Friday, September 21, 2007
Barry Says Bye-Bye
Barry Bonds announced on his website today that the Giants have told him that they would not be bringing him back in 2008. It's not a surprise, as the Giants will be looking to rebuild, but it's still downright sad. Some quick thoughts on this, because it's Friday afternoon and I need a nap...
1) Now batting for your Los Angeles Angels...Barrrrry Bonds!!! Yeah, it's going to be totally weird seeing Barry take some hacks in another uniform next season. It'll be pretty strange starting a season without Bonds's name penciled into the starting lineup. It's like a war veteran who's had his arm blown off, then wakes up at times with the feeling that it's still attached. Um, or something like that.
2) Bonds has a 1.053 OPS this year, which is the best in the National League. Now picture the 2008 Giants lineup, most likely returning a bunch of the same sub-.700 OPS ne'er-do-wells, and picture that lineup sans Bonds. Yeah. It's uglier than a Karl Rove-Rosie O'Donnell love child.
Let's say hypothetically that Bonds wants so bad to retire as a Giants that he'll agree to take a substantial pay cut. He'll come back for $10 million in 2008. Knowing what Bonds brings to a lineup, even at age 42, should the Giants do a 180 (or a Jason Kidd 360) and bring him back at this discounted price? Let's face it, it's likely that this team is going to be absolutely miserable to watch with no Bonds next season. Hell, they're unwatchable with Bonds! If he can put some butts in the seats, hit some home runs, help put some runs on the board, and make a big farewell tour, would it be worth it to take the senior discount?
I think Rob Neyer hit it on the head in a blog post today. As much as it sucks to see the icon of the franchise for the past 15 years just waltz off unceremoniously, it would probably just make very little sense, in the end, to re-sign him, to any dollar amount (unless we're talking like $5 million or something, but that's a little too crazy a dream). The Giants need to rebuild, and the only way they're going to do it effectively is by giving some younger guys a chance to play and prove that they can produce in the major leagues. That is not going to be accomplished by signing Bonds and playing him just for sentimental value. The Astros are killing themselves with Craig Biggio this year for just that reason.
Bonds will find himself on another team in '08 and he'll doubtless help that team score runs and win ballgames. The Giants, meanwhile, need to break the ball and chain and find a way to make this new era of suck as short as possible. Bonds will be missed, and some day he'll come back to Mays Field and be the recipient of one of the greatest ovations ever given to a baseball player.
--I had so much fun embedding that DMB video last Friday, that I think I'll make this a regular feature here on Stankeye, kind of a TGIF thing. This week's random video features the Angry Video Game Nerd. If you don't know who he is, well, he's a video game reviewer who became immensely popular on YouTube and now does work for Gametrailers. He basically only reviews crappy old Nintendo games...while drinking beer and cussing...a lot. It's one of the funniest things around nowadays.
This is a trailer for his review of a bunch of old, awful Spiderman games on the classic game consoles. Again, this is just the trailer, (the full video can be found on this page), but it's freaking hilarious. Warning: it's brimming with filthy language, so kiddies take heed. Enjoy, and have a good weekend!
1) Now batting for your Los Angeles Angels...Barrrrry Bonds!!! Yeah, it's going to be totally weird seeing Barry take some hacks in another uniform next season. It'll be pretty strange starting a season without Bonds's name penciled into the starting lineup. It's like a war veteran who's had his arm blown off, then wakes up at times with the feeling that it's still attached. Um, or something like that.
2) Bonds has a 1.053 OPS this year, which is the best in the National League. Now picture the 2008 Giants lineup, most likely returning a bunch of the same sub-.700 OPS ne'er-do-wells, and picture that lineup sans Bonds. Yeah. It's uglier than a Karl Rove-Rosie O'Donnell love child.
Let's say hypothetically that Bonds wants so bad to retire as a Giants that he'll agree to take a substantial pay cut. He'll come back for $10 million in 2008. Knowing what Bonds brings to a lineup, even at age 42, should the Giants do a 180 (or a Jason Kidd 360) and bring him back at this discounted price? Let's face it, it's likely that this team is going to be absolutely miserable to watch with no Bonds next season. Hell, they're unwatchable with Bonds! If he can put some butts in the seats, hit some home runs, help put some runs on the board, and make a big farewell tour, would it be worth it to take the senior discount?
I think Rob Neyer hit it on the head in a blog post today. As much as it sucks to see the icon of the franchise for the past 15 years just waltz off unceremoniously, it would probably just make very little sense, in the end, to re-sign him, to any dollar amount (unless we're talking like $5 million or something, but that's a little too crazy a dream). The Giants need to rebuild, and the only way they're going to do it effectively is by giving some younger guys a chance to play and prove that they can produce in the major leagues. That is not going to be accomplished by signing Bonds and playing him just for sentimental value. The Astros are killing themselves with Craig Biggio this year for just that reason.
Bonds will find himself on another team in '08 and he'll doubtless help that team score runs and win ballgames. The Giants, meanwhile, need to break the ball and chain and find a way to make this new era of suck as short as possible. Bonds will be missed, and some day he'll come back to Mays Field and be the recipient of one of the greatest ovations ever given to a baseball player.
--I had so much fun embedding that DMB video last Friday, that I think I'll make this a regular feature here on Stankeye, kind of a TGIF thing. This week's random video features the Angry Video Game Nerd. If you don't know who he is, well, he's a video game reviewer who became immensely popular on YouTube and now does work for Gametrailers. He basically only reviews crappy old Nintendo games...while drinking beer and cussing...a lot. It's one of the funniest things around nowadays.
This is a trailer for his review of a bunch of old, awful Spiderman games on the classic game consoles. Again, this is just the trailer, (the full video can be found on this page), but it's freaking hilarious. Warning: it's brimming with filthy language, so kiddies take heed. Enjoy, and have a good weekend!
Labels: arbitrary youtube links, barry bonds
Friday, September 14, 2007
TGIF Links
It's Friday, and I'm heading up to the A's game tonight. I'd take pictures and post them here, but who really wants to see pics of the Oakland Coliseum and its pee-soaked corridors? And this is a Giants site after all. In fact, I'll probably be rooting for the Rangers tonight, since they have Kason Gabbard going, and he's on my fantasy squad (it's a really deep league...don't ask).
Well, here are some random links I thought you readers would find fun and interesting. Enjoy!
---Last week, ESPN's Jayson Stark wrote a wonderful article detailing why the save is probably the most ridiculous statistic in baseball. The insane overvaluing of saves is something I've ranted about repeatedly over the years, but this is the first time, I think, that I've ever seen a columnist from the mainstream sports media talk about it. I haven't gone on an anti-saves tirade in a while, but Stark opened the door, so I be a rantin'.
There are so many things wrong with saves, I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with a somewhat extreme example. Let's say a reliever, we'll call him Paulie Rice, comes into a game with a 5-2 lead. Now, I know there's probably more pressure in the ninth inning, but protecting a three-run lead by getting three outs seems like something most guys can do, right?
So Paulie comes in, walks the bases loaded, gives up a two-run single, but gets out of the jam and the team wins 5-4. Paulie gets credit for the save, even though he pitched atrociously. That save is somehow supposed to reflect upon some quality inherent in Paulie's ability, even though he pitched like crap. True, there are a lot of one-run saves, where the room for error is smaller, but coming in with no one on base to get three outs doesn't seem too taxing for a big league pitcher, no matter what the score is.
The problem is, closers are often paid vast amounts of money based on their save totals. This is just silly. You know who leads the AL in saves this year? Joe Borowski, with an ERA of 5.40. Yet you can bet that Borowski is going to get the "proven closer" label and stick around in the majors for a while, probably stinking up the joint. It's crazy. You can find pretty much any decent pitcher off the scrap heap and plug him in as a closer and he'll rack up saves. Remember Tyler Walker and his 23 saves in 2005? Okay pitcher, resilient fellow, but "proven closer" my arse. Matt Herges also saved 23 games in '04, and he stunk. The list goes on. If a guy consistently blows saves and can't get it done in the ninth, it usually just means he's a bad pitcher. Do I need to bring up Armando Benitez here?
If you look at BP's Wins Expected Above Replacement Level (WXRL, yeah it's a mouthful), which gauges reliever performance based on stranding inherited runners and difficulty of situation, among other things, a lot of the guys at the top aren't even closers. It's because the most critical situations in a baseball game usually don't come in the ninth inning. Yes, there are good pitchers who don't have what it takes to close, for whatever reason (LaTroy Hawkins is one). However, there are also a lot of guys who couldn't consistently come in with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh inning and strand every duck on the pond, and I guaran-damn-tee you Joe Borowski is one of them.
And I won't even go into the ridiculous three-inning rule that allowed Wes Littleton to get the save in the notorious 30-3 game this year. So please, everybody, stop overvaluing saves. It's a bad statistic and just because a guy racks up 35 in a season and has a pair of goofy glasses or a scary mustache, it doesn't mean he has some sort of grit or intestinal fortitude that other pitchers don't. Ok, I got that out of my system. End rant.
--Also last week, BP founder Gary Huckaby caused a furor amongst the stathead community by announcing, in pseudo-Nietzschian fashion, that "baseball analysis is dead". This, of course, sent all of us nerds into a panic. Here we had the founder of the most prestigious and influential stathead website in the world just coming out and saying that everything we believe in is all for naught and we should just stop trying. What's going on here? Is OBP suddenly not life? Have our efforts to dissect VORP been rendered moot? Has Joe Morgan won?
Well, no. Actually, it really isn't that apocalyptic. Huckaby's point is a little muddy (even he admits that in a subsequent chat), but I think he's basically saying analysis is dead in the context of front offices actually utilizing such information. His argument is that all the obvious stuff (like OBP is good, don't shag young pitchers' arms) is pretty much accepted by major league teams now, so there are only so many things a stathead can give you if you're a GM and you hire him on to your staff. The thing is, most of the real in-depth number-crunching is being done independently all over the Internet; it's out there so anybody can grab it, unlike traditional scouting measures. So in that sense, why hire a bunch of stat guys to give you data that you can just get for free by having some intern spend five minutes on The Hardball Times?
I think Huckaby has clearly got a point here, but I also think he's being a merciless drama queen. Does he really have to announce that "baseball analysis is dead"? It just seems like a ploy to get people yelling. Why can't he just say something like, "We've reached a point where quantitative analysis has essentially reached its limits in being an asset to major league front offices. Good job, people. You nerds, don't stop doing what you're doing, though." As for the argument that every front office has accepted the common sense arguments of the saber-types...ladies and gentlemen, I direct you to the Juan Pierre signing.
Huckaby has always been sort of a pompous writer, and he's definitely not my favorite of the BP squad. Dave Studeman and Nate Silver have appropriate rebuttals to the "baseball is dead" article. It's a fun little controversy to wrap your brain around.
--The Giants are apparently looking to bring back Omar Vizquel on a one-year deal for 2008. If it's just one year, then this is a perfectly acceptable move. Vizquel still plays Gold Glove defense, and that's a tremendous thing to have with young pitchers who could get rattled by a bunch of errors behind them. With no immediate alternatives (I do not want Kevin Frandsen as the everyday shortstop, and who does?), bringing back Vizquel would make perfect sense.
One thing though: I really didn't realize until now just how bad Vizquel has been with the stick. He's hitting .243/.303/.300 on the year. That's mother-bleeping atrocious. This is seriously his worst season offensively, and he had some pretty crappy seasons early in his career with Seattle. I'd say there's no way he can get worse, but he's 40 and seems to be done. Like I said, I'd still advocate bringing him back for a year based on his defense alone, but man, his bat has been friggin' awful this season.
--There's really no point to this, but I'm a big Dave Matthews fan, so this is a little something I found on YouTube for all you DMB lovers. It's a live performance of one of his more, er, cult-ier (is that a word? Ah, screw it) songs, Halloween. It's neat because the song rocks and the band almost never plays it live. I think they've only played it in concert like seven times in the past ten years or so. The best part is at the end when Dave just starts talking gibberish into the microphone, like he's having some kind of epileptic fit. Enjoy, and have a good weekend!
Well, here are some random links I thought you readers would find fun and interesting. Enjoy!
---Last week, ESPN's Jayson Stark wrote a wonderful article detailing why the save is probably the most ridiculous statistic in baseball. The insane overvaluing of saves is something I've ranted about repeatedly over the years, but this is the first time, I think, that I've ever seen a columnist from the mainstream sports media talk about it. I haven't gone on an anti-saves tirade in a while, but Stark opened the door, so I be a rantin'.
There are so many things wrong with saves, I don't even know where to begin. Let's start with a somewhat extreme example. Let's say a reliever, we'll call him Paulie Rice, comes into a game with a 5-2 lead. Now, I know there's probably more pressure in the ninth inning, but protecting a three-run lead by getting three outs seems like something most guys can do, right?
So Paulie comes in, walks the bases loaded, gives up a two-run single, but gets out of the jam and the team wins 5-4. Paulie gets credit for the save, even though he pitched atrociously. That save is somehow supposed to reflect upon some quality inherent in Paulie's ability, even though he pitched like crap. True, there are a lot of one-run saves, where the room for error is smaller, but coming in with no one on base to get three outs doesn't seem too taxing for a big league pitcher, no matter what the score is.
The problem is, closers are often paid vast amounts of money based on their save totals. This is just silly. You know who leads the AL in saves this year? Joe Borowski, with an ERA of 5.40. Yet you can bet that Borowski is going to get the "proven closer" label and stick around in the majors for a while, probably stinking up the joint. It's crazy. You can find pretty much any decent pitcher off the scrap heap and plug him in as a closer and he'll rack up saves. Remember Tyler Walker and his 23 saves in 2005? Okay pitcher, resilient fellow, but "proven closer" my arse. Matt Herges also saved 23 games in '04, and he stunk. The list goes on. If a guy consistently blows saves and can't get it done in the ninth, it usually just means he's a bad pitcher. Do I need to bring up Armando Benitez here?
If you look at BP's Wins Expected Above Replacement Level (WXRL, yeah it's a mouthful), which gauges reliever performance based on stranding inherited runners and difficulty of situation, among other things, a lot of the guys at the top aren't even closers. It's because the most critical situations in a baseball game usually don't come in the ninth inning. Yes, there are good pitchers who don't have what it takes to close, for whatever reason (LaTroy Hawkins is one). However, there are also a lot of guys who couldn't consistently come in with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh inning and strand every duck on the pond, and I guaran-damn-tee you Joe Borowski is one of them.
And I won't even go into the ridiculous three-inning rule that allowed Wes Littleton to get the save in the notorious 30-3 game this year. So please, everybody, stop overvaluing saves. It's a bad statistic and just because a guy racks up 35 in a season and has a pair of goofy glasses or a scary mustache, it doesn't mean he has some sort of grit or intestinal fortitude that other pitchers don't. Ok, I got that out of my system. End rant.
--Also last week, BP founder Gary Huckaby caused a furor amongst the stathead community by announcing, in pseudo-Nietzschian fashion, that "baseball analysis is dead". This, of course, sent all of us nerds into a panic. Here we had the founder of the most prestigious and influential stathead website in the world just coming out and saying that everything we believe in is all for naught and we should just stop trying. What's going on here? Is OBP suddenly not life? Have our efforts to dissect VORP been rendered moot? Has Joe Morgan won?
Well, no. Actually, it really isn't that apocalyptic. Huckaby's point is a little muddy (even he admits that in a subsequent chat), but I think he's basically saying analysis is dead in the context of front offices actually utilizing such information. His argument is that all the obvious stuff (like OBP is good, don't shag young pitchers' arms) is pretty much accepted by major league teams now, so there are only so many things a stathead can give you if you're a GM and you hire him on to your staff. The thing is, most of the real in-depth number-crunching is being done independently all over the Internet; it's out there so anybody can grab it, unlike traditional scouting measures. So in that sense, why hire a bunch of stat guys to give you data that you can just get for free by having some intern spend five minutes on The Hardball Times?
I think Huckaby has clearly got a point here, but I also think he's being a merciless drama queen. Does he really have to announce that "baseball analysis is dead"? It just seems like a ploy to get people yelling. Why can't he just say something like, "We've reached a point where quantitative analysis has essentially reached its limits in being an asset to major league front offices. Good job, people. You nerds, don't stop doing what you're doing, though." As for the argument that every front office has accepted the common sense arguments of the saber-types...ladies and gentlemen, I direct you to the Juan Pierre signing.
Huckaby has always been sort of a pompous writer, and he's definitely not my favorite of the BP squad. Dave Studeman and Nate Silver have appropriate rebuttals to the "baseball is dead" article. It's a fun little controversy to wrap your brain around.
--The Giants are apparently looking to bring back Omar Vizquel on a one-year deal for 2008. If it's just one year, then this is a perfectly acceptable move. Vizquel still plays Gold Glove defense, and that's a tremendous thing to have with young pitchers who could get rattled by a bunch of errors behind them. With no immediate alternatives (I do not want Kevin Frandsen as the everyday shortstop, and who does?), bringing back Vizquel would make perfect sense.
One thing though: I really didn't realize until now just how bad Vizquel has been with the stick. He's hitting .243/.303/.300 on the year. That's mother-bleeping atrocious. This is seriously his worst season offensively, and he had some pretty crappy seasons early in his career with Seattle. I'd say there's no way he can get worse, but he's 40 and seems to be done. Like I said, I'd still advocate bringing him back for a year based on his defense alone, but man, his bat has been friggin' awful this season.
--There's really no point to this, but I'm a big Dave Matthews fan, so this is a little something I found on YouTube for all you DMB lovers. It's a live performance of one of his more, er, cult-ier (is that a word? Ah, screw it) songs, Halloween. It's neat because the song rocks and the band almost never plays it live. I think they've only played it in concert like seven times in the past ten years or so. The best part is at the end when Dave just starts talking gibberish into the microphone, like he's having some kind of epileptic fit. Enjoy, and have a good weekend!
Labels: anti-saves rant, arbitrary youtube links, link drop, omar vizquel, stat nerd stuff
Monday, January 01, 2007
Just Don't Call Him a Flake
All I have to say about the Giants now is that they better win it in 2007, because they may be screwed financially long term. That's what happens when you sign an incense sniffing left-handed pitcher to a record-setting deal that has about a 95% probability of turning into a complete albatross in like three years.
There's a fairly new axiom going around in baseball that it isn't the dollars of a contract that kills a team, it's the years. Giving Barry Zito $18 million a year isn't the worst thing in the world; giving him that much over seven years just may be. We all knew it would take some mind-blowing combination of money and years to get Zito. It's just that nobody expected the Giants to be the ones handing it out. At this price, I would almost rather have just given Jason Schmidt and his spit-and-bailing wire arm the four years that the Dodgers gave him and held my breath that his shoulder held together.
Anybody who knows anything about the history of pitchers, especially left-handed pitchers, can tell you that it's incredibly dumb to hand out a long-term deal to any pitcher, no matter how good he is. Pitchers are the most unpredictable beings on the baseball diamond. The human arm wasn't meant to take the incredible stress that throwing a baseball for 200 innings a year entails, and thus the breakdown potential for pitchers is incredibly high. For every Tom Glavine there are like ten Don Gulletts or Russ Ortizes, guys who pitched a ton of innings early in their careers and shagged their arms because of it. Barry Zito's most comparible pitcher at the same age is Mike Hampton, a guy who was a picture of health and effectiveness before signing that insane contract with Colorado. Ever since then, Hampton has been alternating crappy pitching with long stays on the DL.
I could see giving this kind of deal to a great pitcher like Johan Santana or Roy Halladay, because the risk you run is only on the injury front; if they stay healthy, you know you'll get your money's worth. Sadly, Zito is not a great pitcher, or anything close to it. He's an above average pitcher with a declining fastball who allows a lot of baserunners. He was second in the American League in walks allowed last year and his 1.40 WHIP is probably an indicator that the great Oakland defense was keeping his ERA from ballooning to over 4. Zito is durable and has never been hurt but, again, pitchers who enter their thirties can just blow up out of nowhere and I can bring up what happened to Mike Hampton again as an example. Or Denny Neagle. Or Shawn Estes. Or Jim Merritt if you really want to go retro.
Look, given Zito's declining peripheral numbers and his general lack of dominance, I'd say that the Giants are going to be lucky if Zito is worth it for three of the seven years in this deal. I just can't imagine that in 2013 Zito's fastball-curve-walks combo will still be baffling hitters, and that's even if his arm is still attached. I guess this signing is Brian Sabean's response to all those crazed fans longing for that big Giant splash on the free agent market. Well, here it is, only it's almost completely wrong-headed. The Giants made Zito the highest paid pitcher in history when he wasn't even a top ten pitcher and has really had only one dominant year in the majors, and that was five seasons ago. Am I the only one who sees anything wrong with this?
No one could have predicted that the market would spin as out of control as it has this winter, but when you think that the Giants could have grabbed a true cornerstone player like Vladimir Guerrero three years ago or Carlos Beltran two years ago for less money than Zito is going to get now...well, it just makes me want to vomit, and no, a New Year's hangover has nothing to do with it. I liked Zito as an Athletic, and I'm sure the stories about his weird quirks and bizarre doll collections will be amusing, but I can't say I completely disagree with some of the commentators (like Rob Neyer or Nate Silver) who are calling this one of the worst signings ever. There are people on fan forums raving over Zito, but trust me, this ain't Bonds circa 1993 here, folks.
The move isn't all apocalyptic doom and gloom, though. While the long-term ramifications have me shielding my eyes, the Zito signing does give me hope for 2007. Zito should be a top 20 pitcher at least for the next two years, and his pairing with Matt Cain atop the starting rotation gives the Giants quite an enviable one-two punch. If Matt Morris can lower his ERA by a run (which I think is likely, given his decent 2006 WHIP) and if Noah Lowry, assuming he isn't traded, can stay healthy, the Giants have the makings of one of the better rotations in the National League.
The moves to improve the lineup have been minimal, and I still cling to the hope that Sabean will bring in a right fielder worth a damn, but it still looks as though the Giants at least have enough parts to compete in the crappy NL. As the Cardinals showed us last season, if you can just sneak into the playoffs, who knows, maybe your horrible catcher will have an inexplicable stretch of competence at the plate and you'll win the World Series.
Happy New Year's! May 2007 bring the Giants all kinds of glory.
There's a fairly new axiom going around in baseball that it isn't the dollars of a contract that kills a team, it's the years. Giving Barry Zito $18 million a year isn't the worst thing in the world; giving him that much over seven years just may be. We all knew it would take some mind-blowing combination of money and years to get Zito. It's just that nobody expected the Giants to be the ones handing it out. At this price, I would almost rather have just given Jason Schmidt and his spit-and-bailing wire arm the four years that the Dodgers gave him and held my breath that his shoulder held together.
Anybody who knows anything about the history of pitchers, especially left-handed pitchers, can tell you that it's incredibly dumb to hand out a long-term deal to any pitcher, no matter how good he is. Pitchers are the most unpredictable beings on the baseball diamond. The human arm wasn't meant to take the incredible stress that throwing a baseball for 200 innings a year entails, and thus the breakdown potential for pitchers is incredibly high. For every Tom Glavine there are like ten Don Gulletts or Russ Ortizes, guys who pitched a ton of innings early in their careers and shagged their arms because of it. Barry Zito's most comparible pitcher at the same age is Mike Hampton, a guy who was a picture of health and effectiveness before signing that insane contract with Colorado. Ever since then, Hampton has been alternating crappy pitching with long stays on the DL.
I could see giving this kind of deal to a great pitcher like Johan Santana or Roy Halladay, because the risk you run is only on the injury front; if they stay healthy, you know you'll get your money's worth. Sadly, Zito is not a great pitcher, or anything close to it. He's an above average pitcher with a declining fastball who allows a lot of baserunners. He was second in the American League in walks allowed last year and his 1.40 WHIP is probably an indicator that the great Oakland defense was keeping his ERA from ballooning to over 4. Zito is durable and has never been hurt but, again, pitchers who enter their thirties can just blow up out of nowhere and I can bring up what happened to Mike Hampton again as an example. Or Denny Neagle. Or Shawn Estes. Or Jim Merritt if you really want to go retro.
Look, given Zito's declining peripheral numbers and his general lack of dominance, I'd say that the Giants are going to be lucky if Zito is worth it for three of the seven years in this deal. I just can't imagine that in 2013 Zito's fastball-curve-walks combo will still be baffling hitters, and that's even if his arm is still attached. I guess this signing is Brian Sabean's response to all those crazed fans longing for that big Giant splash on the free agent market. Well, here it is, only it's almost completely wrong-headed. The Giants made Zito the highest paid pitcher in history when he wasn't even a top ten pitcher and has really had only one dominant year in the majors, and that was five seasons ago. Am I the only one who sees anything wrong with this?
No one could have predicted that the market would spin as out of control as it has this winter, but when you think that the Giants could have grabbed a true cornerstone player like Vladimir Guerrero three years ago or Carlos Beltran two years ago for less money than Zito is going to get now...well, it just makes me want to vomit, and no, a New Year's hangover has nothing to do with it. I liked Zito as an Athletic, and I'm sure the stories about his weird quirks and bizarre doll collections will be amusing, but I can't say I completely disagree with some of the commentators (like Rob Neyer or Nate Silver) who are calling this one of the worst signings ever. There are people on fan forums raving over Zito, but trust me, this ain't Bonds circa 1993 here, folks.
The move isn't all apocalyptic doom and gloom, though. While the long-term ramifications have me shielding my eyes, the Zito signing does give me hope for 2007. Zito should be a top 20 pitcher at least for the next two years, and his pairing with Matt Cain atop the starting rotation gives the Giants quite an enviable one-two punch. If Matt Morris can lower his ERA by a run (which I think is likely, given his decent 2006 WHIP) and if Noah Lowry, assuming he isn't traded, can stay healthy, the Giants have the makings of one of the better rotations in the National League.
The moves to improve the lineup have been minimal, and I still cling to the hope that Sabean will bring in a right fielder worth a damn, but it still looks as though the Giants at least have enough parts to compete in the crappy NL. As the Cardinals showed us last season, if you can just sneak into the playoffs, who knows, maybe your horrible catcher will have an inexplicable stretch of competence at the plate and you'll win the World Series.
Happy New Year's! May 2007 bring the Giants all kinds of glory.
Labels: arbitrary youtube links, bad zito, insane free agent signings
