilbert, and bow to my math skills.

Until now, exactly what Cain would bring back in trade has been a mystery. Some reports have Prince Fielder and J.J. Hardy coming back, which seems insane. Other goofs have tossed out names like Hideki Matsui, which is equally insane, but for a different reason. And the equation for any premium player's trade value according to a fan of the opposite team is something like this:

So no one knows what Cain's trade value is. He's a good pitcher with the potential to be great, and he's under control for three more years for a total of $13.5M, which is a steal compared to what he'd command on the open market.

The whole point of this protracted introduction was to compare Cain to Jake Peavy. Now I'm realizing that it's an awful comparison. Peavy is the better pitcher. But Cain hasn't had any arm problems, while Peavy has had some elbow issues. Cain will cost $13.5M over the next three years; Peavy will cost $60M over the next five, or $78M over the next six if his option is picked up. Stupid comparison. Apples to rhinosceroses. And now I have all of these pretty words on the subject that I don't want to just delete.

The entire point of this post was to ask if anyone else is as underwhelmed with the rumored offers for Jake Peavy as I am. The rumored offer from the Braves is something like Jordan Schafer, Yunel Escobar, and either Jo-Jo Reyes or Charlie Morton. The Braves are reportedly not going to give up Jason Heyward or Tommy Hanson. The rumored offer from the Cubs is something like Jeff Samarzdfazzaza, Ronny Cedeno, and Calvin Murray Felix Pie. There's a lot of talent there. Schafer's a danged good prospect --mystery HGH-related suspension aside -- and Pie's has been highly regarded for a while, but, yeeesh.

The Padres would be giving up one of the ten best pitchers in baseball, who is locked up for five or six years for about $40M below market value. He's a homegrown player, and he's extremely popular. If you're making that trade, Schafer or Pie would have to become stars. They can't just turn into nice, glad-to-have-ya players. Not when you're giving up a fan favorite who left a lot of money on the table for your franchise. In order to satisfy the fanbase, at least one of the acquired prospects would have to come up and be instant superstars like Tim Lincecum or David Wright were. They can't just keep teasing the Padres with their potential -- like B.J. Upton or Chris "Diamondbacks Player" Young are doing to their franchises -- as they inch towards arbitration.

It would be a huge gamble to trade Peavy for a handful of prospects who aren't once-in-every-five-draft-class type prospects, and I'm glad the Giants aren't dealing with similar offers for Matt Cain. I don't get what the Padres are doing.

Either the Giants have their first Cy Young award winner since 1967, or this site will riot. Virtual cars will flip over; newspaper racks will go through the windows of the FanPost store; there will be poorly organized chants in an attempt to fool people into thinking the riot is an honest protest. Nope. It'll be a riot.

I've been on 538.com all morning, but Nate Silver has nothing on the NL Cy Young race. Come on. I thought you were a baseball guru first. Like it wouldn't be possible to run some regression analysis for the SB Nation winner, the MVN Awards, the Sporting News pitcher of the year, and the MLBPA Player's Choice awards. They all went for Lincecum. That's a good sign, right? Right, Mr. Silver? Hello? MY PESSIMIST'S MIND NEEDS THE REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF A STATISTICAL GENIUS. If you could also work in some pie charts, that'd be awesome.

F5
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I could have gone serious today, you know. I could have wrote one of those bloviation sensations that I dust off every six months. Because, see, Tim Lincecum represents the changing of the guard. The last time a Giants pitcher was in the running for the Cy Young, he lost it to a drugged up, French-Canadian freakshow. Do you know how disillusioning it is to have a major baseball award given to a performance-enhancing drug abuser? It's a crime ag...DON'T BRING UP THE 59 MVP AWARDS THAT BONDS WON, DAMMIT...we're talking about the Cy Young, here. Totally different. And if Lincecum wins, it will be a statement. The skinny kid with a robotic arm wins the award in the era of steroids, saves Mr. Niedermeyer's house from foreclosure, and gets the girl. How could Lifetime and ESPN not already be in a bidding war for the rights to that TV movie?

So what's it going to be, BBWAA? A reprise of the Summer of Love? Or an injustice that sets off the Autumn of Quick-Burning Disgust that Eventually Fades into Eternal Annoyance?

Open Waiting for the Announcement Thread. At some point I'll update this post, and the tone of the thread will either turn to this:

...or this...

...with a side of this...